8 ms·

Whilst there have always been loony left, misandrist etc. articles in the Guardian (I speak having read it regularly since the 80s) I'd argue that to make their

Whilst there have always been loony left, misandrist etc. articles in the Guardian (I speak having read it regularly since the 80s) I'd argue that to make their supporter model work they've had to drop their editorial standards lower still.

vfclists 7y ago
Have any of the major media outlets exhibited anything remotely resembling editorial standards "that they could drop lower still"? For give me if I sound cynical but I am totally done with these Brexit hating pro uncontrolled immigration rags. Advice to news outlets. If you want to make profit than see your readers donate their hard-earned wonga to Tommy Robinson, Carl Benjamin et al you'd better get a grip on reality.
- DanBC 7y ago
  We've just had local elections where the resutl was a swing away from Brexit supporting parties towards Brexit opposing parties.
  - Veen 7y ago
    That's a somewhat tendentious analysis. The Tories certainly got a spanking, but UKIP stood in fewer areas than in the previous election and the Brexit Party didn't stand at all. I suspect we'll see a truer picture in the European elections.
    - ptah 7y ago
      Lib Dem and Green Party, that are Remain/People's vote Parties have made huge gains though
      - Zenst 7y ago
        But then the Lib Dems took a beating last time these elections came to pass and whatever happened, they were going to get more seats on the rebound. Sure they gained more but even if you total all the Green and Lib Dem votes - it would still be less than 50% of the votes from these elections. 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-more-questions-over-250k-offer-not-to-stand-in-byelection 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 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.
        ptah 7y ago
        all the analysis i've seen says that brexit is overshadowing local issues. i'm partial to sortition myself: if it's good enough for jury duty, it is good enough for government
        Zenst 7y ago
        That would work, though with what we have currently - I'd call it QWERTY politics, far from efficient and indeed about as inefficient as you can get and any other layout would be better. Exactly the situation with politics in the UK today and indeed, not just the UK that we see this playing out in some form or another. 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.
  - growlist 7y ago
    Oh boy. The Brexit Party did not put up a single candidate in these elections and despite having only launched a few months ago they are leading the polls for the EU elections! I wouldn't count your chickens just yet guv.
  - dazc 7y ago
    Which are the Brexit supporting parties you are alluding to?
jimnotgym 7y ago
I would argue that they have been rather unique in the British press in keeping the standards of investigative journalism high. No other paper was looking into Cambridge Analytica and their role in Brexit, or the illegal collusion between Vote Leave and Be Leave. They have been fearless when other papers have been complicit
- briandear 7y ago
  Fearless only when their fearlessness supports their viewpoint. They wouldn’t dare look into issues that go against their bias. According to the Guardian, Brexit is 100% bad, when in fact, the issues surrounding Brexit are in shades of grey. It’s not particularly courageous to write articles with which you already support. Courage would be writing articles that challenge their widely held assumptions.
  - ljf 7y ago
    While not the majority of their content, they have had a number of pro-brexit opinion pieces and pro-WAB articles from people across the 'left' brexit spectrum and even some centre/right writers.
  - ggm 7y ago
    Their editorial is pretty evenly split. A lot of readers who are remainer complain about pro brexit positions. The labour party is split. Owen Jones (as an example) and Martin Kettle) certainly don't make your case. Basically, I think you're factually wrong. You're reading selectively if you believe this about the graun
- growlist 7y ago
  I suppose you also think there was no behind-the-scenes orchestration behind the hounding of Aaron Banks etc., that the Remain campaign was whiter than white, and that the Electoral Commission have been completely impartial..
  - C1sc0cat 7y ago
    You mean Mr Banks the one with the shady connections to Putin ?
Veen 7y ago
They've become less economically left-wing over the years, but that's somewhat obscured by their move toward Salon-like content from columnists.
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  They where set up as a free trade liberal paper.
  - Veen 7y ago
    Yes, in 1821. The political landscape has changed somewhat. The Guardian has never been The Morning Star, but it has moved from a more overtly socialist position over the last few decades (oddities like Owen Jones aside).
ptah 7y ago
not nearly as loony as daily express and daily mail
adwww 7y ago
I'd counter, especially relative to other contemporary newspapers, the Guardian's quality is consistently high.
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  True, but you can name certain topics where the possibility of them being correct or to give a neutral perspective is quite low. Still better than most, yes.
- AsyncAwait 7y ago
