Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

viz i am too clever and funny

andrew's Q

Didn't see that twist coming!

i thought this bump would be about the guardian article on rolling stone wanting to "shape the future of culture" with "thought leaders"

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/jan/23/rolling-stone-magazine-culture-council-publication

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertorial

^^^new (and also silly) name for a long-standing (and also dodgy) mainstream practice

ha, kinder

I mean, in the long history of media and commerce the word is pretty new, but the first paragraph in the Wikipedia entry says it's nearly as old as you, mark!

"advertorial" goes back to the 1940s at least, yes (and hence has been a nuisance my entire professional life): the new and silly name for it is "thought council"!

Ah okay sorry!

okay, i browsed that wiki, mark

i see what you're saying, but i will say that this sounds even worse, as the articles will be paywalled

so you're essentially paying a fee to read advertisements

welcome to the 21st c.?

That actually makes it better, because then I won't accidentally read any of it.

i think more sinister than advertorials are those bill and melinda gates foundation pro-eugenics/development issues pieces

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/27/covid-lies-cost-lives-right-clamp-down-misinformation

This is completely nuts.

in what way?

Politically, legally and pragmatically.

The idea of applying 'trading standards' to the 'marketplace of ideas' is clearly an immensely dangerous precedent to attempt to set, irrespective of how time-limited and expert-led Monbiot imagines it to be. It's illegal to lie to customers, it's not illegal to lie to your neighbours and, clearly, it should not be.

There's also a conflation between lying and 'spreading misinformation'. 5G truthers aren't cynically trying to gain a pecuniary advantage, they genuinely believe what they're saying and think that there's a conspiracy to stop them. Starting from a position that they should be fined or jailed for saying what they believe, incorrectly, to be true, would be immensely counterproductive.

Monbiot positions only the most ridiculous COVID misinformation as worthy of criminal sanction (eg. "COVID doesn't exist") but flags half way through that the bigger problem is with mass-media pundits, who he imagines to be exempt from the laws. If we're looking at public utility as the overriding interest, fining @COVIDTRUTHER69 for saying "Bill Gates wants to inject you with a microchip" on Twitter but trying to argue persuasively against Allison Pearson telling 1m+ people every week that COVID is no big deal and more people will die because of delayed cancer treatment, makes absolutely no sense.

" It (the BBC) thrills to the sound of noisy, ill-informed contrarians."

at least he got one thing right! I think the Monbiot got the Rona himself recently. Lol @ the idea that Hitchens can be reasoned with.

Yeah, he's not wrong about the complete lack of responsibility displayed by the BBC and others, and that the format of combative opinion driving news is dangerous.

The Beeb have been inviting idiots to speak their brains on national/local TV and radio for decades, this is hardly a new situation

The Cancer Act is an interesting comparator. You occasionally see homemade flyers promising to cure all cancer ills from some local medicine man but they are (notionally) dealt with by the Advertising Standards Agency. I'm sure there's loads of word-of-mouth and blogs about curing cancer with orange juice or something but I'd imagine they fly just the right side of 'we can't say this will definitely cure you but come and see us to discuss your holistic curated plan'. But otherwise I'd say (based on no data whatsoever) it's been fairly successful at what it set out to do. I wonder if you could even bring any equivalent in now?

SV otm - it's all the misinformation and more subtle dogwhistling, that you couldn't legislate against. Plus this current near-insistence that on any issue you fall into one 'camp' or another and must remain loyal to that camp. Media literacy and critical thinking is more important than ever.

Good points all round, but I definitely wouldn't call this "completely nuts" since it's a position that's been around at least since Walter Lippmann

Have you ever read 1994 Harris being utterly bewildered by Aphex Twin? It's glorious. pic.twitter.com/IE1bk1v4LK

— Mr Demos of Pnyx (@gem_ste) January 30, 2021

an exquisite vintage from the JH archive

He is such a witless tosser and the perfect voice of a sizeable chunk of the Graun's readership

John Harris United Kingdom The Guardian Journalist Writer, united kingdom, author, news, moustache png

https://w7.pngwing.com/pngs/820/137/png-transparent-john-harris-united-kingdom-the-guardian-journalist-writer-united-kingdom-thumbnail.png

He uses "trendy" as a noun in that review, classic sign of a cunt

is that a transparent background or is he back at the mod club?

Everything about him is transparent.

mark s would give him a kicking for using "wondrous" as well!

can't believe it took me until last week to find out he has an Oxford PPE

proper prick?

Can see why he loves proper working class folk and their music then

it's been a very successful grift for nearly 30 years, and he doesn't have a backup grift to fall back on?

This list has lots of people I expected to see, and also plenty I didn't.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_University_of_Oxford_people_with_PPE_degrees

Strong argument for nuking Oxford

Non-UK Politicians is where that really kicks off imo

oh wait hang on it subsequently kicks off even more. Will Self!

oh shit actually all the architects of doom are there. my god

Self may be the least objectionable person on that list

that isn't far off the truth

There are quite a few people I like, Dennis Potter did it too! But the list is about 25% straight-up evil and another 50% are we could say "overachievers" in their professional lives

It's the journalists that really sting. They're all in the same nauseating club as the cunts they're meant to be holding to account

Paul Gambaccini!

less PPE more PPE

I need some PPE to protect me from PPE's

to controps a wee bit on this, the issue with oxford PPE as a degree is that it is (or anyway was) capacious enough to sport a large ambitious subset happy to go all in as a kind of club or gang of backslapping n backwatching n backstabbing wronguns on the rise together

(lol i think 9 ppl in all took the same combined finals as me <-- indie as fvck)

UK weather: 'messy mix' of wintry conditions expected

this article has been hanging around the UK headlines front page for a couple of days now. i tend to have an adverse reaction to weather journalism anyway but the sum total of this seems to be “it’s winter”? for noobs?

It’s Britain. This is what we read.

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2021/feb/06/in-praise-of-eggs-use-them-like-a-broom-to-sweep-everything-together

I tried this but my kitchen floor ended up even filthier than before.

best sticking to playing table tennis with them

it only works if your mates have a spare flat to keep your eggs in

i, for one, lolled

Very brave of Marina to go after her entire audience like this. pic.twitter.com/oJOiRGeZXw

— Shrieking Tinman (@phased_bemused) February 6, 2021

Context aside, idk how well the Guardian approach of hiring people prominent on Twitter and trying to control what they post there will work.

One of the most serious threats to free speech is the silencing of criticism of the government of Israel.

I have now found this out the hard way, having just been fired as a Guardian columnist for sending a tweet about US military aid to Israel https://t.co/EEfLqjY1IM

— Nathan J Robinson (@NathanJRobinson) February 10, 2021