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.

Actual figures on readership from 2016 with change relative to the previous year:

Online -

MailOnline 14,383,578 (-2.55%)
theguardian.com 8,872,392 (1.23%)
Telegraph 4,328,890 (-6.13%)
Mirror Group Nationals 4,195,021 (-13.01%)
The Independent 2,921,273 (-12.31%)
The Sun 2,046,792 (7.16%)
Metro 1,188,978 (-16.16%)
express.co.uk 1,176,494 (-15.94%)
dailystar.co.uk 685,769 (-23.92%)
Evening Standard 479,367 (-4.53%)

Print Circulation

The Sun 1,741,838 (-2.53%)
Daily Mail 1,562,361 (-1.71%)
Metro 1,347,505 (-0.04%)
Evening Standard 902,005 (0.4%)
Daily Mirror 791,839 (-2.14%)
The Daily Telegraph 472,936 (0.19%)
Daily Star 472,869 (0.53%)
Daily Express 413,140 (1.09%)
The Times 402,752 (-0.35%)
i 269,628 (-0.82%)
Financial Times 195,515 (-1.37%)
Daily Record 174,525 (-1.34%)
The Guardian 161,152 (-1.83%)

So apparently people still read the Guardian (or at least their browsers go there) but they don't buy it much.

teacherwith2kids I'd suggest the FT. I read the Saturday edition over the week and find it very good

Thanks Lucy. I might buy him the full range - a Saturday edition is a good idea - and get him to decide.

I mean, I could just get him the telegraph and tell him it's good to know his enemy - but his picking up of FiL's Telegraph on a visit a little while ago did add a touch of apoplectic rage to what is always a tricky FiL-DS interaction.....

I agree with the OP. A symbol of pretentious (sp??), champagne socialist Islington set. Head in the sand stuff that will be the death of the Labour party. Nobody in the real world is listening.

On the Cologne reporting - I didn't see it myself but on the general point: how much should poor reporting of a single event dominate one's whole view of a media source? Does it, all by itself, invalidate all good reporting by the same paper? Or was it one of those things where a whole set of 'not very good' things are brought into stark relief by something 'genuinely bad', and you realise that the overall standard is not something that you can tolerate any more?

Although talking of cookies and internet targetting, I had the most extraordinary google results the other day.

I'd been searching with terms like "Buckingham Palace" "poppies" and "lancaster", and "flypast", and some combo brought up an almost solid bank - two pages' worth - of Daily Mail hits. Some of which were unrelated stories about William & Catherine.

I'd guess they loaded the pages with key words. It was so blatant I nearly started a thread about it.

I can't seem to replicate it today, so either I've not hit the right combo, or something behind the scenes has changed.

But yeah, be aware your search results are not neutral!

I used to work for The Guardian. It is the only newspaper to be owned by a trust and not by an individual or by shareholders, thus ensuring it's political and financial independence. It's journalists are therefore free to report without having to satisfy a profit-motivated owner. All profits are reinvested into journalism rather than to any shareholders. In an age where the media can make or break political careers, and have so much influence, The Guardian/The Observer are really important due to their ownership structure. It makes me really sad to see them struggling financially as I think it's one of the few credible remaining media outlets we have. I can't understand why anyone would be pleased to see the news of their financial predicament, even if you despise their journalism - really odd OP.

duckduckgo is a search engine that doesn't track you. Also you can opt out of most profiling on Google here. You can block most ads and cookie tracking with UBlock Origin and here is a list of Do Not Track settings.

It's interesting to see how the internet changes when it doesn't know you so well.

YABU everyone is entitled to their own viewpoints and think of the jobs that would be lost if you can't see past anything else.

i'm guessing the OP is one of the surge of brexiteers who feel that their time has come to slag off poor people, pinkos, lefties and foreigners.

Out of interest, which newspapers reported on the cologne attacks and which of these did it 'well'.

For those looking for a left leaning alternative to the Guardian, what about the online Independent?

Dapple The online Independent is very hit and miss. I'd say about 90% of it's 'news' is filler, click-baity stuff e.g. "This woman had the best response to being asked about her dress", "Donald Trump just got trolled and everyone loves it".
It often leaves me feeling bemused, not informed.