  Given their outright lies about Assange over the past while, I'd counter that assertion.
  - SolaceQuantum 7y ago
    So I'm super uneducated on this, please let me know if you know because I'd love to know more. 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.
    - AsyncAwait 7y ago
      See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19817959 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19817959
      - SolaceQuantum 7y ago
        Hey, thanks a ton for this! Is anyone persecuting The Guardian for this?
        AsyncAwait 7y ago
        I think Wikileaks wanted to sue them, not sure where that's at, but as far as some watchdog doing so, no, you never get prosecuted for printing what suits the establishment. I guess is similar to how the media pushing for the Iraq War on the premise of WMDs were held accountable, not.
AsyncAwait 7y ago
> Whilst there have always been loony left, misandrist etc. articles in the Guardian 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.
- arethuza 7y ago
  I was looking at their Wikipedia page and I noticed they supported internment in Northern Ireland during the early phase of the Troubles - that's hardly challenging the establishment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian#Northern_Ireland_conflict 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!)
- bgeeek 7y ago
  I'm regular reader and I'm not sure that I would agree with you. My problem with the guardian is that it doesn't currently know what it wants be. 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.
  - simongr3dal 7y ago
    > 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. 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.
GlennS 7y ago
I think they're suffering from the same online short-attention-span clickbait issues as every other news source. 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.
- swebs 7y ago
  >Meanwhile other publications have abandoned that, including the 'balanced' publications. Reuters still provides plenty of balanced journalism without dipping into fashionable nonsense opinion pieces.
  - Nomentatus 7y ago
    I would say "excellent but infrequent," not "plenty."
brmgb 7y ago
> I'd argue that to make their supporter model work they've had to drop their editorial standards lower still. 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.
- pjc50 7y ago
  This seems to be an extension of "people won't pay for local news now the classifieds have died", only that England itself is now too small for a profitable news constituency and the only money to be made is in telling Americans what terrible thing their government has done today. The effect on Scottish press is even more acute; readerships are tiny.
- growlist 7y ago
  You articulate it better than I.
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  What do you mean - don't recall see many devils advocate pieces on the pros and cons of second amendment rights
rndmio 7y ago
I disagree, too many people associate the opinion pieces with the general tone of the rest of the newspaper. All opinion pieces are effectively clickbait (go take a look at the Times or Telegraph (if you dare)). Their general position is generally centrist, they are pretty much LibDems as a newspaper.
- otvsh 7y ago
  The thing with newspapers is that they keep posting opinion pieces using the same page design/layout as any other editorial or news piece with a small heading that says "Opinion", thus making it seem serious, and at the same time when they post opinion pieces that go way over the line they use the "but it was just an opinion piece" card. They want to have their cake and eat it as well.
  - 52-6F-62 7y ago
    I think that's a problem of media literacy and not page templating. Sections and categories are not new features for newspapers or magazines. Words have meaning—they're not there for no reason.
    - otvsh 7y ago
      I think a good solution would be to have opinion pieces in another subdomain such as blogs.mynewspaper.com/ephraimgoldstein with a very different design from the rest of the paper.
      - frosted-flakes 7y ago
        Like the way editorials in print newspapers are always left justified (ragged right), while news articles are fully justified[0]. It's subtle, but for anyone who's been reading newspapers regularly, it's immediately obvious. [0] At least, that's the case here in Canada.
      - 52-6F-62 7y ago
        Maybe. I'm saying more that there really isn't a problem on the paper's end. 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.
majani 7y ago
The problem simply shifts from pandering to advertisers to pandering to power users.
sambe 7y ago
Could not agree more. There has been both a large quality drop and a big political shift to the left (no idea how replies can claim they have become more and more centrist - that was true until a few years ago but it's swung back). They lost me as a reader sometime in 2017. Thinking about it now, the change likely coincides with this business model.

vfclists 7y ago

Have any of the major media outlets exhibited anything remotely resembling editorial standards "that they could drop lower still"? For give me if I sound cynical but I am totally done with these Brexit hating pro uncontrolled immigration rags. Advice to news outlets. If you want to make profit than see your readers donate their hard-earned wonga to Tommy Robinson, Carl Benjamin et al you'd better get a grip on reality.

