to be glad that the Guardian is making enormous losses

[longfingernails]

www.pressgazette.co.uk/guardian-losses-reported-to-have-escalated-by-a-further-10m-to-68-7m-for-the-last-financial-year/

Great stuff. Their chatterati condescension, Islington moral vacuum and politically correct echo chamber has been a malignant blot upon our society for decades.

Let it wither upon the Viner.

CuboidalSlipshoddy Thanks!

We don't just want swing voters' votes, we first want them to apologise. And people won't do that.

Labour doesn't currently want swing voters' votes.

They don't even want centre Left and soft Left voters' votes, as apparently everybody who holds centre Left or soft Left "mainstream" views must be a Blairite or red Tory who should just go and join the Tories.

And to be a pure Labour voter you apparently must be working class and not earn very much, too.

Gwynfluff ironically, the Telegraph reported Cologne along with the DM and allowed comments, which the Cowardian Guardian have shut down on the topics on immigration and Islam as they simply didn't like the views expressed.

The Guardian eventually acknowledged Cologne, minimising it to 30 women and I believe also reported one hilarious theory that it was the Far Right what done it just to stir trouble (although that might have been the 10-minute disgrace that was the Women's Hour 'report.' The one that also featured a Pop Concert Expert who stated this sort of thing is always happening, especially in Canada. And it's all men).

None of them, to my knowledge mentioned Tarryush Gamea, despite a commendable dedication to covering every jot and tittle of the Arab Spring.

Cuboidal - really good contributions on this thread - I agree with a lot of what you're saying.

Personally both my hearts are in my elbows.

And to be a pure Labour voter you apparently must be working class and not earn very much, too.

Oh, that's the party's Webbist tendency, which loves rough-hewn working class men who can tend their gardens and hand-make their furniture. The actual members themselves, of course, are disproportionately likely to be ABC1 and/or university educated and/or in professional/managerial employment, not only as compared to Labour voters, but as compared to the population at a whole. I believe I'm right in saying that 50% of the Labour Party's membership have a degree, which given its age profile is sharply slanted towards the over fifties (when university takeup was at most 14%) is rather telling.

Seems to have the figures at 766 complaints from 838 people?

I believe I'm right in saying that 50% of the Labour Party's membership have a degree, which given its age profile is sharply slanted towards the over fifties (when university takeup was at most 14%) is rather telling.

But presumably the demographics have changed since Corbyn? Although the breakdown of the new members since June 23 is not yet known, I would think a majority are pro-Corbyn and don't (mostly) come from this demographic.

Agree cuboidal - I consider myself left wing on most issues but I'm pretty revolted by the attitude that tories are inherently evil. The left needs to stop the ad hominem attacks on those they don't agree with. If you ( not you personally, the generic you) can't make your point by reasoned debate and need to resort to attacks on your opponent then maybe your point isn't as strong as you think it is....
I'd much rather have seen the guardian revert to its old standards than see it fold.

A slight tangent, but I'm reading a book called 'the persuaders' at the moment which explores this issue. It's premise is that we make very few of our desicions as a result of reasoned argument and most on gut feeling/ tribal lines. The book looks at how propaganda, advertising, media and governments all exploit this. Very good read.

I also quote a previous poster in full, though annoyingly it doesn't copy and paste the links:
" Cologne inquiry into 'coordinated' New Year's Eve sex attacks: Scores of women say they were sexually assaulted and mugged by groups of men largely of Arab and north African appearance 5 Jan 2016

'I’ve never experienced anything like that': Cologne in deep shock over attacks: As police reveal that 18 of the 31 New Year’s Eve suspects were asylum seekers, the far-right is using the fear to fuel its anti-immigrant campaign 8 Jan 2016

The left must admit the truth about the assaults on women in Cologne 9 Jan 2016

And an invitation for people to publicly bear witness: Cologne attacks: how have you been affected? Do you live in Cologne or were you there over the New Year period? If so, we’d like you to share your experiences with us 8 Jan 2016

I can see, as i have said before, that this could be a timing issue, and someone else has suggested that in terms of 'page placement' there were op-ed pieces around these that may have changed their tone, but the oft-quoted figure of 'the Guardian said only 30 people' just doesn't seem to stack up when the material is looked back on?

Yes, teacher. Early Guardian reports talk about "scores of victims", with the story you link giving figures apparently from the prosecutor's office:
"Almost three weeks after the incident a total of 838 people have filed criminal complaints, including 497 women alleging sexual assault. Some of the victims have jointly filed a single complaint, so that the number of alleged crimes stands at 766, of which 381 are sexual offences, including three rapes."

So not "feminist-lite opinion pieces" or "minimising it to 30 women".

(That particular story is from 18 Jan, about a specific arrest.)

x-posted!

teacher - I distinctly remember, a month after the attacks, the Guardian was still reporting the numbers of victims as approx 100, while other outlets (the New York Times, the Frankfurt Algemeiner) were putting the numbers at closer to 1000. It wasn't just being slow to respond in the first few days (and actually I'm partially on their side on this one - "they're raping our women" is one of the oldest tropes in racist propaganda, so it was massively, massively important to fact check before running the story), it was the fact that a month later their figures were out by a factor of 10. That's, in my books, a lie of omission.

