There's an entire other experience of mind I think we miss when we complain about media. Growing up in a family where the news and politics were the default top

There's an entire other experience of mind I think we miss when we complain about media. Growing up in a family where the news and politics were the default topic of discussion, like when there was a lull, someone would make a comment about legislation or policy to break the silence, it's worth looking at who The Guardian is writing for. By telling or repeating a story, you get to become the reporter in the conversation. You get to become the voice of authority by channeling it. It doesn't matter what it actually says, just the effect it has. The Guardian could be a random number generator, and the game among readers would still be to compete to see who can repeat it more faithfully. I would argue the people who edit the Guardian now believe, "we're the newspaper, the truth is whatever we say it is." Most of the facts Guardian prints can be demonstrated as concretely true, but where they and other media become unreliable is that the conflict they use as a vehicle for their story is often fabricated from ideology. "Dog bites man," becomes, "Oppressor gets his just due, and here's why that's ok." To someone whose understanding of the world (and even theory of mind and self) operates as just a kind of axis of language and power, this is consistent. What does it matter if something is true if it doesn't alter the balance of power in a relationship or in society? What does it matter if something is false if it does alter that balance in the subjects? The whole definition of "mattering," is whether it has an effect on that balance, and truth and falsehood are immaterial - insomuch as there are no legal blowback consequences. Meanwhile, outright fabricating and lying is not only taking one for the team, it's a necessary signal of your own status and alignment that you can lie in support of the party line, and the impunity you have shows your status to others. A certain economist with a newspaper column comes to mind as the exemplar of this view in practice. I sympathize with the author, but I think his expectation that The Guardian and other news media are even intended to be faithful representations of reality is the source of his disappointment. He's just not their audience.