One of the biggest triumphs of our times is how technology has enabled us to be able to tell the whole world what we think and feel in a blink of an eye.

It is, perhaps, also our greatest failure.

This week, following the death of George Floyd in America, Bolton Council announced it would light up our town hall in solidarity with Mr Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement.

READ MORE: Town Hall to light up in solidarity with George Floyd and BLM movement

Bolton Council, and many other public institutions around the world, did this in good faith - a small show of support for the millions of people around the world who suffer terrible abuse and injustice because of the colour of their skin.

Some people agree with the move, others don't. Disagreement is fine - but the raft of crazy, irrational conspiracy theories that have sprung up around it are most certainly not.

Let's get the fact right.

First of all, just because Bolton Council lights up the town hall following events elsewhere in the world doesn't mean it is somehow abandoning its priorities closer to home. The time expended turning on the lights will not, I'm sure, stop their workers from collecting your bins, resurfacing your streets or any other work their staff have dutifully continued to carry out before and during this epidemic.

Nor is it an unusual thing for a local authority to take a stand against events elsewhere in the world. Many will remember similar steps following the Stonewall riots which sparked the LGBTQ+ movement and similar shows of solidarity during Nelson Mandela's fight for freedom. These individual shows of solidarity add up to very powerful messages and I, for one, am proud to stand tall with Bolton Council in this show of solidarity against bigotry, racism and injustice wherever it occurs in the world.

But I appreciate not everyone will agree. That doesn't make you a racist or a bigot. But based on the wild and spurious accusations being thrown around in the wake of this move, many critics are indeed racists masquerading as people who care about this community.

These include those people who have sought to use the terrible killing of Emily Jones on Mother's Day in Bolton to score cheap, horrible points against Bolton Council, The Bolton News and the thousands of members of this community who have shown solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.

Because someone shows solidarity with the black community, does not mean they don't show solidarity with the family of Emily Jones. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Since this terrible death of Emily Jones, I’ve been contacted by people from around the world accusing me of all sorts of things because the suspect hadn’t been named in the initial reports.

Websites purporting to offer the 'truth' have sprung up jumping to all kinds of conclusions, which of course are totally wrong.

More importantly, they are dangerous. They are hate-filled conspiracies that only seek to sow hatred and division.

The suspect in that case was not named in the initial reports because that is the law. Suspects are not usually named until they are charged. Legally, journalists cannot go into any details of what happened to Emily to ensure a fair trial.

Doing anything else risks disrupting the criminal justice process, and therefore potentially scupper this heartbroken family’s chance of getting justice.

READ MORE: Woman charged with murder of Emily Jones, 7, in Bolton

These hate-filled conspiracy theorists who purport to care about justice are the ones who risk it ever being delivered by posting unsubstantiated bile for the world to see.

You as a reader, have a choice. You either stick with organisations like The Bolton News and Bolton Council, who, while not perfect, have stood by you for more than 100 years, or you believe nutters on Facebook with no accountability whatsoever.

You can agree with what we write and you can disagree with it. Healthy debate is needed. Likewise, you can support Bolton Council or not. Our two organisations do not see eye-to-eye on a great many things - but we will always do what we think is right and in the best interests of our communities. We won't always get it right but we will be accountable, as we have been for generations.

Whatever you do, whoever you trust, just think before you write. Words mean things. You can either be part of the solution to our community's problems, or part of the problem.

Karl Holbrook, editor