From the editor’s desk

An ethical media policy

There is recognisably such a thing as Catholic fundamentalism. It might be defined, by reference to Protestant and Islamic parallels, as believing in a strict and literal interpretation of basic texts and leaving no room for development. When the new head of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, told Catholic journalists recently that it was not the role of the Catholic press to be "instruments of fundamentalism", this is presumably what he was referring to. Decoded, the phrase seems to mean slavish adherence to a party line, as if there was only one source of truth in the world and that was to be found within the Vatican (or the Vatican as the fundamentalists imagine it to be).

The Tablet knows its fundamentalists all too well, for they sometimes assail it for not being what they are, more Catholic than the Pope. There is no doubt a genuine fear behind this attack that the slightest departure from a very narrow test of orthodoxy immediately opens the door to anarchy and apostasy. But at least since the time of Cardinal Newman it has been generally agreed that the body of Catholic doctrine is never stagnant, but moves according to certain rules and principles in response to discussion, comment and criticism. Without such an understanding, for instance, the Second Vatican Council would not have been possible, nor indeed the First - papal infallibility was itself a development. Against such an understanding, Catholic fundamentalism can be seen as a false ideology, the very thing the fundamentalists are most afraid of.

The preservation of journalism from ideology is one of the themes of this year's papal message for World Communications Day next month. The mass media are legitimately "at the service of a world of greater justice and solidarity", said Pope Benedict. "Unfortunately, though, they risk being transformed into systems aimed at subjecting humanity to agendas dictated by the dominant interests of the day. This is what happens when communication is used for ideological purposes or for the aggressive advertising of consumer products. While claiming to represent reality, it can tend to legitimise or impose distorted models of personal, family or social life." There is room for a reservation, however, about whether one role of the press is to "promote the family", as the Pope argues, for one of the great issues of the day, probably occupying as many column inches as any other topic, concerns which patterns of personal relationship and family life are fitting to human dignity, and which are not. This requires room for debate, for challenging assumptions, even for the odd shocking opinion.

Neither the secular nor the Catholic press can approach such issues with the fundamentalist belief that the answers can be found simply by looking at the Vatican website. But then the Pope makes the suggestion that there is room for a new speciality, info-ethics (along the same lines as bio-ethics), which would create a space in which such issues could be argued about. There is indeed a large agenda for such a speciality, and it might encourage journalists to be more self-critical and analytical. There can be a fundamentalism, too, of "anything goes" - that it is wrong in principle to set any limits to what can be said or done. In challenging that, the Pope is certainly right.