I agree with much of what cuboidal says, not just with the vilification of the Tories, but also with the "pure" labour voter thing. Though I'd disagree that this means working class - if you look at, say, their reporting of Brexit, they went into a paroxysm of grief and blame more appropriate to social media like Tumblr than a serious newspaper (incidentally I totally understand the need on social media for people to engage in expressions of shock and alarm - just that's not what I read a supposedly quality newspaper for). There was no attempt to analyse the result in any serious way, they just seemed to buy into the "17.4 million people are racist and/or stupid" theory - which, of course, if one looks at the breakdown of which areas voted which way, includes a hell of a lot of labour heartlands and working class areas. So I don't get the impression that the Guardian is feeling particularly well disposed towards the traditional working class labour voter these days, because, dammit, you remove the property restrictions on voting and then the buggers don't even vote the right way. (Sarcasm alert, in case anyone missed that). This is quite independent of whether or not one thinks Brexit is a complete disaster or a brave blow for freedom - either way, serious analysis does not start from the position that only racist thickos voted that way, and that the country is now doomed to be at the mercy of racist thickos from hereon in.

Having said that, I really do not want to see the Guardian go under. We need a left wing paper - I just dearly wish it was a better one.

BTW, I'm not suggesting there weren't offensive op-ed pieces - I get The Rage at enough op-eds in the Graun and elsewhere, so often avoid them and wouldn't expect to have picked up the very offensive one(s?) people are referring to.

But it's clearly not the case that the Guardian didn't report the factual stuff.

I didn't say that the Guardian thinks all Labour voters should be working class and low-waged (the opposite is clearly the case).

I said that this is the impression given by the Labour party itself right now, or at least by its pro-Corbyn factions on social media.

The Guardian is clearly not in line with the Labour leadership and their followers.

The first link Ii linked to was Jan 18th, the others were about 10 days earlier. Can you find the relevant article, because it does seem odd that they should be saying 100 when they themselves had already said 838 IYSWIM?

As I say, I have the benefit of search history hindsight, and it may well not have read like that in context at the time. But if it is the only case, and actually the evidence is mixed - as in, the articles I and others have found don't say what the article you remember said - does this make the paper 'rotten to the core'?

I am not, btw, a 'Guardian supporter' - though I do believe that if there are no broadsheet papers that represent anything other than the right wing, our democracy is poorer. I'm just trying to identify what is so heinous about their Cologne reporting, because with the benefit of hindsight they appear to have reported the facts with accuracy and references?

teacher, it's in the first of the Cologne threads I believe. I think it was an online article which was subsequently corrected.

It took them about a week to report it at all.

It was a fucking disgrace and I, a feminist and lifetime Guardian reader, now subscribe to the telegraph,

Many posters wrote to complain about the appalling article which may also have been the shocker that implied girls in short skirts carrying iPhones were just bound to upset these poor men.

Unfortunately, I have only google to aid me, and it certainly doesn't throw up the full list of articles. I may have got the 100 figure from the notorious Gaby Hinsliff article
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/08/cologne-attacks-hard-questions-new-years-eve
but my recollection (I do not keep my search history indefinitely) was that the figure was still being quoted as 100. I've got about 12 pages into a google search of guardian cologne attacks - I don't think there's anything like the number of articles listed in that search as were actually published in real time, but I'm not quite sure how to refine my search.

But I do remember being very strongly struck by the factor of 10 discrepancy.

The first of the Cologne threads is a good place to start. I believe a few of the nastier articles in the Guardian were removed as the truth about what happened began to emerge. But one of the major things you won't see on the Guardian is that they suppressed the story for as long as they could really heavy handedly. No mention of Cologne at all was allowed on the site even in the comments and was immediately deleted. People even began posting facetious comments about buying their husbands cologne for Christmas and they all went. The level of censorship was quite frightening.

And it was being reported elsewhere by reputable sources and grudgingly admitted by the police at that point.

I'm not sure how useful Googling articles is when they can be removed or edited after the event.

I know that at one point I was reduced to reading very right wing press (something I object to) just to get some actual news.

I agree with the care about "they're raping our women" tropes. However, interviewing women, and believing them, might be a start. Reporting what women were saying, and the depressing and misogynist German sexual assault laws, would have been useful.

I agree about the difficulty of verifying what was said online after the event.

I am just interested in the process by which a single badly-reported story has meant that some people are now willing to see the newspaper that contained it disappear.

Have no rival papers ever reported a story inaccurately?

As I said, it was just confirmation of a wider misogynist issue at the Guardian.

a single badly-reported story has meant that some people are now willing to see the newspaper that contained it disappear

It is symptomatic of a contemptuous and rigid insistence on conformity of ideology, even down to disallowing comments on areas they fear may be 'contentious.'

It is no longer a respected, editorially independent newspaper, in my opinion. I believe Cologne destroyed any integrity it had, and showed the true mysoginistic colours of what is now an apologists' rag.

Thanks for the link, Matilda.

I read the Guardian ahead of the other English based papers but don't read any paper that regularly and often get the herald or Sunday herald.
I don't understand why the Guardian ignores Scotland so much when there are so many left of centre people here. Scottish politics is usually only covered when it affects England.
I also find it too one sided and preachy. I'm left of centre libertarian but with the brexit debate I wont to read both sides of the debate. The EU had a lot wrong with it that was glossed over in the Guardian and the guardian would never admit that whilst immigrants may be good for the economy overall by the taxes paid in the short term it puts a strain on infrastructure like GP surgeries and schools to suddenly have a large influx of people many of whom don't speak English.
The sports pages are also rubbish apart from their cycling coverage. They are football obsessed like the other papers. many of my lefty friends do minority sports like kayaking, triathlons, orienteering, mountain biking. It would be nice to see a sports section in a paper reflecting them not just an occasional novelty feature.