Letters to the Media

Letters to the media up to 24th April 2020

 

When is this man going to report on issues that are not based on speculation and hear say. His report was a load of opinion. He isn’t in 10 Downing Street so let them get on with what they are doing. Most of these so called conversation are more than likely to be from disgruntled civil servants and MP’s.  You need to focus more in the difunctional Civil Service more than M Ps who will obviously argue and discuss decisions being made. One mans confusion is another mans fruitful discussion of differing opinions. His passing comments about the Civil Service do not get to the heart of their problems of following orders.

His articles are worth giving a miss in my opinion. So guess what.....

 No Response

Treating the public like children is exactly what the government needs to do. Unfortunately there are a number of people who do not understand the issue and refuse to listen to advice.  Treating everyone the same ensures clarity of message.

  No response

This ridiculous use of the term failure when it comes  to the government changing its plans is becoming increasingly annoying. The role of a government it so look at changing situations and adapt accordingly which is exactly what this government is doing.

 No Response

 

Where does Jonathan Leake get this twisted idea that Brexit was about stopping people coming here to work. Brexit was about stopping unelected bureaucrats questioning our laws and stifling our economy as it was.

No Response

I used to feel that the Insight team were at the top of their game until I read this weeks report on the way the government approached the Covid 29 crisis. Thankfully the expert on today’s briefing put much of the misreporting  right and a number of times corrected journalist comments. Interesting that I don’t find any comments in the press about these incorrect comments and how they were corrected.  Prime Ministers don’t always attend Cobra meetings but leaders of dept often chair. There were a number of things going on at the time Brexit and Flooding which the media loves to criticise the governments actions.

Maybe the loss of some of the present newspapers from our new stands due to financial problems may focus the mind to report facts and not speculation and media opinion

Times Response

Thank you for getting in touch. Our Insight investigation has aroused intense national debate and we understand there are strong feelings on all sides. 

We believe the article performed a valuable public service in the best traditions of our journalism, holding those in power to account for their actions. It was based on impeccable sources and thoroughly researched. 

A detailed response to criticisms of the article is provided by the Insight team itself in our podcast, Stories of our times. This is available free of charge through our website (link here) - or, if you prefer, from a wide range of podcast platforms including those of Apple (link here) and Google (link here). 

Best wishes

Stephen Bleach

Letters Editor

This newspaper is becoming a joke.  One minute you accuse the government of not closing the country down quickly enough when the crisis appeared now you are accusing them of not opening up the country again to commerce. The governments comment that people will get fed up if the country is closed down too soon has been shown to be correct.  Of course we can’t expect you and the rest of the media to accept this.  The problem is you control the messages which are becoming more and more confused. What do you really want because as far as I can see you can’t make you’re mind up?

As for the response on the Insight article do you not realise how many of the public think you are entirely wrong in the way you are pursuing this issue. All you are doing is confusing the public in the one clear message, no confusion in the message at all no matter what the police say, that we need to stop spreading the virus.  The economy has been provided with enormous support - more than any government has done since the war.  Interesting you don’t refer to the reporter Jonathan Leake whose reputation has been tarnished.  You love tarnishing other people but not your own.

If there is any second peak then we know where the blame lies but as usually you will not accept this

 

Interesting how non of these criticisms make it to the letters page.  I looked over the ones that got printed and surpise surprise they wewre all praining the wonderful work of The Times.  What happend to Freedom of Speech.