On March 12 2009 The Folkestone Herald published a letter from the BNP activist for Shepway. The content of the letter was no great surprise, with opening statements claiming ‘genocide’ of the British race showing that some people should really be checking a dictionary before they use 3 syllable words. Anything approaching a half-decent point was lost in the general anti-immigrant-police state-racism rhetoric, although I wouldn’t be surprised if many in the town agreed with the majority of the points made.
In the pic you might not be able to make out the content of this letter but you can make out the presentation, which raises some alarming questions - a newspaper must be impartial, so why is this letter in a box? Why are all the other letters placed neatly in columns, without the luxury of a box to draw attention to them? Why is the BNP letter more than double the length of the permitted word limit? Why not stick it in a ‘Star Letter’ box with a picture of a Golliwog being cuddled by Carol Thatcher* and give the guy a fiver?
Before people cry ‘Michael Howard’ (for he has a regular column), our UFO-spotting friend is the Member of Parliament. Surely a weekly cloumn would be given to any Labour, Lib Dem or even BNP candidate elected. The Herald regularly carries letters from local political parties and organisations, but not in black boxes. The Lib Dems Shepway site even carries a response (http://www.shepwaylibdems.org.uk/articles/000097/the_bnp_are_britains_really_nasty_party.html) it claims was published in the Herald on 19 March. No such letter appeared. Tim Prater of the Lib Dems assures me that the letter was submitted to The Herald on March 15. Were other letters ignored?
Is the box and lack of response due to 1) simple oversight, 2) poor quality of responses, 3) dictated by the need to have an attractive product that sells well and reflects its readership, 4) something more sinister in The Herald? In 2000 the Press Complaints Commission upheld a complaint against the Herald concerning an article about the arrest of six refugees, in which photos were ‘misleading’ (i.e. from a totally different event) and ‘the entire tone of the article was a deliberate attempt to foster prejudice’ http://www.pcc.org.uk/news/index.html?article=MTgzOQ==. For the sake of balanced reporting which informs people of events rather than forming opinions, out of my four suggestions I hope the first is the truth behind this… I’ll put my own two cents over to the editor this week and see if it appears. Watch this space.
*Oddity (as at 11pm March 25) - put ‘Carol Thatcher’ in the Yahoo search box and the third link is a glowing reference from…the BNP! Try the same with Google and the third link is from The Daily Mail, which is the only source cited in the onerous BNP letter to The Herald.
In the pic you might not be able to make out the content of this letter but you can make out the presentation, which raises some alarming questions - a newspaper must be impartial, so why is this letter in a box? Why are all the other letters placed neatly in columns, without the luxury of a box to draw attention to them? Why is the BNP letter more than double the length of the permitted word limit? Why not stick it in a ‘Star Letter’ box with a picture of a Golliwog being cuddled by Carol Thatcher* and give the guy a fiver?Before people cry ‘Michael Howard’ (for he has a regular column), our UFO-spotting friend is the Member of Parliament. Surely a weekly cloumn would be given to any Labour, Lib Dem or even BNP candidate elected. The Herald regularly carries letters from local political parties and organisations, but not in black boxes. The Lib Dems Shepway site even carries a response (http://www.shepwaylibdems.org.uk/articles/000097/the_bnp_are_britains_really_nasty_party.html) it claims was published in the Herald on 19 March. No such letter appeared. Tim Prater of the Lib Dems assures me that the letter was submitted to The Herald on March 15. Were other letters ignored?
Is the box and lack of response due to 1) simple oversight, 2) poor quality of responses, 3) dictated by the need to have an attractive product that sells well and reflects its readership, 4) something more sinister in The Herald? In 2000 the Press Complaints Commission upheld a complaint against the Herald concerning an article about the arrest of six refugees, in which photos were ‘misleading’ (i.e. from a totally different event) and ‘the entire tone of the article was a deliberate attempt to foster prejudice’ http://www.pcc.org.uk/news/index.html?article=MTgzOQ==. For the sake of balanced reporting which informs people of events rather than forming opinions, out of my four suggestions I hope the first is the truth behind this… I’ll put my own two cents over to the editor this week and see if it appears. Watch this space.
*Oddity (as at 11pm March 25) - put ‘Carol Thatcher’ in the Yahoo search box and the third link is a glowing reference from…the BNP! Try the same with Google and the third link is from The Daily Mail, which is the only source cited in the onerous BNP letter to The Herald.
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