Earlier this month, I asked whether the media had won the London mayoral election for Boris Johnson. I railed against the London Evening Standard's relentless barrage of negative stories about rival candidate, Ken Livingstone. I also complained about The Guardian's lead story in its G2 supplement on election day, which was an unsubtle compilation of quotes saying Boris must not be mayor of London.
This week, The Guardian's readers' editor, Siobhain Butterworth devoted her Open Door column to the controversial G2 feature. I'm pleased that the paper is prepared to debate criticism, though on this occasion Butterworth sat on the fence rather than agree or disagree with the criticisms made. (She also used as a subhead an unattributed quote from my email to the paper: "I take huge exception to newspapers telling me how to vote.")
The paper's response?
"The intention wasn't to influence voters, G2's editor told me. "Most of our readers are not Tory voters," she said. "We wanted to reflect the fact that most readers would probably be quite alarmed by the idea of London having a Tory mayor." There was an assumption that because the articles appeared in the features section, rather than the main paper, people would appreciate the irreverent tone. "It was supposed to be fun, in a serious way," she said.
A pretty feeble justification in my view.
Click on the continuation for the text of my email to The Guardian on the subject.
Rob's email to The Guardian's readers' editor
I am writing to protest against the totally biased feature against Boris Johnson in Thursday’s Guardian.
I’m not a Boris supporter. I find it extraordinary that Johnson has been elected mayor. But I take huge exception to newspapers telling me how to vote. (Though I should add that I had no vote in Ken v Boris as I live just outside London.) As a left of centre voter, I have despised for almost 30 years the Daily Mail’s inherent bias in favour of the Tories. I am disgusted that my favourite paper, The Guardian, has chosen to insult its readership in the same way.
I was a big fan of Ken until the last few years, when he began indulging in the most futile form of gesture politics (witness the congestion charge’s rebirth as instrument of class warfare and that ugly insult of a Jewish reporter). Yet your feature simply wheeled out unquestioning Ken fans without any analysis of Livingstone’s record. Shame on you.
I’ve blogged on this in more detail at Ertblog.
Rob
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