Journalists rarely get it right, not because they are thick, rather because they are people and, like all pub customers, they know noting of the way the pub industry is organised. Describing the way this industry works to an audience that knows nothing about it and make an article compelling reading is nigh on impossible if you want to maintain even a modicum of detail and accuracy...

When you describe what goes on behind the scenes in the pub business to a newcomer so many questions are thrown up out of sheer disbelief that there needs to be face to face dialogue to get to any understanding of its complexity.

This, after years of trying individually and between us to get the message across to everyone we ever met being bar room bores, that the Fair Pint founders decided the only was forward to cut though this complexity and concentrate on fairness.

As far as my onvolvement is concerned on this forum this debate began on 8 February 2008 when Mike Bell appeared on radio 4's You and Yours with Andrew Pring and Jonathan Neame.

It seemed like a shocking whitewash to me. But then I know the industry well and am statistically insignificant. The VAST majority of listeners will have thought it was a piece that was informative and accurate - because it was in itself but it left out at least half of the true complicated picture. The problem then is talking to the editorial team and persuading them that they had made serious ommissions when their research tells them they had taken all reasonable steps to maintain editorial balance.

There is little balance when one side of the scales - the ordinary publican who does the work and pulls the beer - has no weight and is invisible against the CE of a PubCo.

The publicans, licensees and lessees are the dark matter of the pub industry universe. They are the omission from the BBPA's pronouncements which, if you measure them objsctively, never stack up. The missing mass is the lessees.

Journalists rarely get it right, not because they are thick, rather because they are people and, like all pub customers, they know noting of the way the pub industry is organised. Describing the way this industry works to an audience that knows nothing about it and make an article compelling reading is nigh on impossible if you want to maintain even a modicum of detail and accuracy...

When you describe what goes on behind the scenes in the pub business to a newcomer so many questions are thrown up out of sheer disbelief that there needs to be face to face dialogue to get to any understanding of its complexity.

Understanding this, after years of trying individually and between us to get the message across to everyone we ever met, and having each become professional bar room bores, led the Fair Pint founders to decided the only was forward to cut though this complexity and concentrate on fairness.

Steve made the point about BBPA's ponouncements above. It's Fair Pint's job to ensure that the journalists who use BBPA's statements as the basis for articles about the pub industry are given the fuller picture by adding, correcting and questioning their voracity. FP will follow through after BBPA making sure journalists get a more rounded understanding of the nuances and complexities of what they are reporting so they become more fluent with their subject and so are able to better describe it to their readers.

This, clearly, is happening now.

Fair Pint's strength is that its stand cannot be proved to be anything other than what it is: a simple, reasonable and just demand for fairness.

The more BBPA puts out, the more FP has the opportunity to put that right. BBPA cannot counter attack FP because there is nothing to attack except a rationally put case for power to be curbed and greed to be stemmed.