Letters Aren't Letters
To the Editor:

I picked up The Chief this week to find that you had taken me to task for questioning your editorial discretion with regard to the Letters to the Editor section of your newspaper. I'd like to respond.

Specifically, you questioned a phone call I made to you regarding fact-checking in the letters section. I was concerned (and still am) because you do not fact-check these "letters," despite the fact that many of them have factual errors and were penned by writers who are clearly trying to attack political enemies.

You responded during that call by blasting my temerity — not unlike the way you did in your column this week. I'd like to clarify what we were talking about and discuss the "letters" you often run.

It is important to point out that The Chief does not run "letters;" it runs 1,000-word op-eds cloaked by a "To the Editor," header. Why are these not letters? For several reasons:

First, letters in The Chief do not respond to specific stories. Rather, they present opinions on topics that often have nothing to do with a recent Chief story. Take a look at the Letters to the Editor page of every other paper in New York, and you'll see letters responding to specific stories. Not so in The Chief.

Second, take a look at the length of letters in other papers. The New York Post has a 200-word maximum; the Daily News has a similar standard, and The New York Times has a 150-word limit. Not so at The Chief. "Letters" in your paper are routinely 1,000 words. They are longer than the op-eds in most newspapers.

Third, and perhaps most glaring, you don't edit or fact-check what you print in the letters section. Again, every other paper in New York edits, condenses and of course fact-checks letters. They see it as a basic journalistic function to make sure (as much as possible) that what they print is factually correct. In fact, The New York Times letters editor has actually discussed this subject before. His take:

"Letter writers, to use a well-worn phrase, are entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts ... we do try to verify the facts, either checking them ourselves or asking writers for sources of information. Sometimes we goof, and then we publish corrections."

Unfortunately, The Chief (and you, Mr. Editor) has decided that it is above the tenets of responsible journalism, that it doesn't have to verify the facts that run in its pages. In fact, Mr. Editor, you went so far as to admit in your recent column (Razzle Dazzle, July 25, 2008) that you don't check the accuracy of what you print in your pages, that in fact you wouldn't want to "cleanse" the pages you edit of opinions that are factually wrong. That's not only ethically wrong, but in many instances it is also libelous.

JESSE DERRIS, Sunshine, Sachs & Associates

Editor's reply: It should be noted that if we complied with the Times's 150-word limit for letters, Mr. Derris's would have concluded without his having a chance to list the reasons he believes what we publish are op-eds rather than letters.

He complains that some of the letters we run are not written in reaction to a particular story in the paper. But all of them pertain to issues that we cover and are of interest to an audience of public workers and would-be public workers.

Some, although hardly the majority, come from dissident members of unions who see the letters column as a forum for addressing other members and airing their gripes about those in charge. This tends to be most common in unions where they believe their voices are stifled by the leadership of their organizations. A decade ago, those allied with Roger Toussaint — who as president of Transport Workers Union Local 100 is now Mr. Derris's client — were among those using the column in that fashion. Our policy has not changed, but Mr. Toussaint's attitude certainly has now that he is on the receiving end of complaints by other dissidents in this column.

Other union presidents on more than one occasion have asked for space to publish rebuttal letters when they believed they needed to set the record straight. We always give them that space, and did so in the past for Mr. Toussaint and his supporters.

Mr. Derris also creates a false comparison in placing our process for handling letters on the same plane with a paper like the Times, which not only has an editor whose work is solely devoted to the letters page but has staffers to assist in the fact-checking process. At The Chief, the letters are handled by a single person who is also responsible for editing the rest of the paper.

Contrary to his claim, letters are edited with an eye toward both accuracy and potentially libelous statements, and they are also condensed when it's deemed appropriate.

Like the Times, if something in the letters column turns out to be inaccurate or subject to question, we either run a correction or allow the wronged party ample space to present its version of the facts. We don't knowingly publish any inaccurate statements by letter-writers. We believe that our readers know the difference between news stories and letters that are as likely to be freighted with opinion as with facts.

We also can't remember complaints from other readers about letters being too long, although a couple believe that one particularly prolific correspondent — whose missives almost always fall within the Times word-count — appears in the column too often.

Mr. Derris on several occasions has been told that he or someone else at Local 100 could write us to correct any statements in the letters column that he believed were inaccurate or gave a false impression. His response each time to that invitation was, "Why should I have to?"

At the risk of giving him advice about his business, our impression has always been that this was one of the things that public-relations firms did on behalf of their clients: present their side of the story.