A balanced picture

Read this blog from Mercury politics correspondent David Maclean about accusations of political bias during the General Election.

http://davidmaclean.eu/party-political-bias-not-here/

The irritation of being accused of favouritism when it's totally untrue is something I can identify with. Over the years I've been accused of both being too close to the management of a businesses and taking the side of workers during industrial disputes. I've even been accused of being in the pay of a company I'd written a story on. All this, of course, is totally untrue.

Yesterday, I was accused of not giving enough coverage to the negative side of last year's debt-for-equity deal which saved Braunstone Frith camera chain Jessops from collapse. The deal, which was widely covered by the Mercury, left investors with 9.7p per 100 shares.

After our interview with Jessops chief executive Trevor Moore on Tuesday, in which he said sales were at a two-year high, a reader contacted me to say he had been a shareholder and the whole episode required "investigative journalism".

What more I could have learned from an in-depth probe into the financial side of a business whose high-profile fall from grace has not only been extensively covered by the Mercury but by the national press as well, I'm not sure.

For those that don't know the story, Jessops floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2004 valued at £160m and was valued at about £1m five years later when it was effectively taken over by HSBC and its pension fund.

Perhaps it is people who invest vast sums of their savings into businesses at the peak of their market who should be more "investigative".