In Mick
Palmer to Editor, Daily Telegraph I published the full text of a letter
submitted to the editor of The Daily
Telegraph on 11
February 2014, in
response to an article by Miranda Devine, published in the Telegraph on 8 February, and a link to the edited version of
the letter published on 14 February.
Below is the text of a follow-up letter sent by Mr Palmer yesterday
to Associate Editor Sarrah Le Marquand.
Begins
Dear Sarrah.
Thank you for your recent advice concerning my response to
Miranda Devine’s opinion piece on 8 February 2014 on ending the drug culture
and for running an edited version of my reply in last Friday’s edition of the
Daily Telegraph.
I must admit, however, to being disappointed on two counts.
Firstly, that your newspaper would publish an edited version
of a response on such an important topic without making any public
acknowledgement that the published response had been edited.
Secondly, that the editing appeared to be aimed at weakening
the impact of my response and minimising any criticism of Ms Devine.
In particularly, I draw your attention to the following
excerpts from my original letter which were omitted from the published version:
The Howard government launched
its “Tough on Drugs Strategy” in 1997. Yet behind the scenes the Howard
government was the first Commonwealth Government to help fund the needle and
syringe programmes run by the states and territories. The Howard government
also allocated a lot of funding to help move drug offenders from the criminal
justice system to drug treatment… In my opinion these were all excellent
policies but they were all harm reduction rather than simply ‘Tough on Drugs’.
And,
I was saddened by Ms Devine’s
attack upon Dr Alex Wodak for his advocacy of drug law reform. Dr Wodak is well
able to defend and speak for himself but, in my view, attacking the man rather
than the ball is not only poor form but generally is a sign of fundamental
weaknesses in the argument of the alleger.
Having regard to the fundamental importance, particularly in
the current media environment, of transparency and integrity in reporting, I
found these omissions surprising and regretful.
I respectfully request that you publish this letter to
correct the record and more accurately reflect the intent and meaning of my
initial response.
Yours sincerely
Mick Palmer
Ends
1 comment:
Pathetic selective editing by those at News Limited, though it's continuing to indicate a complete lack of respect to the fourth estate.
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