London, England - The Archbishop of Canterbury last night launched a wide-ranging attack on the media, accusing journalists of distorting debate, contributing to a climate of national cynicism, and unjustly attacking institutions over their secretiveness.
In the most trenchant statement on public life he has made in his three years at Lambeth Palace, Dr Rowan Williams appeared to take in tabloids, broadsheets, weblogs and broadcasters with equal vehemence. He charged all with conspiring against public understanding.
The speech at Lambeth Palace represented a departure for the archbishop, who has been criticised in church quarters for his reluctance to speak out on public matters, leading to accusations that his advisers prefer him to say nothing controversial.
Dr Williams claimed that some aspects of current journalistic practice are "lethally damaging", contributing to the "embarrassingly low level of trust" in the profession.
The archbishop said: "We need to deflate some of the rhetoric about the media as guardians and nurturers of democracy simply by virtue of the constant exposure of 'information' and we need to be cautious about a use of 'public interest' language that ignores the complexity and, often, artificiality of our ideas of 'the public'. "
He accused the media of manipulating fear, exhibiting violent conflict between people for entertainment, and living off internal feuds: "Corrupt speech, inflaming unexamined emotion, reinforcing division, wrapped up in its own performance, leaves us less human: fewer things are possible for us. Bad human communication leaves us less room to grow." His attack encompassed national newspapers which "communicate as if every reader ... shared the same fundamental values, preferences and anxieties", broadcasters for their obsession with breaking news, and weblogs which indulge in "paranoid fantasy, self-indulgent nonsense and dangerous bigotry".
Dr Williams said that journalists were drawn from too narrow a class, educational and ethnic base. He said that they were too London-based and had "a strong tribal identity which may be pretty far removed from the specific local and civic loyalties that form the raw material of serious discursive politics."
The speech provoked a hostile reaction from some broadcasting and newspaper executives. Nick Pollard, head of Sky News, said that such attacks on the breaking news agenda were outmoded. "The TV news industry is well aware of the pitfalls of instant judgment and [has] developed all sorts of ways of making sure we don't fall into them."
David Mannion, editor in chief of ITV News, said he feared the archbishop's argument may be seized by those who wished to control the news agenda for their own ends.
But John Lloyd, the Financial Times journalist who last year kickstarted a debate on the breakdown of trust between the media and those in public life with his book, What the Media are Doing to Our Politics, said that the archbishop's remarks could reignite the row.
"The fact that he's made this speech shows that there's still some heat in it," he said. "Much of the debate was around the theory that politicians are now imprisoned in a world controlled by the media and much of what they do is determined by that."
Dr Williams, whose communication skills and theological articulacy were among the reasons that he was appointed to lead the Church of England three years ago, has since been criticised for often convoluted and opaque public utterances and his reluctance to speak out on some moral issues.
As archbishop he has had to confront divisions within the Anglican communion over homosexuality and has been subjected to harsh rhetoric, particularly from some conservative evangelicals, because of his privately tolerant stance on the matter.
His reticence about being interviewed and the protectiveness of his staff has caused private criticism and despair among some bishops. Senior BBC staff have admitted that programme producers, after a number of rebuffs from Lambeth Palace, now routinely approach Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, for authoritative comment on religious issues.
The archbishop told last night's audience: "A flourishing, morally credible media is a vital component in the maintenance of genuinely public talk, argument about common good.
"Such talk is not in rich supply just now and it is only fair to ask what share of responsibility the media has for this. But ... societies to some extent have the media they deserve and license."