Reading the Guardian

Tomatoes I barely need both hands to count the number of journalists that can write one article a week from home and achieve a high salary just from that - male and female. They are not representative of what it’s like working in the media, or of life for the vast majority of journalists. Many of them - again, including male columnists - are considered tedious, out of touch and overrated. It’s nothing to do with jealously, but these people don’t speak for the entire media workforce. Plenty of less well known journalists DO also write opinion pieces disagreeing with things, but given they’re not big names, they don’t get as much attention.

If anyone has an FT subscription you might want to comment on an article they have running today about influential women of 2020. They ask for nominations. I suggested JK Rowling for obvious reasons - with some support.

They’ll probably go with Jacinda Ardern who I can’t get too excited about. I’m guessing she’d give away our rights in a trice in return for a five minute bask in lovely Millennial righteousness.

Back on the theme of branded content - if anyone's interested, here's the Guardian Genderqueer Generation series funded by the Open Society Foundations:

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/series/genderqueer-generation

I don't know about anyone else, but the OSF logo is missing on my screen (I think accidentally), and I had to click through to 'About this content' to find details of the sponsorship.

Just read the list of signatories and spotted someone I went to uni with signed it

As an op-ed writer and a supposed champion of free speech she should be open to the notion of people disagreeing with her.

I struggle to understand how a journalist cannot see the difference between people disagreeing openly with her (something she has said she has no problem with) and people sneakily signing a letter which, mentioning her or not, was obviously done with the aim of making her feel targeted - after all, nobody came back to say "Sorry Suzanne, it wasn't actually about you, please come back". And yes, it sounds like you have a problem with people doing well and negotiating better terms than you have.

If a male journalist had this sort of role, it would be seen as younger males as aspirational.

I wasn't aware that other papers were into it too. Does anyone know of any that aren't?

The Telegraph has said it's going to get rid of its branded content:

www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/telegraph-significantly-downsize-branded-content-arm-spark/1686858

I don't know to what extent other papers do it - I think most have commercial agreements of one sort or another but they do it different ways. Some, for example, will have print supplements that are paid for by a sponsor, and clearly labelled as such, but look like editorial. The Mail carries branded content on its website. I think the Times does too, but is scaling back. Not sure about the Indy. I think the Mirror and the Sun probably carry branded content in one form or another.

The irony is that if the letter had said the opposite, that 300+ people felt women were being silenced (and let’s not even get started on the huge public platform Suzanne and other gender critical people have) and they wanted the editorial stance to be gender critical, in response to a column stating trans women are women, I doubt the same people commenting here about removing someone’s right to voice their opinion would hold the same view.

Hmmmm but it’s not reciprocal here, is it? Women don’t get people who are pro-TRA fired. They don’t get told they can’t speak at events and they don’t get smeared as ‘literal Nazis’. A letter signed by 300 women wouldn’t have happened because women and other GC people haven’t got the same ability to air their views as those with the TRA position do.

And the argument that ‘you write for a paper, ergo you are not silenced’ is such a weak one. Silencing is not about forcing someone to be literally silent. It’s about bullying them at work, threatening them with rape and violence on social media, distorting their position and claiming they have said things they haven’t (Suzanne’s crime was to stick up for a female academic who needs fucking bodyguards due to death threats from her students), claiming that their opinions cause people to kill themselves, writing misogynistic shit calling them dried up old witches, targeting anyone who dares associate with them. Free speech is the ability to speak without these horrible consequences. Even in countries without free speech laws, people can still speak. They just get tortured and punished for it. But you can argue they still have a platform. Who cares if Suzanne had an article in the telegraph? That doesn’t take away from the fact that she has been accused of hate speech and has been called every name under the sun because she said women should be allowed to organise and that it’s wrong for a female academic to receive death threats for saying the same. What planet are some of these people living on? It’s genuinely quite scary.

Surely no one listens to Owen Jones? I don't know one person who has anything good to say about him

No but then no one is friends with a bully because they like them. They are friends because they can’t not be.

Moore's Unherd article was excellent.

Surely no one listens to Owen Jones? I don't know one person who has anything good to say about him.

I had been a proud Guardian reader for decades. No longer. We only take it now on a Saturday but I'm actively looking for alternatives. Hadley is pretty much the only highlight left.

But I can't bring myself to buy into any Murdoch-owned newspaper, it will require such a change in my self-identity!

She says in the interview that she had stand up rows with Peter Hitchens and others at the Mail and the. Sat down and chatted to him the next day. News rooms used to be full of arguments and swearing. It was face to face and through the odd snidey remark in columns not through secret sneaky petitions signed by people who then moaned when their names game out. D’oh this was at a media organisation that published the Panama papers. And Moore had won the Orwell prize for her Guardian work a few months earlier.
She says she has no problem with people disagreeing with her - columnists are supposed to be controversial and opinionated. But she was the one doing the heavy lifting when others on staff couldn’t write what they wanted and women couldn’t get commissioned to write about women-centrered feminism.

and let’s not even get started on the huge public platform Suzanne and other gender critical people have
If you can see the platform under the Twitter pile-on.

As an op-ed writer and a supposed champion of free speech she should be open to the notion of people disagreeing with her
Irony Klaxon!!!!!

Speaking of which, it seems unthinkable that a working class girl who left school at 16 would ever grow up to have a Guardian column nowadays.

We’ve definitely gone backwards.

Yes, this problem in the media is exactly the same one that we see in academia. The narrow elitism of so-called liberals. I blame these people squarely for Brexit and the rise of the Right. Their lack of self-awareness and barely-concealed contempt for anyone who does not subscribe to their way of thinking (often working-class people) is astounding.

Paul Embery was on Triggernometry this week promoting his new book, ‘Despised: Why the Modern Left Loathes the Working Class’

It’s on my Xmas list:

www.amazon.co.uk/Despised-Modern-Loathes-Working-Class/dp/1509539980?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

Moore’s Unherd piece touches on similar topics.

As in academia there will be people at the Guardian who want to speak out but are afraid or uncertain about whether to do so. I don’t think many jobs in the media are necessarily cushy and it’s disingenuous to say that as the journalist who posted above would no doubt like to rise up to ‘cushy’ level. Like any job in which there are some prominent figures, your currency can go up as well as down.
One of the guardian’s points in the past was that it let opposing points of view flourish.
Watch the interview on unherd, Suzanne lays out her points better there than in the article

And the fact that all your journo friends agree with you is hardly helping. We are supposed to be hearing a range of views and yet apparently all the journalistic profession thinks the same way. This is a problem. And also clearly not true outside of your bubble.

Yes, this problem in the media is exactly the same one that we see in academia. The narrow elitism of so-called liberals. I blame these people squarely for Brexit and the rise of the Right. Their lack of self-awareness and barely-concealed contempt for anyone who does not subscribe to their way of thinking (often working-class people) is astounding. I avoid Twitter now because it depresses me to see these privileged, bullying ideologues in action. The backlash against this is going to be brutal and we are all going to pay the price.

www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/voices/far-right-feminism-womens-rights-racism-mumsnet-ukip-tommy-robinson-a8793451.html%3famp

www.independent.co.uk/author/gemma-stone

I wasn't aware that other papers were into it too.

Does anyone know of any that aren't?

To quote Wilde - or Lady Bracknell - it "...reminds one of the worst excesses off the French Revolution."

And as history shows, revolutions turn and devour their children. Watch and wait.

Of course it was about Moore. The trans person who resigned 3 weeks after having already left said that they were resigning due to Moore. The idea that it was just a coincidence is gaslighting in the extreme.