by
‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’
A COUPLE of years ago the Rochdale Observer published a report
of a march by one of those three initial right wing groups ostensibly
protesting about the grooming of teenage girls by a gang of Asian
men. The then leader of Rochdale Council, Richard Farnell,
castigated the paper because he objected to the prominence given to
the report. He wanted powers to ban such marches in future
ostensibly on the grounds that they ‘scapegoated an entire
community’. In other words he did not think that the
people of Rochdale had any right to know what was going on in their
town if he did not approve of it.
A
week later the ‘Your Views’ section of the paper devoted
to letters sent in by readers carried a contribution praising the
report and objecting to both Farnell’s attempt to prevent
legitimate protest and his attempt to keep residents from knowing
about it.
In
2014, Simon Danczuk published a book about the town’s former MP,
Cyril Smith, who had died four years earlier. I will be charitable
and say that the book was not very good. It contained material taken
from Smiths ghosted autobiography, material that was clearly
derivative from a 1979 piece in Rochdale Alternative Paper (RAP)
about Smith unsavoury antics at Cambridge House hostel, material that
was later shown to be demonstrably wrong and a lot of assertions for
which there was no evidence produced, but which had the effect of
making any further claims about Smith’s behaviour unreliable.
Throughout
the summer of 2014 the Rochdale Observer carried material, thought by
some people to have been placed by an associate of Mr Danczuk, which
tried to implicate the local Lib-Dems in a ‘cover up’ designed to
ensure that other things about Smith did not become known.
Also
throughout the summer the ‘Your Views’ section of
the paper regularly carried letters pointing out the deficiencies in
Danczuk’s book and why it was not a reliable record.
If
Richard Farnell had been allowed to get away with his objection to
the original report it might just have had the effect of making the
editor a bit more cautious next time. It wasn’t the Home Affairs
Select Committee which challenged Danczuk’s fanciful stories about
Smith’s supposed antics being covered up by Special Branch and of
Westminster paedophile rings, it was letters in the ‘Your
Views’ columns of the Rochdale Observer.
In
recent years there’s been a competitor to the Observer in the shape
of the web based media outlet Rochdale Online
which included a
vibrant ‘Letters’ section. Whichever of these news
outlets a letter writer chose one thing was certain its contents
would be scrutinised by local politicians.
Sadly
that is a thing of the past. The Rochdale Observer first cut
down the space devoted to letters from readers, then reduced the
frequency of the column to the point where some things are out of
date by the time they appear. Rochdale Online went the whole
hog and got rid its letters pages completely.
A
liberal democracy like ours needs these self correcting mechanisms.
Politicians need close scrutiny. Ideas need to be challenged. We
are moving to a time when politicians and journalists will have a
monopoly on the dissemination of ideas. Twitter and Facebook are no
substitute for a vibrant ‘Letters’ page in a
newspaper or its web based equivalent. With both Twitter and
Facebook it is easy to become locked into a world in which we only
hear the views of people we agree with.
Contributions
to ‘Letters’
pages
in newspapers aren’t perfect. They can be badly written, erudite,
bigoted, idealistic,
trivial, important, liberal, conservative, revolutionary or
reactionary. But in
local newspapers they give people a sense of belonging because they
allow them
to have their voice heard. Our
society will be all the worse for their
loss.
Posts
