The Guardian[0] has done some great reporting in recent years[1]:
Notable scoops include the 2011 News International phone hacking scandal, in particular the hacking of murdered English teenager Milly Dowler's phone. The investigation led to the closure of the UK's biggest selling Sunday newspaper, and one of the highest circulation newspapers in the world, the News of the World. The newspaper also released news of the secret collection of Verizon telephone records held by US President Barack Obama's administration in June 2013, and subsequently revealed the existence of the PRISM surveillance program after it was leaked to the paper by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. In 2016, it led the investigation into the Panama Papers, exposing the then British Prime Minister David Cameron's links to offshore bank accounts.
I have a hypothesis that if the breadcrumb says "home › opinion" with no third level then you're in CIF, but I have no real evidence that that is actually reliable.
The "Stern", one of the big German magazines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_(magazine), took a big nosedive in quality in my opinion.
3 or 4 years ago (i am not sure when this exactly happend) they did a "redesign" - and since then many hard topics and inconvienient stories where left behind for soft topics and lifestyle articles.
I really enjoyed reading it but right now I won't bother most of the time.
They even changed their, in my opinion hilarious, but sarcastic album reviews to album reviews which sound like a rehash of the PR text from the record company.
The most important thing is the picture of the lead journalists at the end of the story and how they "connect to this story". And the guy who writes 3 pages about his cooking. And the boring "I am so edgy and showing two sides of my personality" PR interview with a celebrity. Yesterday I've read one of these interviews with the question "do you enjoy wearing suits?"
To be fair, sometimes they still have well made articles, but many times it is just boring feel-good-journalism.
I think the situation in the UK is similar to the US for print journalism (whatever that means these days), with a few large blocks:
* A few top-notch publications
* Far right propaganda, substantially from Murdoch / News Corp.
* A bunch of middling, substantially ineffectual stuff
(I know these are broad generalizations, with many exceptions.)
FT is really weak. Go check out the FT comments some time - none of their readers understand how markets work nor how prices are set. You know why? Because they read the FT and the FT never talks about any of this. All they have is what appears to be in depth but is simply parroting numbers.
Guardian I have more time for but they are frustrating. They tell the truth right up to the point where it comes to talking about the banks and how land is used to extract labour, then they melt away. Which in the UK is everything.
UK journalism has fallen so far. Telegraph for example you could label propaganda - it's right wing. But it's so trashy now. And this is mirrored across all publications.
I have the feeling journalists in Germany still think there is something like completely objective reporting. A kind of gold standard you achieve by adhering to a certain method, with everyone coming to the one and only correct conclusion. Anyone who does not must be inept or not a real journalist in the first place.
Just like every economist in the history of economics
That's a really common prejudice, and not born out by the actual paper, in my view. As just one example, in the US presidential elections, The Economist has endorsed G W Bush, but then Kerry, Obama, Obama, and Clinton.
It's still the best newspaper around, in my view, for concise, opinionated updates on a wide range of global issues.
FT is better than WSJ, but that's not saying much.
Guardian has some good reporting, and is worth supporting, though I disagree with some of their editorialising.
I think if you re-incarnated and showed the editor of the Telegraph from 1950 the web-site, just the difference between the background colour of "sponsored" stories versus actual stories, he'd blow his brains out. Never mind the actual content.
Do German papers do this, mix paid and actual content and attempt to show the paid as similar to real? Although this is nowhere near as bad as The Telegraph following the instructions of disgruntled banker advertisers:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/peter-oborne/why-i-...