The Guardian: I'm boycotting it

Stopped reading the guardian a few months back, after many years . I can honestly say, i dont miss it in my life.
I like free news sources but i am seriously thinking of paying for timesonline, the guardian itself has caused me to #peakguardian.

The Spectator has plenty I disagree with, some vigorously. But I like the fact it has a range of views, and it will deliberately post contradictory arguments.

It's the lack of critical thinking or ANY alternative viewpoint that bothers me about the Guardian.

Taking a certain editorial view I disagree with is one thing. But when it ran a 'debate' about AWS with not one of the four contributors even considering whether a woman and trans identifying male might actually not be exactly the same thing, I gave up.

I've stopped reading it many months ago, Jones completely ruined it for me, the articles from others that followed that I've seen mentioned on Mumsnet have made me even surer. It's very sad for a liberal paper to support such a misogynistic and authoritarian movement.

Worth checking their site for details can't 100% remember the deal but it did sound a bit vague.

Maybe they have to record size of donations and declare any source of a certain size?

That shouldn't be allowed, imo. If a news organization is going to take sponsorship in return for covering issues what they're essentially doing is producing advertorials, and those should be clearly labelled as such.

I wonder if the Guardian is getting some funding from the trans lobby or the sex trade industry.

They say they receive sponsorship for covering certain issues which they don't always declare on the copy. Plus they are making a few million from online donations/begging which has no public accountability or transparency at all as far as I can see.

I find it quite juvenile - obvious arguments, one track politics, glaring bias, columnists (Eeeek), missing big points in stories (for a reason). It's like listening to a gobby teenager or 'social media warrior activist'.

Yes dear. Why don't you have a nice glass of milk and a lie down?

The Guardian began morphing into a vacuous, smug, decadently complacent comment-fest a long while ago, relying on self righteously writing about right wing folk devils. I blame political tribalism. Even when Labour were In government the Guardian would never challenge the party line on women’s issues.

It like losing an old friend, it was our family newspaper for decades. But the Guardian really has changed, CIF comment section is a cesspit and literally anyone and their dog can be commissioned to write a CIF article. I think that crowdsourced vibe is what brought the newspaper itself into trouble as it got less newsy and more commenty and CIF-like in content.
But you can’t have a comment-led site without rules and judicious moderation. the Guardian mods let awful things stand below the line and yet they censor the views of feminists. And anyone who points out biology.

I used to like the Guardian’s long read as the exception that proved the rule but then even that went a bit shit eg like this article about Everyone We Know’s Dilemma www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/20/bugaboo-luxury-pram-baby-buggy-stroller-parenting ]] about whether or not to buy a buggy that costs £1000? I mean, really. In the Guardian.

The fact it has under reported or refused to report mass sexual abuse of women in British towns, and of women in Europe at public events and festivals, absolutely disgusts me. The uncritical reporting and censoring around the TRA stuff is the logical conclusion.

I’ll read the Times, FT, or the Daily Mirror. Cant stomach the Mail. I do rely on the BBC broadcast news a lot though, though I notice their news website is getting increasingly chatty and think piecey.
Young people (just the ones I know) are getting their news through completely different places like Buzzfeed medium and the Verge and Vice and we should be looking at those too for a mix of coverage.

Yes, Guardian boycott here, too, for all the reasons given.

And looking to pay subs (actual money) to other news sources - but only those that support women.

@AfricanPlume only the usual, 12 weeks for £12, & thereafter it's £34.50 for 3 months.

It's the same whether you get print, digital or both which seems a bit silly. We have a stack of mags at least a foot tall now & never read them (I must switch to digital only to save some trees)

www.spectator.co.uk/subscription/?link=subscribeppcprom=A241C

I stopped reading it when they started to evangelise about "sex work"

Does anyone know any good deals/offers for a Spectator subscription?

I'm going to try The Spectator as they have been so supportive in at least three articles and I'm grateful for that. That and Radio 4 should be enough!

I've ranted complained about the Guardian a lot here recently. I actually don't think the readers/commenters are the problem, it's The Guardian itself, especially with trans issues. Take a look at this recent article:

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/08/understand-solar-system-gender-ignorant-transgender

Look at the comments and which have the most recommends. It was really good to see. Clearly readers have peaked, but that comment section is typical of the Guardian's current policy. Close it the second it's not going the way it should. They didn't even have comments on Hadley's article. They stifle debate and censor, and I can't stand the hypocrisy. I said recently I had a comment removed that criticised a line in an article for being anti-abortion. I think that's when I "peak-Guardianed".

