Speaking as someone on the left in the UK, I can assure you the Guardian has been more and more centrist as time goes on. I think the confusion is that they do in fact publish loony articles sometimes on social issues, because guess what? That's easy to do without really addressing any economic problems.
On the economic front they're as centrist as they get, regularly attacking the likes of Corbyn in ways that the Sun is starting to envy, smearing Assange once they're done profiting off him, printing puff pieces for the Saudi Crown Prince etc. The Guardian is no darling of the (grassroots) left, I can assure you.
The other annoyance - the frivolous clickbait articles.
They have articles on privacy yet have lots of trackers themselves. They're really no better than what they preach, at least the last time I checked.
Still, having said that, I prefer to read a variety of news sources instead of one to hopefully get a more balanced view.
Isn't that a side-effect of having business and editorial separated? The individual journalists don't have any power to change the templates their CMS uses.
I don't disagree! Put an article in front of me on most hot topics and I think I would have difficulty telling you what publication it was from - it's the same cynical, smug, faux-progressive yet in reality complacently bourgeois, finger wagging, 'if you don't agree with us you're wrong/old/racist/uncool' attitude from all of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian#Northern_Ireland_...
[Internment was probably one of the daftest ideas implemented by a UK government for a long long time.]
Edit: Note, I am a regular Guardian and Observer buyer - occasionally get the Times for a bit of balance (though still in mild shock over contents of the Telegraph my wife bought at the weekend as everything else was sold out!)
I'm going to cut you some slack and assume you are American, young, or both.. because as a guardian reader from the 1970s onwards I can tell you this is just not correct
Not at all. See The Dangerous Cult of the Guardian by former Guardian journalist Jonathan Cook:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/28/the-dangerous-cult-o...
> George Monbiot, widely considered to be the Guardian’s most progressive columnist, has used his slot to attack a disparate group on the “left” who also happen to be harsh critics of the Guardian.
Media analysts Media Lens have written a lot on Monbiot too. http://medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/search-t...
Support for nationalization is nowadays limited to natural monopolies, and opinion polls show it's quite popular.
EU support isn't traditionally left wing either: historically, the left wing of the Labour Party (e.g. Tony Benn, Michael Foot, Peter Shore, Barbara Castle) all opposed membership. It was a Tory government which took us in, and Margaret Thatcher campaigned for our continued membership.
Ah come on now.
Monbiot is pretty much a social democrat. He may want to nationalise some infrastructure, but he is quite a long way away from being as far left as it gets.
That's the modern left: centrist (or, rather: "establishment corporatist consensus") on economic issues, centrist on societal issues, loony on SJW issues -- and pro-war/imperialism/against enemy-du-jour in establishment millitary-industrial issues.
That is, (some token pro-black/immigrant activism aside, when it's comfortable) more or less non-problems, in an age where the respective groups never had it better and acceptance of them was never more in vogue and established (from Hollywood to major news outlets to laws).
Judging from 99% of their public output, most SJW could not care less for the vast numbers of homeless, the battered middle and working classes, for prison conditions. In fact the same "good souls" would go and openly mock "white trash" -- and they'd do the same for the "latino/black trash" if it wasn't frowned upon.
The difference between real societal issues and SJW causes, is that the former are cross cutting (across niches of people) and fundamental, while the latter are trendy and for the most part inconsequential today (when they don't get into the bizarro, e.g. the "cotton ceiling" thing).
Only a small brave minority fought for gay rights in the 60s and 70s, when gay was a dirty word. But now that it's in fashion, everybody fights the "token" gay fight, for ever more inconsequential rights. It's almost as if they're not pro-LGBT, they just take the winning side, and use it to prop their bios and popularity.
Basically, I think you're factually wrong. You're reading selectively if you believe this about the graun
But since you mention Aron Banks, he is accused of funneling foreign money into UK elections illegally, and is being investigated for it by the NCA. Is that hounding?
Sections and categories are not new features for newspapers or magazines. Words have meaning—they're not there for no reason.
The problem, if there exists one at all, is the reader ignoring words on the page of a publication that is expressly about transmitting words.
That said, the Guardian already uses a completely different highlight colour for its Opinion section than it uses for its News section.
[0] At least, that's the case here in Canada.
1. What specific lies has the guardian spread, and what's the truth? 2. Are there news watchdog organizations for this major newspaper company selling actual proven falsities, and is there legal recourse? I'm not familiar if where the Guardian publishes there is a legal mandate to be a newspaper and not disseminate actual lies.
