Thank you of your explanation (Malaya, Dec., 31) for the conflicting stories in the Dec. 27 issues of the Daily Inquirer and Malaya about Mrs. Corazon Aquino’s position on the Bataan nuclear plant.

The Inquirer (Jan. 3) has admitted that Mrs. Corazon Aquino did not express her opposition to the plant in her speech but in her answer to a written question submitted by the newspaper’s reporter. Your version -- that Mrs. Aquino said nothing about the plant in her speech -- was factually accurate.

But I am bothered by your explanation which rests solely on the factual accuracy of your staff members’ news story. Your explanation ignores the question of whether it was fair to headline Mrs. Aquino’s silence on this question.

Didn’t it occur to your reporters and to your editors that such a lead and such a headline would suggest to very many readers that Mrs. Aquino either favored the nuclear plant or was waffling on the issue? Didn’t they realize that this impression not only would be unfair but also could be inaccurate?

If your reported believed that Mrs. Aquino should have expressed her stand on the issue, shouldn’t she have asked Mrs. Aquino where she stood and followed this up with a question on why she did not mention her stance in her speech? Wouldn’t this have made a more accurate and fairer story?

Shouldn’t your editors have asked the reporter whether she had taken the elementary step of asking Mrs. Aquino (or her spokesman) where she stood on the issue?

And if your reporter had admitted she had not posed this question at all to Mrs. Aquino, shouldn’t your editor have scolded her for such incompetence and rewritten the story so that it wouldn’t make such a big deal about Mrs. Aquino’s silence on the nuclear plant?

The more fundamental question I am raising is:

Is a newspaper justified in claiming that a politician is "silent on an issue" simply because the politician did not address the issue in a speech? If a journalist believes that a particular audience is the appropriate forum at which the candidate should reveal his stand on a political issue, it the politician’s failure to conform to these expectations sufficient justification for the journalist to claim that the politician was "silent on the issue"?

For example:

If your reporter believed that President Marcos should have expressed concern about rampant prostitution when he spoke at Olongapo City and if in fact Mr. Marcos said nothing on the topic at the time, would Malaya be justified in running the headline, "FM silent on prostitution in Olongapo" over a story that starts, "President Marcos today expressed no concern about the rampant prostitution in Olongapo"?

Suppose your reporter expects that Mr. Jovito Salonga, being a politician from Metro Manila, should be especially disturbed about the many inefficiencies in the Metro Manila Commission. Does the fact that Mr. Salonga has not criticized the MMC at all since his return justify the reporter’s writing a story pointing this out, without interviewing Mr. Salonga at all? Would it be all right for Malaya to run such a story with the headline, "Salonga silent on MMC anomalies"?

Or, consider a reporter who feels that one of the major issues of our time is the decline in educational standards, but notes that every time Minister Jaime Laya talks before a teachers’ group, he invariably promises to do his best to raise their salaries. How would such a reporter be justified in writing a story that leads off with, "When Education Minister Jaime Laya speaks to teachers, he talks about raising their salaries but never about raising standards." May Malaya run such a story under a headline such as "Laya’s emphasis: Money, not standards"?

If you answer "Yes" to all these hypothetical questions, aren’t you proposing the dangerous doctrine that in the journalist’s hierarchy of values, accuracy occupies a much higher rank than fairness? Worse, aren’t you suggesting that the letter, rather than the spirit, or accuracy would suffice?

Moreover, aren’t you enunciating the even more dangerous (because arrogant) doctrine that for defining today’s political agenda, the opinion of the journalist on what is or is not a public issue carries far greater weight than the actions and statements of candidate, public officials, political parties, and individual citizens and groups?

Yours for a freer and fairer press.

CARLOTA SALVADOR