Oliver Duff, editor of the Independent’s sister publication, i, has pledged to keep his newspaper strictly neutral in the run-up to the general election.
“We won’t tell you how to vote”, he tells readers in today’s issue. “We take pride in striving for political impartiality”.
Duff, with a nod to the famous Sun headline claim at the 1992 general election that it was the Sun wot won it after previously publishing a front page image of Neil Kinnock’s head superimposed on a lightbulb, writes:
“Some newspapers enjoy the sound of their own voice before an election, liking to claim afterwards that they helped to swing the outcome. Not here. This publication revels in refusing to back any political party.
No leaders’ faces will be superimposed on to vegetables or farmyard animals, and we won’t tell you how to vote. I hope that’s ok with you. We take pride in striving for political impartiality. You, of course, will judge whether we succeed.
What we will do is light a fire under anything that deserves to go up in flames. We will cut through the noise over the next five weeks to try to give you more facts and less bluster.
Issue by issue, day by day, we will examine exactly what the parties are promising – as well as what they are not saying – and whether they can meet their pledges.
We’ll fact-check some of the more exotic claims for you. We will work far away from the Westminster bubble, making a virtue of i’s truly national readership.
That’s because this election won’t be decided by the unions, by big business donors, by newspaper proprietors or by journalists – but by you”.
Duff was prompted to make his pledge after receiving a letter from a reader who told him: “You’ve decided who you’re backing then? No doubt who the i supports. The dodgy Conservatives and Rupert Murdoch! Get real!”
The Independent, Evgeny Lebedev’s flagship title (despite its much lower sale than i), doesn’t yet appear to have made a similar declaration.
