The Guardian has become unreadable

The Guardian long ago ceased its pretense as a "liberal" public watchdog, and has become just another outlet for advocacy journalism and indoctrination.

I'm to the left of Obama on most issues, but the Guardian's lack of objectivity is embarrassing.

The best thing about the Guardian is the comments - they routinely criticize how inane many of the opinion pieces have become.

Many of the comments on Germaine Greer were pretty similar to the ones found here.

I agree, I used to read the website every day but over the past 2/3 years it's become almost unbearable.

That's true. I haven't read it in about 2-3 years. Used to be I read it almost every week.

And, running as they were for any kind of "scoop", they published a list of the victims of Bataclan before any French news outlet. Show some decency, fellows.

R3, and yet only Bill Maher seems to voice that in the liberal media. I like John Oliver's show, but he's as hyper-PC/SJW as they get.

They have become intolerable. It's nothing but a lifestyle site for smug, huffy, Londoners who triangulate wanting to send their kids to private school/ wanting to purchase a $2000 Mulberry handbag with their union memberships and their annual attendance at an anti-austerity march.

They have Jewish blood on their hands.

R8 it's more American oriented these days, I think.

You must see "So Much Guardian," it's great. And they have such a lot of material to choose from.

[quote][R8] it's more American oriented these days, I think.

They have a US site that you'll be automatically directed to if accessing it from the USA.

r11, that boils it down nicely, especially for those us who never read the site.

You'll also be automatically directed there if you're outside the UK, period. Or should I say full stop.

there is an option to re-format it to UK news only whilst abroad, yes?

I'm shit at knowing what news sources to follow, all I've really ever got in mind is bbc and guardian. Which reminds me, I hate when non-Brits link to the Telegraph. How foolish they look and they don't even know it!

There are very many insightful commenters who call out the dreck being published ATL, but there is also a very large contingent of groupthinking zealots of different flavours. Which predominates seems to depend on the topic. I can't be bothered to parse the patterns.

Part of the problem with what's left of the paper is the Left in Britain going entirely off the rails over the coalition years and ditching any engagement with objective reality, going all-in on rage and dogma. In fact that could be true of the U.S. too, the rabid Right notwithstanding.

[quote]the Left in Britain going entirely off the rails over the coalition years and ditching any engagement with objective reality,

The "Left" - including its mouthpieces such as The Guardian - went off the rails a decade ago when it dumped its traditional working class support to foster and support to the point of fetish a far more worthwhile and lucrative agenda - Muslims. By supporting a regressive dogma, the "Left" dropped its "liberal", "progressive" pretense and become as zealous as the "Right".

OMG!

"End of Life Care is a Universal Right AND A White Privilege!"

They're going broke so at least we won't have to endure it for much longer. They made the decision not to charge, and ended up with content you couldn't give away. Turning into clickbait certainly hasn't paid the bills, if that's what they expected.

Murdoch destroyed the Times, the Independent seemingly gave up, I recall the Telegraph's conservatism being somewhat reasoned once upon a time, and the rest are tabloids. A real shame what happened to probably the most vibrant news culture in the world. Perhaps Germany would care to translate theirs?

The Guardian still has the best football coverage. Or I might be thinking of the commenters.

In contrast to the Journal, the editorial line of the FT verges on being loony left sometimes. Otherwise, it's the last outpost for quality journalism on the island.

Say what you want about the Daily Mail, but it is the LAST medium in the UK that reports everything without political considerations, where you still receive a wide range of information.

[quote] Perhaps Germany would care to translate theirs?

Many of the German and French newspapers and journals have online English editions. The translation is sometimes a bit wonky, especially the Germans, who sometimes forget that in English, the verb does not come at the end of the sentence.

[Quote] Say what you want about the Daily Mail, but it is the LAST medium in the UK that reports everything without political considerations, where you still receive a wide range of information.

!

No. Fucking. Words

The Daily Mail has a quota that has to be filled and that is misogynist attacks on women. Actually more than half of their articles are about awful women who destroy men's lives, who are bigger criminals than men and responsable for the end of the white society. They want them to stop working and breed children and then follow it with articles that women are forcing men to marry them and have children. It's always women's fault.

They hate Muslims and point out the misogyny and homphobia in Muslim communities yet their right winger politics agree with everything Muslims do.

R24 The Daily Mail does a wide variety of articles about women, benefits chavs, celebs, stuff about the Royals that the BBC wouldn't dare touch (like that Nazi salute QEII and the Queen Mum were practicing), etc. Their content may at times suck, but at least they publish it. Brit media has become highly selective about what it reports and how it reports it.

If it weren't for the Daily Mail, I would have never known that the late Jihadi John had a mum and 5 siblings living in a 600,000 pound council house, that when John's identity become know, they were whisked away to be protected by British security, and that his family had cost the British taxpayer over 400,000 pounds in benefits payments. Also while John was pursuing jihad in Syria, he was pursuing other activities as well, has a son in Syria who is eligible for Brit citizenship.

The Guardian would NEVER have published any of that.

The Guardian's UK edition is slightly less awful than the U.S. edition, but obviously it doesn't have much about US domestic affairs. But even the UK edition is barely worth reading anymore, I don't have time to sift through all the shit to find the few decent articles.

