Thamenews.net accused of being politically biased

Dear Editor, I was heartened to read your piece declaring that the Lib Dems welcome the delay in the controversial new housing proposals, accompanied by a quotation from Andy Crick as ?South East Oxfordshire Liberal Democrat spokesman?, when he is actually the prospective Lib Dem candidate for this constituency at the forthcoming General Election.

How convenient for the Lib Dems that SODC decided to delay consideration of the Local Development Framework Core Strategy. It provided them with the chance to issue a bland and opportunistic press release identifying themselves with this decision.

You may be interested to learn that Conservative Councillors at Town, District, and County levels, were equally welcoming of this news as, I suspect, were the elected representatives of other parties, Independent Councillors, local Residents Associations, and the local community at large. It should also be acknowledged that our Conservative Member of Parliament, John Howell, played a part in persuading SODC to delay any decision.

Your coverage of the Lib Dems’ statement does not reflect expected editorial standards of political impartiality and amounts merely to electioneering on behalf of the Liberal Democrat party. This does not bode well for the forthcoming campaign, and I sincerely hope that in future Thame News Net will resist being taken in by ?spin? and avoid becoming a mouthpiece for any particular faction.

Mike Dyer
Thame
22/03/10

EDITORIAL REPLY

ThameNews.Net endeavours always to be be fair and to publish any statement from any local party as long as it relates to LOCAL matters, and have indeed published Conservative party focused news in the past such as LINK

LINK

The following is part of an email reply to the above letter:

“….regarding your comments crediting John Howell MP with influencing the decision to postpone a decision on the Core Strategy, I would remind you that The Local Government Act forbids councils from considering controversial issues in the period immediately before elections. Sensibly, our Conservative run county council – which by the way I consider to do a really good job generally on behalf of the rate payers, have done the right thing.

“I am sorry Mike but I am not stupid and will not act as a mouth piece for the Conservative’s or any other party.

“Please tell your party to continue to send press releases about local issues and as I did last election, will publish them to the Council and Politics news section of the website and allow our readers to make up their own minds about what is spin and what is not.” Ed.

DEAR READER
What are YOUR views on ThameNews.Net’s coverage of local politics and Council matters? Indeed, are they subjects that a local news website should bother with at all?
Email: Editor@thamenews.net