To dislike The Guardian almost as much as the Mail at the moment

[fiveacres]

Perhaps I am BU as I rarely read it these days so feel free to tell me I'm wrong.

The Independent was always the newspaper of choice in our house growing up, but when I started buying newspapers myself I read the Guardian and also many books by some of its prominent writers.

I honestly can't work out if it's that I've changed and grown older and shifting into my mid thirties cynicism after the ideals of my youth, but it just seems so incredibly sullen, complaining and despairing yet without presenting any salient solutions. It also appears very patronising against those it seeks to defend.

As a result, I've started reading The Independent.

Has anyone else stopped reading it of late? I'm genuinely interested as to whether this is my state of mind or not - in other words, has it got worse or have I become more jaded? And AIBU to place it in the same category as The Mail?!

The weekend Graun delivered to my door is my luxury. Love it. But I do recognise many of the criticisms levelled here (the 'good to meet you' feature makes me chortle).

I used to work with a very right-wing man who read The Independent. He said he liked to have his thoughts challenged, not confirmed, by his paper.

'I don't get the adulation on here for her at all, it's cringy, yes it's nice she's done alright for herself after a few tough years but the facts are she did go to grammar and she had a nice middle class upbringing like a lot of people, they don't feel the need to deny it happened that way though.'

Adulation? If anything it's the opposite, from what I can see people on MN love an excuse to rip into her.

I'm not her biggest fan, her manner is a bit off-putting but she seems to invoke a weird amount of hate on this site.

Now the Sunday Times is a paper that has changed beyond recognition. Each week's edition is a small forest of crappy supplements.

Comment is not free makes me appreciate the free speech possible on this site. The moderation there is so heavy handed its a disgrace for the paper to refer to itself as a progressive liberal one.

I've tried to post twice there this week and am relegated to persona non grata - my comments have either been deleted or are stuck in a terminal 'awaiting moderation'. They didn't like me disagreeing with Saeeda Warsi's thread on muslims.

I think I've now been banned permanently for pointing out their hypocrisy on stopping me (an ex-muslim) from commenting and running articles this week lamenting on the difficulties ex-muslims face and the silencing of Bangladeshi free thinkers (by murderous Islamists).

The paper is stuck in a twisted sense of right versus wrong and continues to bang an anti-Western drum while giving a free pass to every Islamofascist nutter.

Hadn't heard of Jack Monroe either but googling her she's more Observer than Guardian, one paper from south of the border is enough at the weekend and looks like she's just more fecking recipes.
1 decent recipe per paper is plenty, we're supposed to be rising above housewifyness.

Adulation? If anything it's the opposite, from what I can see people on MN love an excuse to rip into her.

Oh come on, despite the recent revisionism that is currently going on here recently, MN is a proud left leaning Guardian reading site that would pull up any dross reported in the Guardian as fact without any sense of irony.

Nah. I've seen several Jack Monroe threads that were pretty scathing towards her.

I went off the Guardian when, in the very same section (think it was g2) they ran:

A) a piece asking how much financial help do you give your teenage children with people saying they paid for mobile phones and cars and etc

B) a piece about whether teenagers in care should be able to stay until age 18 (this was a while ago now)

And it was just shit, the juxtaposition of it.

The scathing ones are more recent, when she was new on the block the gushing over her was unreal. There were a few cynics about, but the general consensus for a while was that she was "fabulous", and "amazing" etc. advance search it, it's all there.

Then as her profile grew she shook off her pretend working class hero shackles, bitched about David Cameron on Twitter and moved into a fancy house in North London or thereabouts with her rich girlfriend, and the tide turned.

I can see why people liked her initially, she was something fresh and people felt they could relate to her. The problem for someone like Monroe though is that once you've got a bit of a celebrity and a bit of cash and are no longer the single mum scraping by on a £20 shopping budget a week you've lost your unique selling point (to use an awful phrase) and leave yourself open to being accused of being out of touch.

That's specific to Jack Monroe though, there is element that even disagreeing with her on a basic level of some of her finer points is automatically dismissed as being right wing because she is under the guardian umbrella.

Put a Toynbee or Abbott article in any right leaning paper and this place would tear them to shreds.

It's revisionism and hypocrisy , people in this thread citing the snowden leaks as a form of journalistic integrity and moral outrage whilst ignoring the recent reintroduction of the snoopers charter is a recent one.

SaltedPeanuts the Observer is The Guarniad.

I like their website and I especially like the comments section. The problem pages are brilliant. I am very easily entertained and not a left wing intellectual so can't get upset about their condescension to the lower classes.

Left Foot Forward is a good news site for those who want some good left-of-center analysis without the Graun's tedious obsessions and hypocrisies.

I too get a bit fed up with the knee-jerk "OMG ISLAMOPHOBIA" stuff.

YABU to put it into the same category as the Mail. It is not celeb-obsessed or women-shaming.

What's all the hysteria on this thread about someone having a grammar school education? Is that a bad thing now?

I'm not with the Guardian politically but in the past they have had quality journalism and good sport and business sections. But I went right off them recently when that idiot George Monbiyot (sp?) was spouting loads of bollocks about the flooding in Somerset which the Guardian (and other media) swallowed whole. Also a few years ago they employed the guy (whose name I forgot) who slagged off Dubai (where I was then living) but was then proved to be a a plagarist and a liar.

