Sorting letters
Sir: I doubt if last week was the first occa- sion on which you have published a letter rejected by the Times. You do not, howev- er, normally boast about it (front page, let- ters page, Media studies, 22 June).
After our reprinting of a Daily Mail piece about Polly Toynbee on 13 June, we received a handful of letters. Half of them criticised the publication. Half supported it, arguing that the wife's side of such a saga was rarely heard and refreshing to read.
We published none of the supportive let- ters. Of the critical letters only one came from a locus that set it above the others: the attack on us by Andrew Man, Miss Toyn- bee's editor at the Independent, was duly published on 15 June. Of the remaining let- ters from readers we selected a pungent put-down from Mr Steve Voce of Liverpool, which appeared in the Times on 14 June.
Stephen Glover omits to mention the Voce letter, concentrating on one of the eight that were rejected, that from Profes- sor Ronald Dworkin, Lord Lester and oth- ers, which you published yourself last week. I can speculate only that Mr Voce was con- sidered insufficiently 'great and good' for your media studies correspondent. Like all my predecessors at the Times, I receive several hundred letters each week, many of them from writers who feel they have some special right to be heard. With the numbers of letters to the Times rising sharply, along with our circulation success against your sister paper the Daily Tele- graph, I see no sign that the disappointment of correspondents will cease. But, with you around to pick up the cast-offs, the pres- sure may ease for a favoured few.
Peter Stothard The Times,
1 Pennington Street, London El
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