Controversial reporting

My antennae twitched as soon as I heard William Crawley's tone of voice as he said the following on Radio 4's Sunday this morning:

Religious and community organisations are being paid thousands of pounds to assist the Home Office in removing people from the United Kingdom. The controversial scheme involves setting up voluntary return centres where immigrants, usually those who have become homeless, receive financial support from the Home Office to go back to their country of origin.

Now, that doesn't sound too bad when read from the written page, even though you can see the telltale word "controversial" there. What you don't get from just reading is the way William managed to suggest surprise or even incredulity in his tone of voice as he read it, as if he was describing someone he didn't much like. He could have read it straight, but he didn't.

The following report by Rajeev Gupta also called the scheme "controversial". 

Rajeev's report did feature two people - one Hindu, one Sikh - who backed the scheme but they got less time than its critics, and the report's main speaker came from the group campaigning against this deportation method. She got the lion's share of the report and was given both the first word and the last word, thus framing its argument. Sunday's favourite Anglican bishop, Manchester's David Walker, was also on hand as a featured critic, and he wasn't challenged - unlike the Hindu supporter of the scheme. So, all in all, it wasn't hard to work out where Sunday stood on the issue.