Editorial: Being seen to be fair as vote looms

Hawke's Bay Today has had a number of queries as to why we have not been publishing letters to the editor or texts criticising the policies of political parties.

Readers should know that this has been, and will remain, a deliberate policy during the official electioneering period which runs for another 17 days.

Here's one example: I have sent 2 txts now about National but u don't show them why is that?

The reason we are not printing readers' criticism - or praise - of political parties and their candidates on this page, our public forum, is to remain as unbiased as possible throughout the campaign.

Newspapers, including this one, have political columnists giving impressions of the policies and campaigns of the various parties but where letters to the editor and anonymous texts to the editor are concerned, it is difficult to exercise responsible checks and balances during an election campaign.

If we publish readers' criticism or praise of one party, then we have to do so for all. This opens newspapers to the danger of having letters or texts columns "captured" by supporters of one particular party or another.

Those who write to us, aggrieved that their letter denigrating the policies of National, or Labour, or the Greens has not been published seldom note the fact that we have been even-handed in applying this policy.

Hawke's Bay Today has made space available elsewhere for candidates to explain themselves and their party policies (see page 4 today) and regularly reports policy releases and reaction to them from the campaign.

We will publish letters and observations about the campaign in general but not attack-mail against individual parties. We do regularly publish readers' passionate views on the policies of political parties when the country is not in the throes of an election campaign.