Imams, soldiers, schools and the NUT

The same was true of coverage of the NUT's proposal that, in the interests of community cohesion, leaders of the many different faiths in Britain should be invited into all schools to offer religious instruction.

Now this is a controversial proposal. It managed to upset, in almost equal measure, both faith leaders and secularists. I leave others to judge its merits.

But what was alarming was the way many newspaper headlines chose to focus on just one part of this, namely the possibility of Muslim clerics going into schools.

The Daily Express headline, for example, filled almost the entire front-page with huge letters stating "Fury over plan to teach Koran in schools".

Once again, the effect of the headlines was to arouse a knee-jerk response by over-simplifying what was being said.

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