Editorial: A little faith on letters

How many Americans live in a community with a newspaper that will entertain publishing every local letter it receives? Not many, we’d wager. It’s an opportunity — not a Constitutional right — that seems to be taken for granted of late.

The Reporter recently added a discretionary criterion to our letters policy — that in addition to libel and unsupported facts, malicious statements will give us pause as we prepare letters for publication. As with the libel and factual accuracy rule, the malice policy will not result in an automatic, flat-out rejection of a letter. That’s not how we operate.

When a letter runs afoul of our policy, it triggers a conversation with the letter writer. The goal is for the writer to make his or her point within publication limits that protect the integrity of the paper.

The letters section of a newspaper is not like a Town Hall public hearing. There, the speaker is solely responsible for the words he puts forth. When we publish a letter, we also become responsible for those words.

We hope to receive and publish many a highly critical letter — extreme criticism and malice are not the same things. And we will continue our efforts to publish every local letter we receive.