DanBC 7y ago
We've just had local elections where the resutl was a swing away from Brexit supporting parties towards Brexit opposing parties.
- Veen 7y ago
  That's a somewhat tendentious analysis. The Tories certainly got a spanking, but UKIP stood in fewer areas than in the previous election and the Brexit Party didn't stand at all. I suspect we'll see a truer picture in the European elections.
  - ptah 7y ago
    Lib Dem and Green Party, that are Remain/People's vote Parties have made huge gains though
    - Zenst 7y ago
      But then the Lib Dems took a beating last time these elections came to pass and whatever happened, they were going to get more seats on the rebound. Sure they gained more but even if you total all the Green and Lib Dem votes - it would still be less than 50% of the votes from these elections. 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-more-questions-over-250k-offer-not-to-stand-in-byelection 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 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.
      - ptah 7y ago
        all the analysis i've seen says that brexit is overshadowing local issues. i'm partial to sortition myself: if it's good enough for jury duty, it is good enough for government
        Zenst 7y ago
        That would work, though with what we have currently - I'd call it QWERTY politics, far from efficient and indeed about as inefficient as you can get and any other layout would be better. Exactly the situation with politics in the UK today and indeed, not just the UK that we see this playing out in some form or another. 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.
- growlist 7y ago
  Oh boy. The Brexit Party did not put up a single candidate in these elections and despite having only launched a few months ago they are leading the polls for the EU elections! I wouldn't count your chickens just yet guv.
- dazc 7y ago
  Which are the Brexit supporting parties you are alluding to?

jimnotgym 7y ago

I would argue that they have been rather unique in the British press in keeping the standards of investigative journalism high. No other paper was looking into Cambridge Analytica and their role in Brexit, or the illegal collusion between Vote Leave and Be Leave. They have been fearless when other papers have been complicit

briandear 7y ago
Fearless only when their fearlessness supports their viewpoint. They wouldn’t dare look into issues that go against their bias. According to the Guardian, Brexit is 100% bad, when in fact, the issues surrounding Brexit are in shades of grey. It’s not particularly courageous to write articles with which you already support. Courage would be writing articles that challenge their widely held assumptions.
- ljf 7y ago
  While not the majority of their content, they have had a number of pro-brexit opinion pieces and pro-WAB articles from people across the 'left' brexit spectrum and even some centre/right writers.
- ggm 7y ago
  Their editorial is pretty evenly split. A lot of readers who are remainer complain about pro brexit positions. The labour party is split. Owen Jones (as an example) and Martin Kettle) certainly don't make your case. Basically, I think you're factually wrong. You're reading selectively if you believe this about the graun
growlist 7y ago
I suppose you also think there was no behind-the-scenes orchestration behind the hounding of Aaron Banks etc., that the Remain campaign was whiter than white, and that the Electoral Commission have been completely impartial..
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  You mean Mr Banks the one with the shady connections to Putin ?

Veen 7y ago

They've become less economically left-wing over the years, but that's somewhat obscured by their move toward Salon-like content from columnists.

