A letter to the editor

Dear Mr Beard,

So someone referred to your newspaper as a local rag? Hold the front page!

As the big bad defamer and council comms chief John Shewell said earlier today, phoning him would have been preferable to sending an email suggesting he had ‘defamed’ you. The man was correcting something you’d got wrong.

“As to your comment describing the Argus as a “local rag”, the advice from our company lawyer is that the tweet as a whole is defamatory in that it characterises The Argus (and therefore the Editor and individual members of staff) as a “rag” that carelessly or incompetently publishes false or misleading information and is not to be relied on.”

Really, Michael?

Christ, if councils sent tetchy emails to every newspaper that defamed them, servers across the land would be collapsing under the weight of never before seen levels of tetchiness and lawyers would be even richer than they already are. And no one wants that.

If you’re looking for something to report on, there’s lots of lovely stuff here.

Best wishes,

Charlotte

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