JK Rowling featured in Guardian person of the year

What will 2022 bring?

It brings a review by Lucy Mangan of the Harry Potter reunion programme. And it makes me wonder if Mangan is a tiny weeny bit Terfy.

www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/jan/01/harry-potter-20th-anniversary-return-to-hogwarts-review-perilously-close-to-emetic

Don't be dispirited, @saraclara . 2021 was the year that the Guardian said

many readers also nominated the author JK Rowling [as their Person of the Year]

and quoted one of their readers:

She is very inspiring for women and is supportive of women’s rights

It's also the year that the CEO of Stonewall when asked if JKR is transphobic said "no idea" and in the same interview (on Woman's Hour) said:

So, gender critical beliefs […] have always been protected under the Equality Act and it’s absolutely possible for people to hold gender critical beliefs without expressing them in a way that’s harmful to trans people.

What will 2022 bring?

@saraclara Please carry on! Truth is incredibly important, whichever 'side' it 'serves'.

[quote DadDadDad]@saraclara - you're doing sterling work explaining this.

I'm afraid the false idea that JKR was winning a vote and the Guardian shut down the poll has got too much traction now![/quote]
I should give up really! But I hate fake news, and it's almost worse when it comes from people who have the same opinions as me. I want to think that 'our side' is better than that. But no. People of all opinions will fictionalise anything to suit their agenda, apparently. It's really dispiriting.

@saraclara - you're doing sterling work explaining this.

I'm afraid the false idea that JKR was winning a vote and the Guardian shut down the poll has got too much traction now!

Once again. They didn't ask for votes. They asked for individual opinions. The regular Tell Us section is never about data or tallying. It's about people telling their experiences or offering their opinion. There is never a 'here's how many people said...' outcome.

There's absolutely nothing stopping posters going to the 'Tell us' section of the Guardian to see for themselves how the segment works, rather than jumping to invalid conclusions or simply making up conspiracy theories.

Again, I'm a JKR fan, so have no agenda here other than to try to point people towards the facts, rather than some of the rubbish that's been spouted both here and on Twitter.

So they haven't said who got the most votes...?

[quote CandidaAlbicans2]@saraclara, if the Guardian wasn't taking a tally of opinions (like votes) how did it know which people to feature in the article? I'm wondering what the criteria was.[/quote]
The same as any of their 'Tell Us' round ups I assume. They read through the comments sent to them and write an article based on some of them. It actually would have been really easy for them to leave JKR out if they'd wanted to, because it's simply a public comment/opinion section with no rules or criteria involved. But they didn't.

@CandidaAlbicans2 - to answer your question, maybe the journalists who work on the "Tell us" format did their usual process of browsing the submissions, and picking out the ones in their judgement would make an article with enough variety to interest their readers (or more cynically, enough controversy to get people clicking and discussing - which seems to have worked!)

@saraclara, if the Guardian wasn't taking a tally of opinions (like votes) how did it know which people to feature in the article? I'm wondering what the criteria was.

If you actually read the Guardian you'd have seen it there. Here's today's Tell Us question:
www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/30/tell-us-have-you-changed-your-mind-on-getting-vaccinated-against-covid?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

The Guardian does not run a 'person of the year' award, and never has. It didn't ask for votes, it asked for opinions. I'm interested to know how you think that it is "perfectly clear" that the Guardian did what you think it did, when it very clearly (to anyone who reads The Guardian) that it didn't.

The gaslighting accusation is absolutely ridiculous. The entire thing was there for us to see, from the moment they put the question up.

It was perfectly clear that that JKR by far had the most votes and that the Guardian hurriedly changed the format when they realised.

@AliceThorpe - it's not perfectly clear and I doubt what you are saying is true. I'd be quite happy to see JKR named Person of the Year, and I am sure Guardian were a bit surprised to see how many readers gave her name, but it was NEVER a poll format, so it's impossible to say anyone had the most votes. Guardian run these "Tell us" articles all the time, and they don't ask for votes, they ask for readers to write a sentence or a paragraph, then they might edit them into an article where they quote some of the submissions.

It's good to see that the many responses on Twitter encouraged enough people to submit JKR's name on the Guardian's webpage that they couldn't ignore it. But responses on Twitter were not votes either, and there is no evidence that there was ever a plan to announce a "winner".

The kids don’t care about actually people in actual need.

Ranboo raised $325,000 for Charity:Water in August (a charity that provides clean water in developing countries), but it was only his $100,000 donation to The Trevor Project that gets a mention? Interesting.

This spoof Guardian article is funny 😆

It was perfectly clear that that JKR by far had the most votes and that the Guardian hurriedly changed the format when they realised.

Trying to bury her win by making it an article about some of the many people doing good works (and some random youtuber) is just another hamfisted and transparent act of misogyny.

Let's not pretend that there is anything good about this. The Guardian dug a hole in which they could not pretend the woman they have consistently lied about had won and they put up an absurd smokescreen so they can gaslight readers into pretending the hole didnt exist.

Has anyone told Owen Jones?

I think I'd enjoy the YouTuber LOJ's reaction too

Am curious as to how this has gone down in the US Guardian office.

Its good news. People are feeling able to speak up...slowly.

Interesting to note they did so with more grace than I expected
He's a TRA, he was included to "balance" the inclusion of JK Rowling.

One of my interests is the visual display of quantitative information. Published data that is really hard to comprehend is sometimes due to incompetence with statistics, graphing and tables. BUT as in this case the omission of the number of entries for each submission person is a deliberate choice. The paper received its submissions online, lending itself to a straight tabulation of how many unique entries were received for each. Sure they published a non-hierarchical grid that also served to highlight some deserving people working in relative obscurity. Excluding the top ten by number of entries received is to hide something, and we can speculate as to what they are hiding.

Yay- glad that JKR is there and she was written about at the beginning.

Yes, some very interesting people on there. Great for Ranboo for his profile to be increased. The only thing I will say about the write up is that "Anonymous, Australia" writes like a journalist rather than a member of the public who genuinely feels passionate about the work that their nominations are doing. The contrast is striking.

Also, whoever Ranboo is, they clearly think he was picked because he represents a side of this debate.

What happened was that when people on Twitter started encouraging everyone to nominate JKR, the trans activists picked Ranboo as their alternative person to nominate - there being no obvious trans figurehead, so it was best if they could all focus on one person rather than split the vote.

Thing is, most Guardian readers won't have heard of Ranboo. I certainly hadn't. It's just an attempt to manipulate the vote (or what people thought was a vote). Admittedly you could say the JKR nominations fell into the same category, except loads of us genuinely admire JKR and for us she really is our person of the year. She's an exceptional woman.

I doubt many grownups had heard of Ranboo. The comment by the nominee included a lot more explanation about who he was than the other entries, most of whom needed no introduction at all.