Reading the Guardian

If the letter was not about Suzanne Moore specifically, why did signatories not ask media outlets to clarify that it was not about Moore in the reporting at the time? Surely they must have been horrified it was being interpreted as a campaign directed at her at her only. What did they do to remedy the misunderstanding?

Consider this article in Pink News, about the letter, in March, which even uses Moore's name as a tag for the article. Did they contact PN about it?

The signatories join a growing movement against the paper’s repeated anti-trans coverage, precipitatedby a controversial columnfrom Suzanne Moore.

On Thursday more than 200 feminists wrote toThe Guardianrejecting Moore’s argument that trans rights threaten women, and stating that the views expressed in the paper are not representative of women or the wider public.

This was followed on Friday by another letter signed bymore than 2,500 people,expressing the same sentiment.

www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/03/07/hundreds-guardian-staff-letter-to-editor-pattern-transphobic-content/

I have been reading The Guardian on and off for 30 years, many of them as a subscriber. Like a pp said, I wouldn't even read it for free now. Even my dad who has been a reader since it was The Manchester Guardian no longer buys it.

I cannot understand why anyone would go into journalism (or book publishing) if their response to differing opinions is to call for censorship and cancellation. What kind of a journalist calls for fellow journalists to be cancelled? A shoddy one, for sure. It's really pathetic to see the standards our once great 'fourth estate' have fallen to. I'd be embarrassed to call myself a journalist if I had no respect for journalistic integrity. It's disgraceful.

doubt the same people commenting here about removing someone’s right to voice their opinion would hold the same view.

Bollocks. Everyone who regularly posts on FWR is increasingly aware that free speech includes free speech for the other side, AND free speech for people with the absolute worst of the worst views.

We bloody love sunlight round here, and denying the TWAW lot freedom to speak leaves the general public in the dark.

Nick Cohen has been very supportive of her too.

She had an incredibly cushy role filing one column a week and never having to go into the office and being paid more than most journalists will ever achieve. As an op-ed writer and a supposed champion of free speech she should be open to the notion of people disagreeing with her.

Does this 'zero support' in your peer group have anything to do with jealousy, by any chance? Because it's hard to read your comment about her having a cushy role and not jump to that conclusion tbh. Apparently JK Rowling is very disliked by lots in children's publishing, too. People can really lack self-awareness about the reasons why they maybe don't like someone, unfortunately.

Also I really don't think hers is an issue of not liking people disagreeing with her. That's journalism for you, surely? The letter that was signed was Orwellian. It was bullying, too. How many people have signed similar letters en masse about people like Jeremy Clarkson or Rod Liddle in the past? I mean, can you even imagine it? They have certainly written some really unpalatable stuff over many years and there are many other journalists and readers who very strongly dislike their work. Look at Owen Jones pairing up with Frankie Boyle for a paid event, too. I am staggered if you think this issue is about Suzanne not being able to take people disagreeing with her. It's like witnessing someone standing on the edge of a cliff with an extraordinary sea view, but looking back towards the fields going, 'nothing to see here. Just a few cows and some grass.'

also theconversation.com/uk

The Times and the Economist are good

Hadley

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.

I’m actually not that much of a fan of Suzanne Moore. But the refusal of the Guardian to countenance women saying that they are women and that men are not is terrifying. I hope they go under - they deserve to for their dereliction of journalistic integrity and betrayal of women.

I’m afraid to say that among my peer group of other journalists, all of us who work for various national outlets, there is zero support for her.

That is simply not true. I know very many journalists who support her wholeheartedly.

The Guardian jumped the shark years ago. Their Saturday listings guide painstakingly lists nightclubs as if the grime massive are finding out which underground clubs to smash by buying a fucking newspaper.

So did the letter originate from US Guardian?

The music editor who signed it is Ben Beaumont-Thomas. There was a whole Twitter thing when he was calling for people to support the Guardian as Saturday section closed, and unsurprisingly women told him where to go. His sister relatively recently moved to the Women’s Prize.... so make the connection there.

our journalism should be grounded in the principle that trans women are women

So when someone - Suzanne - deviated from that it led to a call to action. They couldn’t tolerate the idea that the same newspaper could have differing views and be discussed and published from within. All that matters is everyone at the paper chants the same mantra, and you don’t, they’ll try and shut you down.

This is modern journalism at the Guardian. Predicated on a lie and any dissenters pushed out.

Call me old fashioned bu, if a journalist disagrees with something another journalist has written, why don't they write an article laying out their opposition? I find it very hard to believe the Guardian wouldn't have published it.

That list is laughable. Once you go to The Times you won't go back. Their letters page is full of the great and the good, people who are recognised for their decades of contribution to society in the arts, science, politics etc.

I couldn't give a monkeys what a non binary 'West Coast content editor' thinks about any subject whatsoever.

Thinking is allowed.

I just find it quite remarkable that a journalist like yourself can not feel any support for a fellow journalist who received no support - even if she wasn’t fired - from her editor for writing an article on women’s rights, but see no issue with hundreds of IT staff and others complaining about editorial content. It’s not only about censorship, it’s about the entire nature of your job. Do you run all of your copy past Tim the tech guy to make sure he approves before you submit it?

Do you think anyone at the Guardian can publish an article defending women’s rights now, after all this?

namechange, if the letter wasn’t aimed at Suzanne (and it was written, IIRC a couple of weeks after she wrote a particularly contentious column), who else could it have been aimed at? The graun doesn’t really publish any other GC writers.

Also, Do you not find the concept that there are areas of debate too contentious to be mentioned at all just a wee bit chilling?

As an op-ed writer and a supposed champion of free speech she should be open to the notion of people disagreeing with her. The letter wasn’t even about her specifically - she wasn’t named - but a growing trend of articles the signatories took objection to. Surely they are as entitled to their stance as Suzanne is to hers?

Well as a journalist you should be aware that their grievance was not with what she had written, but that it had been published. From the letter:

We are also disappointed in the Guardian’s repeated decision to publish anti-trans views. We are proud to work at a newspaper which supports human rights and gives voice to people underrepresented in the media. But the pattern of publishing transphobic content has interfered with our work and cemented our reputation as a publication hostile to trans rights and trans employees.

Are you saying that because they were exercising their right to free speech themselves, it doesn’t matter that they were calling for someone else to have that right removed?

And can you point out what Moore wrote in the offending article that was ‘anti-trans”?

I worry for you really. You say you’re a journalist but support a group of people who called on their editor to stop publishing someone for writing things they didn’t like. One day it could be you.

People are welcome to disagree with her. But they do that through argument and telling us what exactly she said that was wrong, inaccurate or unfair. Other papers manage this. The Guardian has lost its moral compass.