Thank you for the excellent piece in last Friday’s Free Press on the role of local papers in holding up standards of accurate reporting, with which I entirely concur.

Honest and reliable dissemination of news should be grounded in any young journalist’s experience in working for local newspapers. If they move on to bigger or national dailies, at least they will be taking a good set of ethical reporting principles with them.

Sun headlines like ‘Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster’, from a pre-social media age, were complete fabrications – a bit of tabloid fun that didn’t do the career of the celebrity (RIP) any harm – but we’re now living in an era of fake news affecting more serious matters for people’s attention.

Last October, according to The Independent, the British public still believed Vote Leave’s “£350 million a week to the EU” myth from the 2016 EU referendum. Fake news sticks, unfortunately.

Last week I received a UKIP flyer asserting “Conservative, Labour, Lib Dem, Green and SNP MPs betrayed you”. That’s not just dangerous, divisive language, but also inaccurate.

The Liberal Democrats, Greens and SNP encouraged the electorate to vote remain at the 2016 EU referendum. They have been consistent in their policy positions ever since, continuing to make the case for the UK remaining part of the EU.

Therefore they have not “betrayed” those who voted leave.

I highlighted UKIP’s flyer in a message to the Electoral Commission. In their reply, the commission advised that  “Parliament has not legislated to require that the content of election material must be truthful or factually substantiated. The law gives a high degree of protection to freedom of expression, which is of paramount importance during electoral campaigns.”

I can only conclude that freedom of expression protects the propagation of fake news during electoral campaigns, trumping the validity of statements made in election flyers.

Yesterday (Thursday) was European Parliament election day – a really important day across all the nation states of the EU, including for now the UK. I’m hoping that honest electioneering prevailed, returning a big vote for the pro-Remain parties and for UK’s continued membership of the EU.

Ian Scott, Blenheim Mews, Minehead.