ONE of the more distasteful and dangerous aspects of the current general election campaign is the total disregard for truth displayed by many of Britain's daily national newspapers.

The problem is not that they are partisan, preferring a particular party over others. The Morning Star does not pretend to be neutral and our editorial view will also be reflected to some extent in what we choose to report and how.

But having a political view is no justification for newspapers to pass off fiction as fact and knowingly misrepresent or fabricate the views of parties and politicians with whom they disagree.

When sections of the press sink to the level of being no more than lying propaganda hate sheets, they perpetuate public ignorance, poison the well of rational, democratic debate and make informed choices less likely.

Which brings us to the conduct of gutter rags such as the Sun. They make no attempt to report the policies and proposals of the Labour Party with even the semblance of accuracy.

The tone was set back in February, when News Corp boss Rupert Murdoch flew in from the US to tell his Wapping minions that their anti-Labour lies were not whopping enough.

Since then, the fact-free "news" reports and false quotations have flowed thick and fast. A new low was reached on the evening of the televised debate between seven party leaders on April 2.

The Sun and other papers were quick to pronounce their verdict on the main performers. The front page of Murdoch's flagship had a picture of a panic-struck Ed Miliband, alongside the headline: "OOPS! I JUST LOST MY ELECTION!"

Purportedly reflecting the viewers' mass "verdict," the paper reported that the 'red-faced' Labour leader had blown his chance of replacing Prime Minister Cameron.

Yet this front page had been sent to the BBC at 8pm, before the debate had even begun. Likewise, the Daily Express had already come to its front-cover conclusion about an event still to happen: "Coll Cameron on top, but Farage keeps up fight on EU and migrants."

Both headlines remained the same overnight, although the opinion polls put Miliband singly or jointly at the top of the performance league table.

Subsequently, Ukip leader and self-styled defender of "Judeo-Christian culture" Nigel Farage received a donation of £1.3 million from fellow millionaire Richard Desmond, the owner of the Daily and Sunday Express, the Daily Star and Channel Five TV who made his fortune publishing hardcore pornography.

This whole episode illustrates the rot which blights Britain's mass media.

Far too many of our newspapers and television and radio stations - together with their websites - are owned by multimillionaires and multinational corporations. Most daily and Sunday national titles are in the hands of just six proprietors and their organisations, some of which also have large stakes in the local and regional media.

The Morning Star alone is owned by a co-operative of its readers and supporters.

That, together with our consistently left-wing outlook, goes a long way to explaining why we are consistently excluded from TV and radio round-ups of the British press, further skewing the balance of public political debate to the right.

As for the hysterical anti-Labour campaign being run by the likes of the Sun, Daily Express and Daily Mail, it may not be unconnected to an unpublicised passage in that party's manifesto.

This declares that "the concentration of media power in too few hands is damaging to our democracy" and commits a Labour government to protect plurality, reform the rules on cross-media ownership and limit the size of media empires.

Will Labour change the pattern of media ownership in time to rescue rational political debate from those who would destroy it?