Last week I posted an item about the Bath Chronicle's campaign to keep rugby at the city's Recreation Ground. After speaking to the paper's editor, Sam Holliday, I discovered that it was a controversial initiative because the city's people were sharply divided over the matter. Holliday had been aware of that fact, but decided to go ahead with his "Keep rugby at the Rec" campaign based on his belief, and that of other senior staff, that it would be in Bath's best interests.
He had already had letters of complaint when we spoke, and published them accordingly. He thought it was a healthy example of democracy, with the city's paper at the heart of the debate. But his latest editorial reveals that some people don't see it like that at all, and the arguments they advance raise fundamental questions about the raison d'étre of newspapers, local and national, and the "proper" exercise of journalism.
Holliday writes: "There is nothing wrong with many of the excellently argued letters and comments which oppose our views and make their points with passion and clarity. However, the ones that puzzled me most were those who attacked us for having a view at all. We should be totally impartial, some people say, and it is our job to report the news, not help create it."
Holliday rightly considered this argument, which asserted that papers must be independent or impartial, to be "very interesting and valid", though he couldn't help but notice that "nearly all the people" who criticised the paper were those opposed to its stance. In other words, they "are not truly criticising the Chronicle for taking a position on this issue - they are criticising the Chronicle for not taking their view." Leaving that aside, Holliday then moves on to the substantive argument about whether it was right in principle for newspapers to back one side of an argument.
"I passionately believe they should", he writes. "Newspapers have been launching campaigns for what they believe is for the benefit of their readers since they were founded, and I sincerely hope they will continue to do so, because no one wants a paper that is seen as being irrelevant or out of touch with people's concerns." He then adds that "even if we sometimes ruffle a few feathers en route, is that really such a bad thing?" before concluding: "Trying to lead from the front and create and stimulate debate and discussion is what newspapers should always do."
Now I have to say that I like the cut of Mr Holliday's jib. He is surely right in theory and in practice. As long as his paper is prepared to give space to opposing views - which it clearly is doing - then there can be nothing wrong with adopting a definite editorial position. A newspaper is not a blank sheet of paper. Similarly, its senior editorial staff have views and it is perfectly proper for them to be expressed. Impartiality is often fake anyway. Indeed, in practice, merely acting as a "sounding board" often fails to stimulate debate. And, in the end, it's the quality and intensity of the debate itself that counts. By encouraging people to air their views ensures that policy-makers will be able to make their decisions based on a genuine knowledge of public opinion.
I was talking to my City University students this week about the age-old journalistic conflict between objectivity and subjectivity, between the journalism that attempts to be impartial and that which is self-consciously committed to a point of view. Each time I do this it strikes me that we should long ago have passed that point. But the Holliday editorial reminds us that the debate continues to haunt journalistic endeavour.
