5 ms·

For those unfamiliar, Private Eve is an excellent magazine with a long history. It takes a humourous but serious investgative look at UK politics, business etc

For those unfamiliar, Private Eve is an excellent magazine with a long history. It takes a humourous but serious investgative look at UK politics, business etc looking at eg corruption and double standards. With cartoons and iconic front page puns. And for the large part it avoided the pitfalls of moving online. Current issue: https://www.private-eye.co.uk/current-issue https://www.private-eye.co.uk/current-issue

dazzawazza 6y ago
It has consistently had (IMHO) the best pandemic coverage of any media. The MD section is brilliant, challenging and thought provoking... and it's a satirical magazine! (this says a lot about the poor state of media in general).
TazeTSchnitzel 6y ago
Private Eye avoided the paywall problem by not putting itself online at all, it only publishes selected articles online to leave you hungry for the rest :)
- miki123211 6y ago
  It also avoided becoming accessible to the blind and other parts of the population who cannot read print.
  - mellosouls 6y ago
    This is a good point, accessibility is very important and it's a shame you've been downvoted. Private Eye is available in audio form through the RNIB, though it may just be a digest version as it looks like it's part of a weekly compilation from various publications. https://www.rnib.org.uk/daisy-magazines https://www.rnib.org.uk/daisy-magazines
  - Angostura 6y ago
    I think RNIB do an audio read version
johanek 6y ago
A print subscription is £34 a year, delivered (in the U.K.). It’s ridiculously good value.
noir_lord 6y ago
So good in fact that the managing editor is usually the most sued person in the UK. Ian Hislop is a national treasure and his evidence to the select committee on press intrusion was both erudite and hilarious.
- mabbo 6y ago
  His TV panel show, "Have I Got News For You" is also wonderful. Just comedians, discussing and making jokes about the news, for something like 25 years now. And most of it is on YouTube.
  - radicalbyte 6y ago
    Our PM was also a regular.
  - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    To be clear he didn't create the show, he's one of its stars.
    - timthorn 6y ago
      The show was a successful transition to television of the Radio 4 classic, "The News Quiz"
      - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
        I've never paired them, curiously. The News Quiz is still a R4 show so transition would perhaps be the wrong word. Extension, assuming they have the same source as you imply with your comment.
      - noir_lord 6y ago
        Indeed, I love The News Quiz though I still miss Sandy, the new host is great but not a match.
  - iso947 6y ago
ballooney 6y ago
I strongly urge UK-base HNers to subscribe. It is one of the few national publications still doing proper long-term investigative journalism into local government (in a way that local papers haven’t had the resources to do for years) and usually signals important stories before the main papers pick them up, especially wrt stories about the rest of the news media. Many people stuck in large media orgs leak to the Eye so they can report that e.g. the Telegraph hasn’t been allowed to report on something that might damage the financial interests of its owners. And it’s quite funny.
- amiga_500 6y ago
  Agreed. I think their level of investigation is peerless. They go where others fear to tread. They ruffle more feathers in every single edition than the FT does in a year. I can't think of any other UK publication that comes close.
  - tialaramex 6y ago
    It's an overall excellent and very dense UK-specific read (~40 pages of editorial, cartoons and letters every fortnight). Several stories broken by Private Eye have ended up featuring on Hacker News much later too such as Horizon - an IT system for the UK's Post Office which somehow executives managed to persuade the courts was infallible, so if a bug in Horizon said your Post Office ought to have £10k of cash that it didn't you (the "Postmaster" of that office, typically a small local store owner making a little bit of extra money offering this vital service) might literally go to prison for stealing this money that never even existed. It does have its own unique culture you'd need to spin up on to really grok what's going on. For example it just calls the Queen "Brenda", and various government agencies get more apposite names like the "Fundamentally Supine Agency". And there are a lot of running jokes after existing for so long.
    - amiga_500 6y ago
      It's basically what the press looks like when they are doing their job. They are privately owned and on a mission to tell the truth, not to make as much money as possible. Hislop and before him Cook are actual real people trying to do something good instead of just attempting to get rich for the sake of it before dropping dead. There are lots of in jokes and also "code phrases", such as "tired and emotional" == drunk, more here [1]. I used to subscribe to it but cancelled it after I left the UK. The UK press are an absolute disaster. Most are partisan, including: Telegraph: torygraph Daily mail: torygraph FT: bankers times Guardian: with you until you need actual help then it's back to mi5 Sun/Times: Murdoch incorporated Private eye is literally carry everything on their shoulders. There is nothing else. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurring_themes_and_in-jokes_in_Private_Eye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurring_themes_and_in-jokes_...
Bokanovsky 6y ago
Private Eye has also created one of the best legal responses that they cite now and again. In the case of Arkell v. Pressdram. If you're curious about it details are on Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Eye#Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Eye#Litigation
DanBC 6y ago
Private Eye is very good, but they don't always get it right. > Even when an error does not end up in the law courts, it can still prove embarrassing. The magazine was at the forefront of challenging the MMR triple vaccine - devoting a special-edition pamphlet to the subject. A defiant Hislop insists that the Eye was right to raise the questions it did and to defend the reputation of Andrew Wakefield, the controversial doctor who first suggested there might be a link between MMR, autism and bowel disease - a theory ruled out by the latest comprehensive review of evidence. "There's nothing there that I don't think is right. We came into the story about the hounding of Wakefield and the idea that he wasn't a bona fide doctor, who'd done a huge amount of good looking after these children - the parents certainly bear witness to that. All his stuff beforehand was peer-reviewed and no one said, 'This man's a lunatic' about the link between bowel disease and autism. The work he's still doing is still perfectly OK. I don't accept the claim, 'You added to a climate of hysteria, which means herd immunity will go down and therefore it's all your fault.' I think the questions we asked at the time were acceptable to ask." That leaflet was published in 2002, when the science was pretty clear. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1123186/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1123186/

dazzawazza 6y ago

It has consistently had (IMHO) the best pandemic coverage of any media. The MD section is brilliant, challenging and thought provoking... and it's a satirical magazine! (this says a lot about the poor state of media in general).

