YOUR Letters Pages (May 8) included letters from No campaign supporters complaining that you were biased towards the Yes campaign.
As a supporter of independence I find articles within your paper unduly critical of the Yes campaign and too keen to pick out the negative in the arguments regarding independence.
This ability to annoy both camps in equal measures probably reflects an independent and unbiased approach.
I will give you the benefit of the doubt, meantime.
William Thomson,
25 Lithgow Place,
Denny.
IT was interesting to read the offerings of your correspondents William Leslie, Dr Colin Clark, John K Richmond and Tom Dolan (Letters, May 8) who object to the Sunday Herald taking the stance of supporting independence. The role of a newspaper is surely to report objectively. Additionally, newspapers should broadly reflect the views of their readership. With support for independence roughly at 40% it is, therefore, reasonable to expect that to be reflected in the Scottish media. However until last Sunday, not one paper expressed support for independence, with most actively opposed.
The Herald is probably the most tolerant, but even three weeks ago I had occasion to write in complaint about what I saw as a bias against the Yes campaign.
On that day the politics section was dominated by the ridiculous utterings of George Robertson while the two opinion columns and the Agenda article were all of an anti-independence theme. Perhaps, therefore, on balance, The Herald, with its sister paper, the Sunday Herald, is actually maintaining an unbiased reporting policy.
Andrew J Beck,
3 Andrew Crescent,
Stenhousemuir.
IT is with some concern that I write in connection with your recent efforts to distance The Herald from the declaration of your sister paper to support a Yes vote in September's referendum.
Suffice to say the newspaper described in the series of letters you chose to print yesterday (along with a reassuring note from your editor) is not one which I, as a supporter of independence, would recognise. Hence the reason for my concern; if I complain that in both the selection of stories and their treatment, The Herald can hardly be described as the Yes campaign's secret advocate (your balance yesterday, for example, of three to one in favour of anti-independence stories was not untypical) am I condemning this letter to a short life on your letters editor's screen before the "delete" button is pressed?
And if I make the further observation that you have chosen this week to either downplay or entirely ignore significant stories supportive of a Yes vote (commitments to remain in an independent Scotland from Tesco Bank and Aberdeen Asset Management plus the collapse of Better Together's pensions scare story at the hands of the UK pensions minister) am I now merely typing, for my own cathartic pleasure, a letter even more assured of electronic oblivion?
I sincerely hope not. To be clear, I applaud your stated intention to be strictly neutral on the matter throughout what promises to be an increasingly fraught summer, to hold both sides of the debate to account. But that neutrality should amount to more than simple assertion.
Chris Cairns,
35 Braid Avenue, Edinburgh.
AS I have seldom been published on your Letters Pages, perhaps I can be a breath of fresh air to William Leslie. While The Herald has already stated its editorial position and any comment from myself would be redundant, I cannot share his feeling that "most of us" are bored with the referendum campaign- in fact, the breadth of the Yes campaign is astonishing in scope, creativity and energy, and unlike anything I have experienced in UK politics.
Furthermore, it is unfortunate that Mr Leslie mentions pensioners losing out in some way as a "fact", when the Department of Work and Pensions has been communicating privately with concerned citizens reassuring them that their pensions are safe for the past year or so, and just this week the UK Pensions Minister, Steve Webb, confirmed that pensions would indeed be safe in the event of independence ("Pension for Scots guaranteed after Yes vote", The Herald, May 8).
Dr Ross Gillanders,
16 Shore Street, Cellardyke.
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