Alastair Down on Wednesday: Responsibilities that come with my rose-tinted specs.

Byline: Alastair Down

DURING Royal Ascot, my colleague David Ashforth was lectured by some particularly grand northern trainer on his many shortcomings as a human being, with particular reference to the Post's campaign on stable staff.

When Mr Trainer had finished his little homily, Mrs Trainer weighed in with her two'pennorth informing the Bearded One that he was "worse than labour".

There was some debate subsequently as to whether this was a reference to the revolutionary blood-red Bolshevism of Mr Blair, or an observation that Ashforth was more of a pain than childbirth.

Personally, I thought David's contributions to an inevitably emotional debate were admirably

even-handed, far more so than my deliberately provocative intervention about the role owners have in helping remove abuses, which drew some justifiably narked reaction.

And there is no doubt that the campaign has raised once more the hoary old issue of what racing journalism should be about. Some have expressed the opinion that the Post has no business to be raising such issues and that we have done the sport a disservice.

One Newmarket trainer's wife has been complaining vitriolically that "all trainers are being tarred with the same brush", an observation that simply isn't true given this paper's insistence on repeating that a large number of trainers do more than their level best to look after those they employ.

What is more, we have deliberately stayed our hand in the case of one household-name trainer whose treatment of - and attitude towards - his staff is Dickensian but whose unmasking would do untold damage to the sport.

The truth is that the racing press is a model of mannerliness compared to the coverage accorded other sports. Racing enjoys a benign press for the simple reason that 99 per cent of racing journalists are potty about the game.

But having a passion for racing doesn't mean that one has to suspend all critical faculties. There are a number of leading journalists who are no fans of Peter Savill, but that isn't because they loathe him in general, they just happen to think he is frequently wrong in the particular - what sort of spineless folk would they be if they toadied to Savill because he is chairman of the BHB? It is arguable that we should be more stroppy than we are.

One of my colleagues greeted my arrival at Newbury for the Lockinge with the remark "oh not another afternoon's rose-tinted speccing", a reflection of his withering contempt for the sort of journalism that teeters on the edge of PR.

And he has a valid point. I have covered a lot of Derbys, not all of them fantastic races won by superstar horses under the rides of geniuses.

But it is The Derby - our Derby - and you can hardly open the following day's report by saying: "This was one of the most ordinary Classics since Beethoven went deaf, won by a yak, trained by a prat, owned by a yard dog and ridden by an ignoramus." A huge part of my role is to sell the game and perhaps that is why the reaction can get so vicious when the rose-tinted specs get swapped for something darker.

But one role of racing journalists, or parasites as some prefer to describe us, is to give some sort of voice to those who have none. The two most important groups are punters and stable staff, neither of whom have the sort of access to public opinion or the corridors of power that the media can give them.

As the industry's leading specialist publication, the Racing Post has a responsibility to the whole broad church of racing, and if that occasionally upsets those who still see racing as a private fiefdom of the privileged, then so be it.

Part of racing's appeal is the passion people have for the sport, from whatever perspective they approach it. Even those who resent aspects of the stable staff campaign surely do not argue that some of the anachronistic injustices are not overdue suitable remedy.

It is hardly bomb-throwing anarchy to insist that we have a modern, accountable climate of employment for those who work at the sharp end. What is required is an intelligent and ongoing dispassionate debate with the game's finer minds, such as Mark Johnston, fully involved.

The Post's campaign has nothing to do with targeting particular power elites or finding scapegoats for a situation that has been years in the festering. It is not anti-owner or trainer, but inevitably we look to those groups, who presumably have the health of racing at heart, to be part of the way forward. And forward is the direction in which we need to go.