For the past several weeks we have had the opportunity to report on a number of contentious topics, which have stirred the passion of our readers.
On at least two occasions we have relaxed our rules about letters to the editor and allowed some rather lengthy submissions to be printed. Often, the decision to print a long letter means we have to forego the printing of other letters that week. There is only so much room.
Two of the more lengthy letters made it onto our pages because they were pithy and well-written opinions of the writers, and because after printing one, we felt an obligation to print the other because it addressed the opposite side of the issue.
All that being said, we may have caused ourselves more problems than we intended. Recently, we have received several lengthy letters that we have not printed, but we have done so for more reasons than just the length.
A problem we see more and more of is one whereby people believe everything they see and read on various blogs, web pages and user-modified websites. Just because a piece of information is repeated, forwarded or “liked” on a popular social network does not mean it is based on fact. Too often this information not only lacks factual basis, it can often be described as at least bordering on the ridiculous. Information from one source is mixed with information from another source, neither of which is credible and both sources are used to give credibility to the other.
We try, whenever possible to fact-check as much as we can, but some of the information becomes so convoluted that it is almost impossible to verify, or for that matter, debunk.
The other problem is that of purely personal attacks. Going after someone’s opinion or ideology is one thing; stooping to name-calling is rarely beneficial and certainly not something we choose to participate in.
So, for the time being at least, we are going to clamp down on our policies once again and ask that letter writers adhere to some basic rules.
First, we ask that your letters be on topic and not just mass-distributed political statements. While we encourage passionate discourse, we also ask that respect be shown. Letters should be of a reasonable length. We really like those that have about 300-400 words and are to the point, without a lot of superfluous information. Oh, and those who choose to disagree with something printed by some other publication and want to use us to bad-mouth them, probably will not get much ink here unless we have a dog in the race too.
Most of all, we encourage our readers to voice their opinions and we value each and every reader. Just remember that we cannot print all the letters we get, and our job is to determine which ones we do print.
Thank you.
