IN the run up to Local Newspaper Week later this month, this newspaper has joined forces with local and regional titles across the UK to launch a campaign to fight fake news.

As we approach the most significant national election in a generation, the need for independent local newspapers and their websites to report and explain the issues in an entirely neutral, honest and balanced way is essential.

This approach is in keeping with their ethos of always seeking to provide trusted news, campaigning on behalf of their communities, giving advertisers respected platforms to promote their services, exposing wrongdoing through painstaking investigations, and ensuring that the voice of residents and the business community is heard with clarity and authority.

This election will be different from any other. It is not simply that the outcome will define our future relationship with the EU and the manner in which it is negotiated; but it will be held in the context of the phenomenon of fake news.

In the past 12 months there has barely been a single global event - from the election of the President of the United States to an incident involving a gunman at a Washington pizzeria - that has not been infected by the suggestion that entirely fabricated information designed to deceive had been circulated indiscriminately via social media.

The great global social media conglomerates have been slow to respond and grudging to intervene.

Instead, it is established newspapers and their websites which continue to be the political whipping boys, expected to submit to the most rigorous regulation and the threat of the most pernicious and damaging regime of court costs on the planet while they seek to pursue honest, investigative journalism in the public interest.

Unlike social media and the major digital platforms, this newspaper and its website are accountable for every single word we publish.

We have signed up to a comprehensive Editors' Code of Practice - which even our detractors have imitated - and we and all our staff have contractually bound themselves to its requirements. This code encompasses everything from accuracy to privacy, harassment, intrusion into grief or shock, protecting children, reporting crime, and the use of clandestine devices and subterfuge.

We are passionate and professional about the way in which we hold decision makers to account, represent our home towns, and provide news and information that is suitable for whole families.

We are honest brokers of local information, upholding the values that you share with us, seeking always to do the right thing no matter how difficult that can sometimes be in fast changing times.

That all costs money. When you buy our paper or advertise with us you are supporting the very journalism and quality that keeps integrity at the heart of all we do.

We make a real difference.

Our title piece is a hall mark for our core value.

With pride, we provide trusted news and honest advertisement platforms and thanks to the tireless diligence of our editorial staff you can be confident that our stories are always exactly what they purport to be: the genuine article. Fact - not fake.