Is this unbiased reporting?

[dougdeep]

"PUT ALBION AT SHOREHAM" by John Eccles(Sx.Express)

Brighton and Hove Albion directors should forget about building a new stadium at Falmer and concentrate on Shoreham Harbour as a likely venue, a public inquiry has been told.
Lewes District council barrister Robert White told the re-opened Falmer inquiry the club should stay at Withdean in the short-term until the likely future of the harbour site was resolved.
In his opening submission, he said stadium plans for Falmer should be scrapped because significant damage would be caused to an attractive stretch of open landscape and versatile agricultural land would be lost.
The loss of land to a development of that scale would also completely erode the open gap between Brighton and Falmer and amount to the encroachment of the built up area into rural surroundings.
He added "The evidence will demonstrate that there exist alternative sites within Brighton which are able to meet any need for the development without incurring the same weight of objection."
"Those sites are available,affordable, of the right size and meet the requirements of the football league."
"None demonstrate the same level of harm that has been demonstrated to exist if the stadium proceeds at Falmer."
He continued "Lewes District Council has sought to be realistic and relies only on those sites which it considers to be genuinely available and suitable for the football club."
"In no particular order, those sites at Sheepcote Valley, Toads Hole Valley, Withdean and Shoreham Harbour."
"But while Sheepcote and Toads Hole are able to accommodate a 22,000 seat stadium, the council accepts that Withdean is not a suitable location for a development of such scale (certainly at this time)"
"However, it submits that there is no compelling reason for the club to move now. It can remain at Withdean in the short-term until a more suitable alternative is found."
"Such a long-term solution might be found at Shoreham Harbour."
"There are undoubtedly difficulties associated with development there. However it would be folly and contrary to policy, to ignore the potential of one of the country's largest brownfield sites in favour of an alternative location at Falmer."
Albion barrister Jonathan Clay said Shoreham Harbour would not provide a site for a stadium. One would have to be carved out from existing buildings and filling in parts of the harbour basin.

 

[Gwylan]

Yes. Seems pretty fair to me. No opinion stated as fact and both sides put their point of view.

There's disparity between the amount of coverage given to the Brighton and Lewes points of view but perfectly accceptable give the target readership.

 

[Icy Gull]

"PUT ALBION AT SHOREHAM" by John Eccles(Sx.Express)


"However, it submits that there is no compelling reason for the club to move now. It can remain at Withdean in the short-term until a more suitable alternative is found."
.

Maybe he'd like to prepare a business plan that would justify that ridiculous statement , perhaps to include Lewes District Council funding the shortfall in revenue to keep a Championship club at Withdean.

 

[The Large One]

Lewes residents are in for a shock if they only read Sussex Express. Little will they realise what a load of bollocks the contemptuous Robert White is talking when a stadium springs up on the University of Brighton site near Falmer.

He is either extremely thick or extremely spiteful. To submit that the Albion can stay at Withdean implies he has ignored the information that the club has put out for a long time that it is haemorraging money OR it implies that he doesn't give a shit about the Albion and is happy for it to die.

 

[Rangdo]

Well it is all fact. However, if this article is all you had heard about the inquiry you'd think that they had put up a compelling case for Shoreham harbour and the Falmer deal was dead in the water. Of course, we know different.

 

[The Clown of Pevensey Bay]

He's only reporting one day's evidence given to a public inquiry. It's like writing a report saying

SHIPMAN TELLS COURT: I DIDN'T KILL PATIENTS

based on one day sitting in Preston crown court and listening to Harold Shipman's evidence.

The report's fine, even though what Lewes DC say is bollocks!

 

[Bwian]

Lewes residents are in for a shock if they only read Sussex Express. Little will they realise what a load of bollocks the contemptuous Robert White is talking when a stadium springs up on the University of Brighton site near Falmer.

He is either extremely thick or extremely spiteful.

I suspect that it is that he is both spiteful and simply doesn't give a shit about The Albion. Typical of the Sussex Express and other rural rags written to pander to the Little Englanders who believe that the countryside is only there for their occasional recreational usage: "Keep the riff raff out". It's like a real life version of the Stepford Wives with all of these displays of insularity...

Makes you wonder how much closer we'd be to our new stadium if we'd adopted a different name for it? University Stadium in Brighton( or similar) would have destroyed the false image of a stadium being built next to Falmer's Rat Pond.

 

[perseus]

I suppose the Albion prepared Press Releases for all the newspapers telling them our side of the story!

Of course, they did. It would be folly not to do so. Public Inquiries are about informing the public as well for goodwill purposes. (If you think it is just a Court Case, you have been misinformed?) So the Sussex Express deliberately ignored such helpful added extra information?

Unless Albion did not mention the asset-stripping and West Sussex County Council Structure Plan, the "stromboli" terrain, the building on water that any harbour plan would entain. Of course, knocking down houses for new roads, etc.