[quote]The Guardian still has the best football coverage. Or I might be thinking of the commenters.

I like the MBMs, which gives you a bit of both. Though I could live without Barry "Fancy a dick pic?" Glendenning.

There's also a "Guardian Rap Comments" Twitter, featuring lots of "get off my lawn" types.

It's never been popular.

As long as they have Jessica Valenti, The Guardian will remain a joke. She's point blank awful.

Jessica Valenti belongs in an institution for the criminally insane.

R29 Thatshust the printed version, the website is very popular.

From their hmm brave editorial yesterday, where they're still advocating a DIPLOMATIC solution to the terrorist attack...

[quote]Which brings us to Syria. The defeat of Isis in Syria will not dissolve the threat of jihadi violence, but it is a necessary step on that road. That will surely entail military action, though that does not mean the west has to do all the fighting. Friday’s recapture from Isis of Sinjar in northern Iraq is instructive. The combination of US warplanes in the sky and Kurdish fighters on the ground proved decisive. For all that, the core of the answer must be diplomatic.

[quote]There are very many insightful commenters who call out the dreck being published ATL

What is "ATL"?

ATL is Above-The-Line, what the staff write. BTL is Below-The-Line, what the commenters write.

Thank you, R35.

The Left has always been unhinged when it comes to the economy and foreign policy.

They have too many writers who write about nothing.

I liked it in the 70s

R12 I was actually referring to the British version. (Which you can chose from outside of the UK)

The comments are somewhat better.

I particularly enjoyed this one:

All the best people live in the country. It's true; at present I reside by the blustery shores of Norfolk's Champagne Coast, where I take many a moody walk and am sometimes done in watercolours. It's frightful to look out and think of those Mongolian hordes gathering on the opposite shore, ready to invade in their ill-made boats, with the sole objective of spoiling things for us; but I suppose it's all because we really are quite the best country in the world, as a dear pal used to say.

I abhor censorship and have been the victim of it myself. Really, when you think about it, running someone down in the press in excruciating detail in response to a completely imagined slight, but without actually naming names, ought to be the fundamental right of any proper person. But no! As that frightful peeress with the unpronounceable name might say, we all have to tread so lightly nowadays for fear of giving offense!

People misunderstand the concept of Democracy. I should think that if an honorable member of Her Majesty's divinely appointed government, and who also happens to be a pal, opines in public that you are a genius and that everyone who doesn't think so is an illiberal bigot, then that explains the concept pretty clearly, really. But, heigh-ho! I suppose they'd call it something like 'cultural relativism', which is a concept proven by any number of right-thinking vicars to be non-existent.

There's nothing like living in a delightfully rambling farmhouse in the Cotswolds and working two, sometimes three hours a day for giving you perspective. I've tried to explain to many an ex-friend that such soft, metropolitan concepts as 'Climate Change' will find no purchase on a swift reading of the thirty-nine articles, but people simply don't want to listen! I suppose it's all that frantic running about that must go on down there in the cities, with people charging about and attending meetings of Liberty and whatnot (and which, by the way, used to be a perfectly good name for a perfectly good shop - and now look! You can't say the name without blushing).

I suppose my great common sense comes from having chosen to be born and brought up in the North, where all the real people come from. Nevertheless, it astonishes me to be frequently called a minor writer turning out penny dreadfuls and turning up my nose at books of actual substance. But really, anything more than 80 or 90 pages is the purest affectation, as entrants for literary prizes I've judged have come to know. I suppose they're also the sorts of people who dash about feigning concern over human rights while having to be torn finger by finger from their copies of Middlemarch (never read it!). Still, as we salt-of-the-earth Northerners like to say, "Ne'er cast a clout 'til May be out"! Or something.

The decline is largely related to the hunt for clicks. What generates the most visits to their website? Not in-depth journalism, but editorials and first person essays usually about race/privileges.

Does anyone know a decent non-pay-walled news site that isn't click bait/video driven, objective, and comprehensive? If so please please please share it!

I read the Daily Mail like a Soviet would read Pravda back in the day. Not so much for the actual articles but to see which slant they are applying to the news of the day.

...Imaging Stalin pouring his curves and flaunting his enviable pins.

That's on Susan Hill in The Guardian BTW.

The Guardian is an excellent newspaper. I'm grateful for their online site ..

This feels like a Russian thread. The Guardian is a great liberal newspaper, I used the FF feature ..

Saw this one this week...if you exercise too much, you'll become a right wing nazi

I blocked almost everyone on this thread!

The Guardian has some brilliant regular columnists like Simon Jenkins and Andrew Rawnsley. UK politics is fascinating at the moment

LOL, R51! I somehow missed this thread when it originally aired, and reading 90% of the posts made me think *I* had taken the crazy pills.

You're right, r49 -- right wingers showed up a day or two ago and are starting all the usual "blacks are stupid and lazy" threads, the "Europe is being overrun by heathens" threads, etc. They're also bumping a lot of old threads too. This is one of them.

The Guardian does great work.

They did investigative stories that many local and US papers skipped over.