The opinion page is an opportunity to vent

Someone asked me recently why I don’t write more editorials. They went on to say that if they owned a newspaper they would write as often as they could to let people know what they thought. It’s my opinion that what I think is not as interesting or as important as what everyone else in the community thinks. That is what the “opinion” section is all about.

I received a letter this week from a nice lady, which has prompted me to clarify the difference of an “opinion” section from the rest of the paper, which has news, announcements, press releases, feature stories, etc. She is very upset with another publication, Catholic News Notes, which apparently wrote a negative article about our local Catholic priests. She is also upset that we have printed negative letters regarding Fathers Bud and Bernie. She says she would like us to have policies in place to keep letters like these out of the paper because we are in danger of becoming an “Enquirer” type of paper and guilty of spreading gossip.

First of all, I would like to say that I personally respect and admire Fathers Bud and Bernie. I am not Catholic, but I knew of Father Bud before he came to Fallbrook. As far as I can see he is a moral and upstanding man who follows his convictions and has accomplished great things at St. Peter’s. He has caused some controversy along the way and that is to be expected when you are accomplishing things. He is responding to all of this as I would expect him to… he’s just continuing to move forward and do his job without losing his focus. It’s nice that he has people in his parish who take the time to support him with their letters.

Now, back to the “free press.”

We believe the opinion page is crucial for a healthy community. It is an outlet and forum where people are allowed to vent publicly, giving them some relief and control of their surroundings. Certainly anyone who regularly reads that section sees there are a lot of positive letters also. It’s a public forum. We print almost everything we receive and we edit only for length when we need to. We don’t typically “fact-check” our letters because they are subjective opinions. While we may be uncomfortable with people attacking a public figure (such as Father Bud or Father Bernie) or addressing racism, politics, public policy, etc., it is important that we provide the opportunity for steam to escape steadily so we don’t have explosions on our hands.

In the past we have been fortunate enough to have someone on staff who could fact-check letters regarding assertions made against FPUD because we had a suspicion that a person was using our public forum to stretch the truth on a regular basis.

Our most unpopular opinion page policy is that we won’t print anonymous letters, because cowards don’t deserve to have their letters printed.

A quote to ponder: “Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.” —Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Biography