I hope the oppoisiton have not stolen another march on us in the press?

Maybe, all this is to come in a later bulletin?

 

[Rangdo]

Makes you wonder how much closer we'd be to our new stadium if we'd adopted a different name for it? University Stadium in Brighton( or similar) would have destroyed the false image of a stadium being built next to Falmer's Rat Pond.

I've always thought that was a big mistake. Easy to say now I know but I think calling it something like East Brighton Stadium or something like that would have meant all the idiots who stick their noses in but know nothing about it would have thought "good stick it in East Brighton" instead of "you can't possibly build in Falmer Village".

 

[Hydro Driven]

The stadium has to be in Brighton or Hove!!!! Shoreham Houbour is in SHOREHAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Also it will cost too much!!! Go to www.seagulls.co.uk, click on the enqiry update!

 

[perseus]

Not least cause nobody outside of Sussex can pronounce it properly, i.e.

Fow maa (sounds like a cat being strangled). Like

"Goin' down Fow maa matey, to throw bricks at the rats!"

Or should that be ducks as it is Chinese New year tomorrow?

 

[Rangdo]

Not least cause nobody outside of Sussex can pronounce it properly, i.e.

Fow maa (sounds like a cat being strangled). Like

"Goin' down Fow maa matey, to throw bricks at the rats!"

Or should that be ducks as it is Chinese New year tomorrow?

Its rooster this year. The Farmer's got chickens.

 

[perseus]

What is the view of the harbour plan down in Portes Ladda? (I think that was the medieval spellling).

 

[Lord Bracknell]

I suspect that it is that he is both spiteful and simply doesn't give a shit about The Albion.

Spiteful? Nah. Not John Eccles. He's a lovely bloke. Anyone who drinks in any pub in Lewes will know that.

Doesn't give a shit about the Albion? That's a bit unfair. It suggests that he's picked on the football club to be the target of his not giving a shit.

Eccles doesn't give a shit about ANYTHING apart from opening time. His job is to write a few thousand words each week. He manages to get most of these by recycling old stories culled from the archives.

This is a typical example (from this week's paper) -

WHILE preparing ground for the enlargement of Ditchling graveyard in 1888, workmen came across an ancient well.

The upper portion, to a depth of 8ft, was lined with flints. Below this was hewn chalk and below that blocks of sandstone.

Some antlers and bones were found.

That's it. The whole story. Why?

His Falmer story isn't deliberately biased. I'm sure he started with every intention of being fair to all parties. It's just that the first sheet of paper that came to hand was a press release from Lewes District Council. By the time he'd copied it into his computer, he found he'd got enough words to fill 10 column inches. So he just stopped writing. And went back to the pub.

 

[Rangdo]

What is the view of the harbour plan down in Portes Ladda? (I think that was the medieval spellling).

If you're talking visible view then I wouldn't be able to see it from here.
However, if you're talking personal view I think it's a load of bollocks.

 

[Rangdo]

His Falmer story isn't deliberately biased. I'm sure he started with every intention of being fair to all parties. It's just that the first sheet of paper that came to hand was a press release from Lewes District Council. By the time he'd copied it into his computer, he found he'd got enough words to fill 10 column inches. So he just stopped writing. And went back to the pub.

Now thats my kind of job

 

[Gully]

How on earth are 22,000 people supposed to get in and out of the Shoreham Harbour area safely, there is only one road in, answer: it would be a logistical nightmare and nigh on impossible.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

How on earth are 22,000 people supposed to get in and out of the Shoreham Harbour area safely, there is only one road in, answer: it would be a logistical nightmare and nigh on impossible.

The answer lies in one sentence in the Sussex Express story:-

Lewes District council barrister Robert White told the re-opened Falmer inquiry the club should stay at Withdean in the short-term until the likely future of the harbour site was resolved.

In other words ... wait until 2020, when someone might get round to redeveloping the whole of the Harbour site (including new access roads and a link to the A27).

In the meantime, we can watch the Albion slide down the League at Withdean, unable to cover the cost of players' wages from the income that crowds of 6,000 bring in.

 

[Rangdo]

How on earth are 22,000 people supposed to get in and out of the Shoreham Harbour area safely, there is only one road in, answer: it would be a logistical nightmare and nigh on impossible.

Err, I think you've forgotten the footpath over the lock gates.

 

[Screaming J]

Spiteful? Nah. Not John Eccles. He's a lovely bloke. Anyone who drinks in any pub in Lewes will know that.

....cut.....

Eccles doesn't give a shit about ANYTHING apart from opening time. His job is to write a few thousand words each week. He manages to get most of these by recycling old stories culled from the archives.

True. The man's low journalistic standards have been a byword in the Lewes area for years. You do wonder how he keeps his job.