Biased News?

As many readers will know, we have regular news from our MP together with occasional additional information sent into us from her office. The latter items we publish when they are relevant and of potential interest to our readers.

There is, of course, also an opposition party and some readers have often commented that we publish very little from them and we are therefore biased in favour of the Conservatives. They are wrong.

National papers do indeed have political affiliations – or at least most of them do – so if your views are to the right you are more likely to be in tune with, say, the Telegraph or the Mail, rather than the Guardian or Mirror. The reverse is equally true

Local papers are different. Rye News has always been politically neutral which we believe is the right stance for a local paper. We are here to support and stand up for our community regardless of which party may be governing in London.

For the past few years our MP has been a Conservative and therefore what she and her predecessor say and do has a possible effect on our community and needs to be reported. We are not blind to the fact that there is also an alternative viewpoint to many of the government’s actions espoused by His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition – currently the Labour party.

We would love to publish these and give our readers a genuine opportunity to compare policies that might specifically affect us, but sadly until recently the local party has been reluctant to make their voice heard, or at least not through the medium of Rye News.
It would seem, however, that that is now changing. There is a new Labour prospective parliamentary candidate in place for Hastings and Rye. She is Helena Dollimore and we were happy to publish an article by her last week.

So are we now biased in favour of Labour? Judging by some reactions to her piece, there are (inevitably) readers who think that we are, but I hope I have made it plain that this is not the case. What Rye News is doing is its job – giving our readers alternative views and thereby allowing them to make up their own minds, with the benefit of knowledge, rather than assumptions, on who is providing the best solution to the problems that concern this town and the surrounding area. It is called free, unbiased speech and, as recent media control in Russia is showing, we are fortunate to have it.

Image Credits: Steve Bidmead / Pixabay https://pixabay.com/photos/westminster-palace-of-westminster-347971/ Pixabay https://pixabay.com/service/license/.