A Newport MP has accused the South Wales Argus of censorship, claiming it removes reader comments from its website which criticise the paper.

Paul Flynn made the claim on his own website, www.paulflynnmp.co.uk. He has called on others to get in touch with him if their comments are banned from the Argus website or letters fail to get published in the letters page.

His comments came after claims that a reader’s online comment posting was removed from a story about Monmouth MP David Davies, who was criticisng new rules on advertising as targeting the wrong types of food.

The comment said: “What I do not understand is this sycophantic attitude that The Argus has towards Davies. Every pathetic utterance he makes seems to be covered in the paper.

“I fully expect a headline soon saying something like ‘MP passes wind after curry and calls for curbs on air pollution’.”

Paul Flynn said: “This letter was swiftly removed from the Argus website. Other highly intelligient comments critical of the Argus also disappeared.

“They claim to believe in free speech. It’s free speech only for the foul-mouthed moronic bigots that infest their site.”

However South Wales Argus editor Gerry Keighley has hit back at the claims, and said he had not authorised the comment in question to be removed.

He added that the paper did not favour one politician over another.

He said: “One comment was taken down mistakenly but to say this represents a change of policy is absurd.”

He said comments that were obscene, unduly offensive or which attacked an individual member of staff would be removed, but comments were not removed solely on the grounds that they criticised the paper.

He said: “We ran a story about a sports stadium recently and there were around 30 comments strongly criticising us.”