How many journalists are employed by the online Independent vs the Guardian?

how much should poor reporting of a single event dominate one's whole view of a media source?

The problem wasn't one of journalism, of not having resources available. The problem was of editorial stance: they were simply not willing to run stories, even if true, which cast their chosen "oppressed" groups in a poor light. It was a 24 hour compression of the more general failure of the media to report Rotherham and Rochdale: once you start from the position that immigrants are saints and white women are representatives of the oppressor, the rest falls easily into place.

It wasn't actually in the Guardian, but Mary Beard's piece in the London Review of Books shows the mentality of bien-pensant liberals (and, incidentally, removes any sympathy I might otherwise have for the abuse she gets online):

This wasn’t just the feeling that, however tactfully you dress it up, the United States had it coming. That is, of course, what many people openly or privately think. World bullies, even if their heart is in the right place, will in the end pay the price.

You see, all the people that died on 9/11, every one of them, are "bullies" who "had it coming". She was happy to lump all Americans, even the ones who were British or Dutch or German, into the deserving victims. Similarly the Graun after Cologne: German women, even the ones who are black or Jewish or poor, are the oppressors of innocent refugees. That it's basically the racism of low expectations combined with nasty victim-blaming misogyny (young men, a bit forrin, they just can't help themselves, who are we to criticise, sluts in short dresses, etc) is slightly besides the point: it starts from the position that if you're European, by birth or residence or accident, you are a "world bully" who "has it coming".

It is a shame, as we do need more voices in the news world, not fewer. Rusbridger expanded far too much - they've been burning through funds for the last few years.

Having said that, it's become almost beyond parody in recent years. With the exception of one or two really good writers/issues (the snowdon coverage for example) the quality of the writing and reportage is poor. The sub editors seem barely literate and the science section is laughable.

But four things mainly have stopped me reading it:

firstly, the utter refusal to offend religious groups leading to some frankly shocking apologist articles in the wakes of various terrorist atrocities. Their coverage after the Charlie hebdo incident was jaw droppingly bad. Apparently all the west' fault for alienating the poor terrorists. Utter bilge

Secondly, the strong misogynistic streak which permeates everything. The opinions of men are always put above women. Religious men over women, transsexual men over women. In their race to virtue signal and be right on, absolutely everyone and their dog must not be offended, but women can eff off. It's dire.
Thirdly, just the general degradation of content. Poor sub editing, navel gazing articles, science coverage by writers who don't seem to have a GCSE between them, or even the most rudimentary grasp of scientific method/critical appraisal/stats.
And fourth, their attitude to the working classes of this country. If you want to know why brexit won, read the guardian. They see the working class as a kind of subhuman pet which doesn't know what's good for it.

So yes, I'll be sad for what it used to be, but not for what it became.

cuboidal

I agree completely.

The problem was of editorial stance: they were simply not willing to run stories, even if true, which cast their chosen "oppressed" groups in a poor light.

And so it continues with the Guardian currently refusing to state that the attack on the Priest in Normandy was an Islamist terrorist incident, even though the French press are reporting as such, and also that the poor man was beheaded.

I agree with everything you said Fomal

OP is a right wing astroturfer.
Non thread.

Just comes :) back to Sat that Bagpuss shameful reporting

Indeed, Bag. Liberation, hardly the most right-wing source (it's often said to be France's Guardian) reports Hollande thus: "Devant la presse, François Hollande affirme que les preneurs d'otages se réclamaient de Daech."

The Guardian, of course, won't print this. It was probably Frenchmen, in striped sweaters with strings of onions on their bikes, who did it. "The motivations for the hostage-taking were not yet clear".

Lolo what an amazing link just had a snapshot of work, hobbies and interests from my Google activity history most entertaining

But why do they do it to themselves? Their readership is dwindling, people are happy to scour for more reliable, unbiased news sources in search of the truth. Do they really hold their readers in such contempt just to maintain a charade of their own making?

The only Guardian article I can see on the French attack (about which oh god), is headlined: Normandy church attackers who killed priest 'claimed to be from Isis'

It has an update time of 13:00.