The Media Column: The Archbishop, the censored quote and the second coming

The new editor of The Times has been in North America for a while; so he may be labouring under the delusion that Britain is still a devoutly Christian country, and that a word of praise for a rival newspaper from the incoming Archbishop of Canterbury will send readers hotfoot to the newsagent.

That, at least, would explain The Times's eccentric behaviour over the announcement that the Rev Rowan Williams was to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. The paper first printed an extract from what it termed his "forthcoming book". Yet the Rev Rowan Williams's book is not forthcoming. Lo, it hath already come, about two years ago.

When that was pointed out, a Times executive responded that the book was changing publishers. Such ingenious reasoning could keep us all in brilliant serialisations for years. There would be tantalising teasers of new works of fiction from Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens to enliven the daily pages, with radical new political insights from Karl Marx and George Orwell at the weekend.

If The Times was a mite over-eager to present itself as being first with the news, it was also guilty of another little journalistic sleight of hand, again concerned with the new Archbishop's book, that was more alarming. In the extract from the book, Mr Williams referred with characteristic charity to "The Guardian's excellent education supplement". Or, at least, he did in the original text. By the time the sentence appeared in The Times, the word "excellent" had been lost. The Guardian, needless to say, made hay with this. Its columnist Catherine Bennett professed herself shocked, virtually accusing The Times of sacrilege in censoring the man shortly to be the country's most eminent churchman. While her shock was shot through with a heavy irony, there is something shocking here. As it happens, I probably share The Times's view that the Rev Rowan Williams was in too exuberant a mood when describing The Guardian's education supplement. No doubt his ecclesiastical duties recently have been too heavy for him to catch this paper's splendidly revamped Thursday education supplement. I commend its probing editorial and pages of job ads to his Reverence. But as much as one might wish the new Archbishop's readings of current debate in the teaching world were more eclectic, one cannot put words into his mouth. Still less should one take words out of it.

The Times was exhibiting signs of Fleet Street paranoia. It is far from alone in suffering from that debilitating condition. It is not the first paper to worry that too generous a credit, or even a credit at all, for another paper will cause a dip in the circulation. Yet generally a loss of readers is more to do with one's own flaws than with readers being energetic enough to rush off to sample a paper they have seen mentioned that morning. Readers tend to be more broad-minded – and often more loyal – than journalists. They know other papers exist and have good things in them. But they are happy with the overall mix they have chosen. If they leave, it is because they have become dissatisfied, not because they have been alerted to the existence of a rival.

Changing a quote, as The Times did, to shield one's readers from a compliment for another paper sets a dangerous precedent. Should we all avoid mentions of other papers altogether – censor the interviewee who mentions that she does the Times crossword in an idle few moments, has an odd craving to be featured in Nigel Dempster's Mail diary, or gets her kicks from The Guardian's social-work spreads?

Newspaper paranoia is a sad condition that can provoke all sorts of delusions. Usually, it limits itself to labelling stories "exclusive" when they are universally available. When the symptoms include claiming two-year-old books as new or rewriting people's quotes because they have the audacity to read and enjoy another paper, it's time to call a doctor.

d.lister@independent.co.uk

David Aaronovitch is away