TazeTSchnitzel 6y ago

Private Eye avoided the paywall problem by not putting itself online at all, it only publishes selected articles online to leave you hungry for the rest :)

miki123211 6y ago
It also avoided becoming accessible to the blind and other parts of the population who cannot read print.
- mellosouls 6y ago
  This is a good point, accessibility is very important and it's a shame you've been downvoted. Private Eye is available in audio form through the RNIB, though it may just be a digest version as it looks like it's part of a weekly compilation from various publications. https://www.rnib.org.uk/daisy-magazines https://www.rnib.org.uk/daisy-magazines
- Angostura 6y ago
  I think RNIB do an audio read version

johanek 6y ago

A print subscription is £34 a year, delivered (in the U.K.). It’s ridiculously good value.

noir_lord 6y ago

So good in fact that the managing editor is usually the most sued person in the UK. Ian Hislop is a national treasure and his evidence to the select committee on press intrusion was both erudite and hilarious.

mabbo 6y ago
His TV panel show, "Have I Got News For You" is also wonderful. Just comedians, discussing and making jokes about the news, for something like 25 years now. And most of it is on YouTube.
- radicalbyte 6y ago
  Our PM was also a regular.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  To be clear he didn't create the show, he's one of its stars.
  - timthorn 6y ago
    The show was a successful transition to television of the Radio 4 classic, "The News Quiz"
    - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
      I've never paired them, curiously. The News Quiz is still a R4 show so transition would perhaps be the wrong word. Extension, assuming they have the same source as you imply with your comment.
    - noir_lord 6y ago
      Indeed, I love The News Quiz though I still miss Sandy, the new host is great but not a match.
- iso947 6y ago

ballooney 6y ago

I strongly urge UK-base HNers to subscribe. It is one of the few national publications still doing proper long-term investigative journalism into local government (in a way that local papers haven’t had the resources to do for years) and usually signals important stories before the main papers pick them up, especially wrt stories about the rest of the news media. Many people stuck in large media orgs leak to the Eye so they can report that e.g. the Telegraph hasn’t been allowed to report on something that might damage the financial interests of its owners. And it’s quite funny.

amiga_500 6y ago
Agreed. I think their level of investigation is peerless. They go where others fear to tread. They ruffle more feathers in every single edition than the FT does in a year. I can't think of any other UK publication that comes close.
- tialaramex 6y ago
  It's an overall excellent and very dense UK-specific read (~40 pages of editorial, cartoons and letters every fortnight). Several stories broken by Private Eye have ended up featuring on Hacker News much later too such as Horizon - an IT system for the UK's Post Office which somehow executives managed to persuade the courts was infallible, so if a bug in Horizon said your Post Office ought to have £10k of cash that it didn't you (the "Postmaster" of that office, typically a small local store owner making a little bit of extra money offering this vital service) might literally go to prison for stealing this money that never even existed. It does have its own unique culture you'd need to spin up on to really grok what's going on. For example it just calls the Queen "Brenda", and various government agencies get more apposite names like the "Fundamentally Supine Agency". And there are a lot of running jokes after existing for so long.
  - amiga_500 6y ago
    It's basically what the press looks like when they are doing their job. They are privately owned and on a mission to tell the truth, not to make as much money as possible. Hislop and before him Cook are actual real people trying to do something good instead of just attempting to get rich for the sake of it before dropping dead. There are lots of in jokes and also "code phrases", such as "tired and emotional" == drunk, more here [1]. I used to subscribe to it but cancelled it after I left the UK. The UK press are an absolute disaster. Most are partisan, including: Telegraph: torygraph Daily mail: torygraph FT: bankers times Guardian: with you until you need actual help then it's back to mi5 Sun/Times: Murdoch incorporated Private eye is literally carry everything on their shoulders. There is nothing else. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurring_themes_and_in-jokes_in_Private_Eye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurring_themes_and_in-jokes_...

Bokanovsky 6y ago

Private Eye has also created one of the best legal responses that they cite now and again. In the case of Arkell v. Pressdram. If you're curious about it details are on Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Eye#Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Eye#Litigation

DanBC 6y ago

Private Eye is very good, but they don't always get it right. > Even when an error does not end up in the law courts, it can still prove embarrassing. The magazine was at the forefront of challenging the MMR triple vaccine - devoting a special-edition pamphlet to the subject. A defiant Hislop insists that the Eye was right to raise the questions it did and to defend the reputation of Andrew Wakefield, the controversial doctor who first suggested there might be a link between MMR, autism and bowel disease - a theory ruled out by the latest comprehensive review of evidence. "There's nothing there that I don't think is right. We came into the story about the hounding of Wakefield and the idea that he wasn't a bona fide doctor, who'd done a huge amount of good looking after these children - the parents certainly bear witness to that. All his stuff beforehand was peer-reviewed and no one said, 'This man's a lunatic' about the link between bowel disease and autism. The work he's still doing is still perfectly OK. I don't accept the claim, 'You added to a climate of hysteria, which means herd immunity will go down and therefore it's all your fault.' I think the questions we asked at the time were acceptable to ask." That leaflet was published in 2002, when the science was pretty clear. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1123186/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1123186/