C1sc0cat 7y ago
They where set up as a free trade liberal paper.
- Veen 7y ago
  Yes, in 1821. The political landscape has changed somewhat. The Guardian has never been The Morning Star, but it has moved from a more overtly socialist position over the last few decades (oddities like Owen Jones aside).

ptah 7y ago

not nearly as loony as daily express and daily mail

adwww 7y ago

I'd counter, especially relative to other contemporary newspapers, the Guardian's quality is consistently high.

raxxorrax 7y ago
True, but you can name certain topics where the possibility of them being correct or to give a neutral perspective is quite low. Still better than most, yes.
AsyncAwait 7y ago
Given their outright lies about Assange over the past while, I'd counter that assertion.
- SolaceQuantum 7y ago
  So I'm super uneducated on this, please let me know if you know because I'd love to know more. 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.
  - AsyncAwait 7y ago
    See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19817959 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19817959
    - SolaceQuantum 7y ago
      Hey, thanks a ton for this! Is anyone persecuting The Guardian for this?
      - AsyncAwait 7y ago
        I think Wikileaks wanted to sue them, not sure where that's at, but as far as some watchdog doing so, no, you never get prosecuted for printing what suits the establishment. I guess is similar to how the media pushing for the Iraq War on the premise of WMDs were held accountable, not.

AsyncAwait 7y ago

> Whilst there have always been loony left, misandrist etc. articles in the Guardian 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.

arethuza 7y ago
I was looking at their Wikipedia page and I noticed they supported internment in Northern Ireland during the early phase of the Troubles - that's hardly challenging the establishment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian#Northern_Ireland_conflict 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!)
bgeeek 7y ago
I'm regular reader and I'm not sure that I would agree with you. My problem with the guardian is that it doesn't currently know what it wants be. 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.
- simongr3dal 7y ago
  > 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. 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.

GlennS 7y ago

I think they're suffering from the same online short-attention-span clickbait issues as every other news source. 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.

swebs 7y ago
>Meanwhile other publications have abandoned that, including the 'balanced' publications. Reuters still provides plenty of balanced journalism without dipping into fashionable nonsense opinion pieces.
- Nomentatus 7y ago
  I would say "excellent but infrequent," not "plenty."

brmgb 7y ago

> I'd argue that to make their supporter model work they've had to drop their editorial standards lower still. 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.

pjc50 7y ago
This seems to be an extension of "people won't pay for local news now the classifieds have died", only that England itself is now too small for a profitable news constituency and the only money to be made is in telling Americans what terrible thing their government has done today. The effect on Scottish press is even more acute; readerships are tiny.
growlist 7y ago
You articulate it better than I.
C1sc0cat 7y ago
What do you mean - don't recall see many devils advocate pieces on the pros and cons of second amendment rights

rndmio 7y ago

I disagree, too many people associate the opinion pieces with the general tone of the rest of the newspaper. All opinion pieces are effectively clickbait (go take a look at the Times or Telegraph (if you dare)). Their general position is generally centrist, they are pretty much LibDems as a newspaper.

otvsh 7y ago
The thing with newspapers is that they keep posting opinion pieces using the same page design/layout as any other editorial or news piece with a small heading that says "Opinion", thus making it seem serious, and at the same time when they post opinion pieces that go way over the line they use the "but it was just an opinion piece" card. They want to have their cake and eat it as well.
- 52-6F-62 7y ago
  I think that's a problem of media literacy and not page templating. Sections and categories are not new features for newspapers or magazines. Words have meaning—they're not there for no reason.
  - otvsh 7y ago
    I think a good solution would be to have opinion pieces in another subdomain such as blogs.mynewspaper.com/ephraimgoldstein with a very different design from the rest of the paper.
    - frosted-flakes 7y ago
      Like the way editorials in print newspapers are always left justified (ragged right), while news articles are fully justified[0]. It's subtle, but for anyone who's been reading newspapers regularly, it's immediately obvious. [0] At least, that's the case here in Canada.
    - 52-6F-62 7y ago
      Maybe. I'm saying more that there really isn't a problem on the paper's end. 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.

majani 7y ago

The problem simply shifts from pandering to advertisers to pandering to power users.

sambe 7y ago

Could not agree more. There has been both a large quality drop and a big political shift to the left (no idea how replies can claim they have become more and more centrist - that was true until a few years ago but it's swung back). They lost me as a reader sometime in 2017. Thinking about it now, the change likely coincides with this business model.