I keep wanting to boycott and I think I am one of the majority of readers who see they're wrong on so many issues, but I do enjoy it when they get hauled over the coals in the comments.

YY Olenna. I stopped reading it regularly after Cologne, and was incensed by the coverage. The social engineering in the comments on trans issues (back when they originally allowed them) with not even mildly gender critical comments being allowed to stand while misogyny always seemed to get a free pass (CIF is full of angry little MRAs) was the nail in the coffin.

It's an interesting question about murdoch.

I have just stopped reading The Guardian and will be getting a subscription to The Times.

As I've said elsewhere - The Guardian cannot die a horrible flaming fiery financial death soon enough. Their circulation figure keep dropping so it's only a matter of time that they go to paywall or they close shop.

Yeah the Guardian is dead to me too! Without meaning to sound like The Donald: it seems a bit too full of fake news.

Used to buy the guardian on a Saturday, now buy the Independent or Times.

I thought it was just me!

Stopped getting the guardian on. Saturday three weeks ago & have not missed it. Really sad there is nothing left wing out there anymore (including political parties)

Back then, a lot of posters were very anti Murdoch papers like the Times, and more supportive of the Guardian. I wonder if the Guardian has changed - or has MN?

I think the Guardian has changed, MN has changed, and the world has changed

Merch Thanks for this thread. I'm in a similar position. Have been pondering a punt on The Times for a while.

I used to buy the Graun every Saturday without fail. 15 years.

I stopped buying about 12 months ago. Read online for a while but I gave up completely at Christmas - exceptions are I usually check for Rhik Samadder's kitchen gadget column on a Wednesday and I still have a thing for him and a couple of favourite columnists.

Although this thread has made me realise I haven't even been doing that for a few months.

23 year old me is looking over my shoulder as I write and screaming 'The fucking Times! What the actual...'

Yes, Oleannas - I get the rage over their (non) coverage of Cologne even now.

They maintained a news blackout for getting on for a week. Then they systematically underestimated the number of attacks by a factor of between 5 and 10 relative to other sources (reputable sources - I checked out the Frankfurter Allgemeine, Die Zeitung, New York Times, Washington Post). Then they commissioned one of their female columnists to write one of the shittiest pieces of victim blaming I've ever seen, basically saying "well, if western women will go around flaunting their mobile phones, what do they expect?"

Now I totally get the need for caution and careful reporting. "They [unspecified racial other ] are over here raping our women" is one of the oldest tropes in wartime and peacetime propaganda. So it's quite easy for reports of this sort of thing to have a lot to do with racism, so you have to fact-check. And one of the reasons it's such a prevalent trope is because it's very often true - except that of course "they are raping our women" should be supplemented with "and what's more when the circs are reversed, we rape their women" (see behaviour of UN peacekeeping troops in Bosnia and countless other countries, for instance). Add to that the fact that as Julie Bindel once wrote in an excoriating article, rape might as well be legal given the chances are next to zero of you managing to report, get it through the police and CPS gatekeeping without it being "no-crimed", then get a conviction, given that men can apparently have sex with paralytically drunk women they've never even spoken to, accidentally fall penis first into women's vaginas (again drunk and unconscious women), leave women bleeding from their vaginas and in tears, and apparently juries still think the men in question could have reasonable belief in the woman's consent. So yes, rape is commonplace, carried out by men of all colours, nationalities and religions, frequently used as a weapon of war, or as a means of one male group sending a statement to another male group via "violating their women...", and rarely punished, if at all.

None of this changes the fact that what happened in Cologne was horrific, and should have been reported accurately, and that a decent follow-up op-ed piece would have discussed Taharrush Gamea as a form of what anthropologists call "corrective rape" (in this case applied to women who have the temerity to step into public spaces), as something which happens in Middle Eastern culture (and which many people in the Middle East are fighting against), and which up until the events of Cologne had not been seen in most of western Europe since WWII (this sort of rape as a weapon of war was horrifyingly widely used during the Balkan genocide).

Lapdance I also still get a Saturday Guardian though I like Janice Turner's work in the Times a lot. It's true though that we all need to read news widely. Most news sources have at least something to recommend them - the Mail is abhorrent in many ways but did pursue the killers of Stephen Lawrence, for example.

I am somewhat sceptical about the posters saying they don't read any (mainstream) news at all as they inform themselves from other sources, but won't say what they are. As a pp said, few people have the time to do that much research themselves. Come on folks, share where you go! Or we'll be left suspecting it's The Canary or Breitbart or something...