Very occasionally, Ears To The House is contacted by the people whom we write about. Curiously, it’s extremely rare for anyone to get in touch whenever we publish nice, positive things about them – although one person who was mentioned in an article last week is very much an honourable exception to the rule.
Unsurprisingly, they tend to be slightly more willing to reach out whenever the content is of a more critical nature. Exactly why isn’t totally clear to us – perhaps they just like to pretend they don’t read what’s written about them online. Regardless of their reasons, we have no issue with being contacted over such matters.
Infact, this site reaches out as part of our standard procedure to a lot of the people we write about – usually with no issues. Stories have been amended and corrected in this way too, often before anything ever appears on these pages. We go to great lengths to ensure our content is as accurate as possible.
But what we don’t take kindly to are legal threats – which is why when the Ears To The House Facebook page received this message from Juan Atkins yesterday saying we were “running the risk” of being sued, there was only one thing we could do. And that was simply to publish his words in their entirety.
Our page sent out a standard response to his message, as it does to everyone who reaches out via this method. Since we now know that Atkins is a reader of this site – and he’s far from the only one in Detroit who does – we thought we’d explain ourselves here in the public’s gaze.
Mr Atkins, Ears To The House is categorically not going to engage with these kind of threats – because quite simply, there is nothing to engage with. If you have an issue with something we’ve covered on this site, send us an email with details of your complaint. Provide URLs to the post or posts in question and explain exactly what it is you seemingly find so objectionable.
Our editor will personally read your email and respond in due course. This could mean courses of action such as the offending posts being updated with corrections, or the offer to write a right of reply – which we would publish entirely unedited, for the sake of fairness.
In certain circumstances, this might even result in the offending posts being removed entirely. As much as we believe in holding people to account for their words and actions, we aren’t in the business of annoying people purely for the sake of it. Alternatively, if your complaint is simply because you don’t like what was written, we humbly suggest you don’t get in touch again.
If your complaint is not on the grounds of accuracy, you’ll be running the risk of our editor telling you to f*** off. Which, ironically enough, is what happened the last time someone made similar threats. We will continue to ask questions and report on Juan Atkins and anyone else without fear or favour – even if the man himself doesn’t like what we have to say…
