The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #88139 Message #1650751
Posted By: Richard Bridge
18-Jan-06 - 05:42 AM
Thread Name: Times online debate on Licensing Act
Subject: Times online debate on Licensing Act
I have today written the following entirely self-explanatory letter to the online editor of the Times.
The On-line Editor The Times 1 Pennington St., London E98 1TT
Forge House High Street Lower Stoke Rochester Kent ME3 9RD
Dear Sir On-line debate The effect of the Licensing Act on live music
I refer to my discussion with your staff at the telephone. You are hosting an online debate on the above topic at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,564-1981930,00.html. You have told me that my contribution to that debate has been rejected, and you have also told me that other contributions to that debate have been rejected, and will not be posted. That of course is your prerogative in a moderated forum, but the reason your staff gave me undermines the honesty of the debate.
I was told that you required a variety of views and would not publish too many contributions on the same side, because you could not permit the online discussion to become a petition. I was also told that you were concerned, and therefore rejecting contributions to the debate because you feared you were being lobbied by a pressure group.
The upshot is that you give a wholly dishonest view of the substance of the debate. If a pressure group can mobilise its supporters that is the very stuff of democracy. If there are no contributors to support the government position, and if you receive an overwhelming input against the government, you ought, democratically, to reflect that in your reportage, and to do otherwise is redolent, indeed gives off an unsavoury stench, of bias.
My own contribution, further, approached the issues from a different perspective from any other contribution yet published by you on this topic, and by your own rules as explained to me ought therefore to have been included so as to provide a plurality of perspectives.
This is not a level playing field, and your position does the best traditions of the Times no credit at all. I strongly suggest that you should accept all contributions to your online debate, moderating only for legal reasons. Otherwise what you host is not a debate but a fraud which fails properly to present the facts or indeed the public opinion.