Ladies & Gentlemen,
I thought to send something along the following lines to the editor of RAF News. It seems only fair to allow him an opportunity to see/rebut/respond before seeking to involve the big guns of AMP or COS Personnel.
Any thoughts would be welcome.
Dear Editor,
You may be aware of a website: pprune.org, which is an aviation related series of fora, within which individual subject Threads are posted and commented upon. It is a global site, although much of the content emanates from the UK.
On Good Friday and within the ‘Military Aviation’ forum, a Thread was started which enjoyed the title: ‘RAF News – Rag or What?’. Within less than twenty four hours, the Thread had attracted three dozen responses and whilst some had ‘drifted’ off the main thrust of the question posed, those which had not were universally critical of RAF News.
The main area of concerns seemed to be:
a. Inaccuracy of reporting with significant errors of fact. This complaint being indicative of an ignorance of the subject matter ie the RAF and its history .
b. A poor level of content quality, relative to the other service newspapers/magazines eg Navy news and Soldier.
c. A blithe acceptance of the ‘party line’ with no attempt to apply any cerebral rigour to the articles being printed.
d. A suggestion that comments by letter or email, critical of air force policy or of the newspaper itself were suppressed and certainly not responded to by the editor or a staff member.
The concerns above will suffice for the moment to indicate that the RAF News is not seen by some to be representative of the real world within which the RAF operates and it probably sacrifices an opportunity to attract and hold readership because of this.
May I suggest that you go to pprune – membership is free – and take the opportunity to absorb the comments in detail. It goes without saying that you can comment on or rebut what is posted. You might find the Thread useful in gauging some opinion about your newspaper and formulating some changes of direction and focus.
Yours sincerely
Old Duffer