Hysteria?

I think the overriding negativity on the Mail, it's dislike for everything and everyone who doesn't fit into the narrow category is mirrored in the Guardian. It isn't as overt but that doesn't mean it isn't there. There is absolutely a note of 'we notice this because we are so intelligent; if you don't notice/disagree with it it is because you lack our intelligence.' Smug and irritating. Like the Mail

I grew up on the Guardian and still read it over any other paper.

I totally get the points made above, and sometimes I love to hate the more condescending content, or just to laugh at it.

But in general, I have no idea what most people expect middle class people to do. I'm middle class and earn a good salary, so my own life is very naice. Should I just go 'fuck you, plebs!' to those who didn't have my luck?

Or should I be aware that others don't live like I do, and their kids aren't as lucky as mine, and give a shit about it?

It seems unfair to say that Guardian readers are just as bad a Mail readers because they care about social issues despite being generally well off. Would you rather they were just out for themselves?

I'm with MorrisZapp. I don't like this 'plague on both your houses' stuff.

Also I think newspapers generally are in a tough position, because in this digital age people expect tons of content, and they expect it to be free. But how does really great journalism happen if no-one is paying? Someone upthread criticised the Guardian for taking advertising from oil companies at the same time as campaigning against fossil fuels. But how are they supposed to survive if no one is paying to read the content?

As it happens, I think the Guardian is one of the the very few papers now that has any kind of reporting of what is happening in the rest of the world. For that I can forgive it some of the more tedious and irritating self-obsessed London-bubble stuff (Zoe Williams, I'm looking at you).

As serious newspapers go, the Financial Times is probably the best one left, with the best reporting and the most informed comment. Bu that's too hardcore for me. I do like fashion -- even if I never buy any of it.

Not a newspaper, but Private Eye is a good source of important stories you won't read elsewhere.

For example, the "recent" Post Office scandal about the shonky computer system, has been followed by PE for the past 5 years.

For world news reporting I was pleasantly surprised by the economist. It has a Tory slant to it and supported the Tories in the recent election and the no campaign in the Scottish independence one but does cover world activities very thoroughly and is quite liberal in many ways. I ended up subscribing as it was hard to find in local shops.

The financial times weekend version makes me feel very communist and want to get all these people with more money than sense overthrown...

The FT (not the weekend "how to spend it" nonsense!)is a good (occasional) read.

US papers always seem more meaty.

"the Guardian is full of Oxbridge educated daddy-funded interns
I do wonder how Jack Monro and Owen Jones parents managed this, along with Charlie Brooker, Decca Aitkinhead et al.
Some went to Oxbridge, some didn't. None are 'daddy-funded interns'."

Sorry, the Guardian is notorious for being a convey belt of Oxbridge graduate / public school educated journalists. It has also been heavily criticised for its heavy use of unpaid interns in the past, needless to say the only young people who can afford to be an unpaid intern are going to be those from wealthy backgrounds. It all seemed a bit hypocritical while the very same paper is attacking the use of zero hour contracts.

Just for the record......

Martin Kettle (Associate Editor) Balliol College, Oxford
George Monbiot (Columnist) Brasenose College, Oxford
Jonathan Freedland (Columnist), Wadham College, Oxford
Zoe Williams (Columnist), Hertford College, Oxford
Jane Martinson (Womens Editor), [College not clear], Cambridge
Peter Preston (Columnist and former-Editor), St Johns College, Oxford
Alan Rusbridger (Former Editor-in-chief), Magdalene College, Cambridge
Janine Gibson (Editor-in-chief, Guardian US), St Johns College, Oxford
Seumas Milne (Associate Editor and Columnist), Balliol College, Oxford
Rowena Davis, (Politics and social affairs journalist), Balliol College, Oxford
Hadley Freeman (Columnist and features writer), St Annes College, Oxford
Paul Lewis (Special Projects Editor), Kings College, Cambridge
Madeleine Bunting (Columnist and Associate Editor), Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
Jackie Ashley (Columnist and political interviewer), St Annes College, Oxford
Polly Toynbee (Columnist), St Annes College, Oxford

Former Editor Alan Rusbridger (Cranleigh);
Political editor Patrick Wintour (Westminster);
Leader writer Madeleine Bunting (Queen Marys, Yorkshire);
Policy editor Jonathan Freedland (University College School);
Columnist Polly Toynbee (Badminton);
Executive editor Ian Katz (University College School);
Security affairs editor Richard Norton Taylor (Kings School, Canterbury);
Arts editor-in-chief Clare Margetson (Marlborough College);
Literary editor Clare Armitstead (Bedales);
Public services editor David Brindle (Bablake);
City editor Julia Finch (Kings High, Warwick).;
Environment editor John Vidal (St Bees);
Fashion editor Jess Cartner-Morley (City of london School for Girls);
G3 editor Janine Gibson (Walthamstow Hall);
Northern editor Martin Wainwright (Shreswbury);
Industrial editor David Gow (St Peters, York).

Looks to me like those journos must be pretty bright then? I didn't go to Oxbridge (not clever enough) but I am uni educated. I'd hate to think that would go against me in any way.

The people who want news (or recipes) to be given to them by poor people are missing the point. If those writers/ bloggers/ cooks achieve success (by being down to earth, say) then inevitably they will be paid accordingly and then not be poor any more.

There's no way round this.