Events | 2010.01.17
Letters to MediaGuardian
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Doorstepping etiquette
Jonathan Maitland claims that Ofcom rules prevented him from doorstepping the Royal Mail chief executive, Adam Crozier, about his salary because he was producing a current affairs programme and not a news report ( An anomaly on our doorstep, 11 January ). This is simply not true. He also alleged that Ofcom would "almost certainly" uphold a complaint if a reporter approached a boss of a publicly owned company asking about his salary. The Ofcom Broadcasting Code has always allowed programme makers to doorstep people when it is justified to do so, whether it is for the news or current affairs. It is reasonable – in most circumstances – to expect programme makers to request an interview first. However, there will always be occasions where it is not possible to make a request and a quick impromptu interview is appropriate and in the public interest.
I am surprised that Mr Maitland believes, in the current climate, that a programme scrutinising public expenditure is not in the public interest.
Chris Banatvala director of standards, Ofcom
Access all areas
You say that " 2m pages of 19th-century newspapers have been digitised and made available online " (Colindale: the final chapter, 11 January). Well, up to a point. Only subscribing institutions such as colleges and libraries are given ready and free access. As a volunteer researcher (I am working to produce a catalogue of archived material as part of a national scheme), I must pay for access for a 24-hour period. The cost is not the issue; I simply need occasional access for fact checking, as it arises. It does seem unreasonable that an individual cannot consult this material in the public domain. I have asked the British Library if access could be arranged in this way, but so far have received no response.
William Jones Prescot, Merseyside
• As someone who went some way to ruining my eyesight in my younger years peering at the very small print of Victorian newspapers at the British Library\'s austere Colindale reading rooms, I am totally in support of the project to digitise papers. Indeed digitisation of some radical papers from the 19th century, such as the Northern Star, is already revolutionising the research agenda.
However, digitisation costs money and I do have concerns about whether access to some of the more obscure items in the collection, no less interesting to some researchers however, will simply be consigned to Boston Spa, even more difficult to get to for many than Colindale, if less austere.
Keith Flett Tottenham, London
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