> Sources have said Manafort went to see Assange in 2013, 2015 and in spring 2016 – during the period when he was made a key figure in Trump’s push for the White House.
Sources did say that, and the Guardian is telling us that these sources said that. The Guardian isn't saying it happened.
See also "Freddy Star ate my hamster (says beauty)". https://sunheadlines.blogspot.com/2008/11/classics-freddie-s...
Is the "misunderstanding" here that The Guardian or other UK papers can print claims from "sources" without verifying a single piece of materially important information?
You seem to be here to defend The Guardian in this long thread about what a great paper it is, but your defense is to make a comparison to The Sun and target it at people who are pointing out that The Guardian has printed obvious lies (actual "fake news") in meddling with US politics. That's a really interesting way to defend them. One would think such defense in a thread like this might be inspired by their honesty and integrity as a news organization, but it's actually that it's okay to lie by claiming sources said something because The Sun did it.
You're holding the guardian to higher standards than any other UK print media.
Person B: The Guardian tells lies about relatively important stories like Assange and Manafort meeting.
Person C (you): Actually, all UK print media lies!
Is this a fair characterization of what just happened?
The Guardian has not lied. The Guardian has accurately reported what sources said. This is what all UK print media does. Guardian is somewhat better than some other UK print media because they'll (as they did here) include the words "sources say" in the headline or sub head, or they'll include quote marks in the headline.
Plus, it looks disingenuous to pretend that The Guardian didn't willfully choose to print this story instead of any of the many many stories about Barack Obama being a "secret Muslim" or even "gay" according to some source.
You can further clarify why you think The Guardian is actually good if you want, but if it involves, "Everyone else publishes stories from sources," I'm done taking it seriously.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110106083508/http://www.counte...
2. The fact that I linked to those articles (and my own comment preceding the links), makes no claims as to the veracity of those claims. However they do underscore the fact that there was bad blood between WL and TG.
3. Your post plays the man rather than the ball to attack claims I never made (clearly however others must feel the same way you do).
EDIT: correction to type of argument in point 3.
https://theintercept.com/2019/01/02/five-weeks-after-the-gua...
I'd recommend you watch this[1] interview with the author of that article as well, for some context as to who he is.
I personally mostly stopped reading The Guardian because for all intents and purposes they have become an American journal. They are obsessed with American social issues and and mostly treat the news from an American point of view. I think it's a clear strategic choice of Viner but it saddens me to see what was a great English paper turn into that.
I won't even talk about the Opinion part of the journal. Describing it as uneven seems charitable.
The effect on Scottish press is even more acute; readerships are tiny.
But, while they do put out a substantial volume of nonsense, the Guardian also does real journalism.
Meanwhile other publications have abandoned that, including the 'balanced' publications.
Reuters still provides plenty of balanced journalism without dipping into fashionable nonsense opinion pieces.
They lost me as a reader sometime in 2017. Thinking about it now, the change likely coincides with this business model.
But the Green party have IMHO made huge gains factoring in everything and that is good as frankly IMHO - we have a lack of Green party representation. But to usurp all Green and LibDem voters as being solely interested in the remain camp would be disenfranchising of those voters.
After all - these are local election by local people for local issues - nothing to do with brexit beyond protesting vote people who failed to grasp that a local councilor and coulcil has less influence upon Brexit than they do as an individual who has had a say in the matter.
Protest votes irk me, as they highlight the democratic voting and say of the people is not robust enough that they are driven to such voting styles. There again I dispise tactical voting - a tactic that both the LibDem and to a lesser extent the Green party have partaken upon. Then the way the LIb Dems go about local election campaign leaflets - from what I have experience - pretty low and immoral tactics used when you get leaflets demonising and bully wording the other parties and neglecting to say what they actually offer.
But lets add some context here about the underhand election tactics being used from everybodies favorite source - https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/11/greens-face...
But in fairness to the Lib Dems - they have been pretty solid upon their brexit position (after the vote) - dispite being very adamant about respecting the vote no matter what the result....until they lost. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX1vhfdSKu4
Frankly - party politics needs to change - I'd love that all local councils were independent as party politics and councils offers no advantage, frankly the opposite.
Maybe one day soon we will move on from a democratic system designed for people who can just write an X and communicate every 5 years towards something more fit for our literate speed of light communications standards we have today.