Re: Controversial coverage (Our View, Oct. 23)
I will assume the words in the “Our View” in the Oct. 23 Gazette entitled “Controversial coverage” are sincere.
I believe that the author believes sleep is lost by some of your writers and editors over the use of the correct turn of phrase, and appropriately balanced reporting, and that your writers “pour your hearts out” for your readers to maintain trust.
I will also accept that you did not sell the full front page of any Black Press publications to candidates or parties during the election in order to separate your publication from any perception of bias based upon party affiliations.
And finally, I will accept that the editorial page of your papers is not the front page and often contains opinions, rather than facts.
However, I don’t know if it is just me, but it does give me considerable pause each time I happen to glance at Tom Fletcher’s B.C. Views column (which I do less and less in recent years) and I find his one-sided, biased, anti-NDP, anti-union, right wing, pro-business, pro-fossil fuel rhetoric.
Yes, his column appears on the editorial page. But at the end of each column his credentials indicate he is “legislative reporter” for Black Press.
How can anything he writes on other pages of Black Press publications possibly be taken as non-biased reporting, when his columns are filled with vitriolic, biased points of view that have little to do with reporting, and often enough, questionably to do with reality?
Arthur Entlich
Metchosin
Editor’s note: While West Shore-based stories from Tom Fletcher are rare in our print edition, readers can find his legislature-based reporting on provincial goings-on on a regular basis in the News category on this website.