AS the chairman of a pressure group which has been successful in forcing a large housebuilder to complete necessary works on a decade-old development, I want to register my thanks to the Gazette for its comprehensive reporting on this issue.
Local newspapers and independent news websites with professional reporters, who aren’t influenced by advertising revenue, are critical in ensuring that powerful people and organisations are held to account.
The Gazette didn’t slavishly report everything we said during this short campaign (actually, far from it). And journalists, quite properly, always asked ‘the other side’ for their comments, to ensure fair and balanced reporting.
The company concerned and its agents are doubtless a major source of advertising revenue for the Gazette, and I expect all these folks found us irritating, particularly since marketing for Lay Wood is now under way. But that didn’t influence the Gazette’s reporting at all, nor did it prevent a leader column in which the paper expressed support for our cause.
The ‘fake news’ debate (in which Donald Trump and others can dream-up whatever accusations they choose, without any supporting evidence at all, yet accuse the press of inventing stories and having no sources) is pretty worrying.
We may gripe about the press but life would change fundamentally for the worse if politicians and corporations didn’t have awkward journalists holding their feet to the fire. That’s true even on a local level.
DAVID BELLIS
Chairman
David Wilson Homes Action Group
Devizes