The Communications Department at the council have taken apparent delight at writing to VB to tell us that part of an article we published yesterday was incorrect (full details below).
It’s great to have such a quick response from them. In less than an hour, as it turned out. Sure beats the weeks of us sending them reminders, that we often have to put up with, to get answers to our questions.
Very keen
Not only have they given amazing service on this, but they’re also very keen on chasing to have the correction made, having mentioned it in BOTH of the email exchanges that we’ve had today.
We look forward to them applying the same level of keenness when chasing themselves on the queries we have made that are still outstanding.
Failed to answer key issue
In their eagerness to point out our overseeing that one of the missing sections of text had been cut out and placed on the right hand side of the page, they failed to answer the key point raised in our article.
Trusting what’s published
Why wasn’t the actual date of publishing/editing updated on the article?
If you’re going to proudly display a “Last updated at” field at the top of your articles, aren’t you duty bound to put the actual time and date of when changes were made to it?
If these dates don’t actually reflect when the document was “Last updated at”, how do we the reader know when articles are edited without disclosure (as appears to have happened here), or indeed, how many times has this happened in the past without anyone noticing?
As we said, it’s down to that fragile thing called Trust.
“Not seeking to hide anything”
Here’s the swift response sent to VB yesterday …
The council is not seeking to hide anything. The article (a direct copy of the widely issued press release) was re-edited post-publication to make sure it complied with the style of the new news section of iwight.
Some very minor amendments were made (as you have noticed) but for some reason (most probably human error) the article did not re-appear afterwards as it should have done. It was re-published as soon as this was pointed out.
Contrary to your erroneous report, no paragraph has been ‘completely removed’. The text to which you refer has, in reality, been given greater prominence as a stand-alone fact next to the story itself.
