NEWSPAPERS receive hourly doses of spin in all forms. The challenge of any issue is to try and figure out what the facts are among all the advertising and opinion and to let our readers know so they can make up their own minds.
Letters to the editor are sometimes a form of spin - or an orchestrated campaign. Fortunately, almost all writers play fair and acknowledge their allegiances or biases.
When we publish letters to the editor on a topic of community concern, we choose letters that are representative of the opinion on both sides of the issue and, if the issue is ongoing, run a proportional sampling. Of course, we do our best to confirm writers' identities by phone call or email and we don't publish defamatory comments.
So it is always galling when we discover letter writers who pretend to be something they are not in order to advance some sort of covert campaign.
The letter below this editorial discloses just such dubious ethics: brazenly created and directed by the development manager of the Onni Group, a company that seeks city approval for a development proposal that currently doubles the allowable density in the official community plan.
This type of lobbying is often in evidence at public meetings and hearings, where developers ensure a majority of supportive presentations by stacking the meeting with subcontractors, clients and customers.
It's past time for councils to require all those providing "input" in any form to make a declaration as to whether or not they are connected with the developer so their bias is transparent.
