LIBERAL DEMOCRAT CANDIDATE SLAMS HARTLEPOOL MAIL COVERAGE OF ELECTION

4.36.04pm BST (GMT +0100) Mon 3rd May 2010

Reg Clark has criticised the coverage of the General Election by the Hartlepool Mail. He comments:

'In recent days we have had a situation whereby a national polling organization YouGov has, based on regional data, predicated a Liberal Democrat victory in Hartlepool. Whereas The Northern Echo, who commissioned the poll, ran the story on its front page the Hartlepool Mail astonishingly decided not to feature this story on any page.

Furthermore, the Tory candidate in Hartlepool has made claims in public meetings to have had sight of 'secret documents' which prove that local health officials and the government are wrong in claiming that there is no 'Plan B' for an abandonment of the declared Wynyard Hospital project. The Mail has resisted calls from local people, including elected councilors, for the candidate, who is a regular columnist in the paper, to 'put up or shut up' on the issue, but has accepted his explanation that he cannot expose the 'whistleblowers' in question, and again, has chosen not to report the issue at all.

Whilst I accept that the Mail's editorial policy is to be broadly neutral on the election, I believe that they have failed the people of Hartlepool in their role as the town's 'paper of record' in deciding not to cover these critical events and developments in the. The result has been disadvantageous to the Liberal Democrats, has bailed a mediocre and inexperienced Tory candidate out of a hole of his own digging and has thereby by default favoured the sitting MP.

This is how the two party system, which has served the country so badly, is perpetuated. All the signs are that the electorate have had enough of it'.