I AM mystified by News Shopper’s editorial policy for the edition of October 15.

A short item on page 7 reports the jailing of two vandals for a total of four years for causing an estimated £60,000 of damage.

Police described the pair as so intent on causing damage not even the threat of death deterred them.

Yet the front page story (Ex-PCSO Fined £1) detailed a victimless crime of which the presiding judge said “there was hardly any alarm or distress caused” and fined the defendant just £1.

The only reason for giving this feeble story such prominence seems to be the opportunity it afforded of putting the words “solo sex act” in bold type. Not the criterion I expect from a newspaper run by and for mature adults.


John Flinders
Sydenham

  • Editor’s note
    Many factors influence the choice of our front page story on any given week.

As well as general public interest, we also have to think of exclusivity, time elapsed between event and publication and many other such factors.

Naturally from time to time, people will disagree with our selection and we accept and learn from that criticism.

Prurience played no part in our decision to run this story so prominently.

We felt that there was a genuine public interest in a case involving a former public servant being caught out in the way that he was.

And rather than diminish the story, we felt the judge’s remarks added to the news value of this case, comprising as they did a criticism of the legal system that had brought this case to crown court in the first place.

And the News Shopper is not just run with mature adults in mind — we like to think we appeal to as broad a spectrum of the population as possible.