Dear readers,
With the full acknowledgement that I am failing you, I make the following announcement: I will no longer be publishing letters to the editor related to municipal or state elections in The Valley Indy.
The decision comes after I was vaguely threatened (in my opinion) with a libel lawsuit. I did not think the letter was even remotely close to libel.
However, I checked with colleagues and was advised that if I could not confirm the contents of a letter; the letter should not be published. That struck me as a massive liability: an impossible standard at a publication with one full-time employee covering three towns. Mind you that Derby alone has four candidates running for mayor, plus contested legislative races and the tax board.
When I worked at The News-Times of Danbury, one editor’s full-time job was to vet letters. I do not have that luxury.
Mind you, there have been stringent written policies in place for years regarding letters in The Valley Indy. My approach has been that letters are the writers’ opinions, and that as long as there were no personal attacks or blatantly false statements — I was hands off.
For those not familiar news publications — unlike tech companies such as Facebook — can be held responsible for publishing libelous content.
It pains me to stop publishing letters during election season, especially because incumbents have a name-recognition advantage because incumbents are often in the news.
At the same time, I’ve struggled for years with the fact that political-season letters — by and large the only time anyone writes letters in the age of social media — are essentially free advertisements for the campaigns.
Those free ads take time away from my normal editing and reporting jobs. By that I mean — when I set deadlines for election-related letters, very often the writers wait until the literal last minute to submit letters. This publication just isn’t set up for that.
I’d like to find a way to set up a process to vet letters, but as of this writing I don’t have any ideas.
Eugene Driscoll
Reporter/Editor/Grant Writer/Marketing Department/Social Media Manager/Podcast Producer
ValleyIndy.org
