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[Brett-Butler]

There are often more than two sides to an argument!

When the Independent started they set out to make unbiased reporting their USP. The difficulty they faced was making the reporting interesting as well as impartial.

There is still a big gap to be filled between the red-tops at one end and the upmarket papers at the other end. The i is partly aimed at that market, but it is still dominated by two very right-wing titles.

It would be interesting to see whether a newspaper with no opinion pieces could succeed. Would you also exclude a letters page? You would also need to decide where to draw the line between analysis, perhaps including some historical context, and opinion. As an example, a journalist with the expertise to write a background piece on the Middle East would probably have their own opinions. Trying to avoid letting those prejudices creep into the analysis would be difficult.

I hadn't actually thought about the letters page when I was formulating my idea. On the one hand they're opinions so they would go against my "no opinion pieces" policy, but on the other hand they can provide the paper with the feedback required to ensure we're meeting our objectives, and on a personal note the letters pages is normally my favourite part of reading a newspaper (bottom page website comments, on the other hand, can do one).

And you're right that even when it comes to analysis, it can be quite hard to write about some topics from a completely unbiased perspective - that old maxim "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" springs to mind.

I guess the only way to have a completely unbiased newspaper is for it to be completely run by robots, although even if we did that, eventually there would be a creeping pro-"giving robots lots of oil" bias in their journalism.