I'm sorry that what you are about to read has to do with the Islamic school, a topic that has been so thoroughly explored that there is little left to be said.

A two-page letter was presented recently to Camden's councillors and council managers, claiming this newspaper published a story based on ``absolute lies'' and that we labelled the town racist.

Two days ago, these claims were reduced to a more succinct flyer, a copy of which was left at the Advertiser's front door.

The claim in the flyer is that a story we published on the day after the Islamic school decision - containing excerpts from some of the 3042 public objections to the school - did not represent what was on the file.

It says the flyer's writers have council information that states the opposite of our story.

We have gone directly to the source of the information, which we published first.

The council's environment and health director has confirmed that the flyer misinterprets the council's data (see the story in local news).

We have no objection to people critiquing our work. It's healthy for anyone to scrutinise what they hear, no matter who says it.

In that spirit, we encourage anyone who is interested to delve below the surface if the whispering campaign reaches them.

Devote a day to reading the submissions at the council for yourself.

Go back through the 116 pages of Advertiser coverage of the Islamic school issue. See if you can find anywhere that the paper has labelled the town racist.

See whether the views of one side or the other of the school debate appear to have been prevented from being aired in the letters and stories. Inspect the hundreds of comments on our website's blogs.

Our coverage far surpassed that of any other media organisation.

We are confident in our small team's professional, fair and in-depth approach to a story that was picked up by some of the world's biggest news services.

You can be justly proud of your paper, the Fairfax Community Newspaper of the Year.

rsenescall@fairfaxmedia.com.au