Distorting or "spinning" information on matters of public interest can create a serious lack of trust in institutions, the Archbishop of Dublin said yesterday.
At the Ethics and Values in a Digital Age conference, at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dr Diarmuid Martin said: "One of the negative side-products of the information age has been the emergence of that new form of doctorate, conferred by I know not who: the spin doctor . . . In many cases this involves just harmless focusing of the message that one has to get across.
"The question becomes more serious when spin enters into the areas of economic competition or into politics and public life, as the debates on the invasion of Iraq have shown in a particularly obvious way.
"Access to information is an essential dimension of the democratic process. It is curious to find that in most western societies there is a growing corpus of law facilitating access to information, while at the same time there is a growing tendency to manage information which surrounds some of the more fundamental dimensions of governance and democracy.
"Spin should not substitute for telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," he said.
Dr Martin also said questions about the ownership of knowledge arose in the case of ownership of media, both print and electronic. "Transparency on media ownership is a matter of public interest and requires specific legislative norms, he said".
It was an ethical imperative that information technology should be used in a way in which the dignity, self-esteem and capacity of each person was enhanced and fully respected, he said.
Catholic teaching had always defended the right to private property, but "while recognising how intellectual property rights systems generate creativity and reward of creative talent, personal and corporate rights and interest are always subordinate to basic human need and the needs of the human family."
He warned that "the path of technological change means that whatever trickles down will trickle down too little and too late to be of real advantage to the marginalised." The conference was organised by the Information Society Commission