to find the twitter anti ad campaign against GB news ridiculous?

[smersh84]

it annoys me to see people on twitter demanding companies stop advertising there and boycotting them.
they don't even a real reason beyond I don't like it.
If you don't like it don't watch it
it literally hasn't even been on for 1 week.
why is everyone such an SJW these days?
do people think they are real activists over twitter?
do you people really think companies care about what they do beyond whether they make more money?
I know about the Epstein thing but that was one of their guests.
sorry a bit of a rant there.
im not trolling just angry

You mean " non-dom south of France news"?

It's a channel made for the divisive, racist and easily led.

So, you want people to stop using Twitter to say things you don’t like? Really? Irony overload.

Anyone using words like gammon is rascist

Would love to see the mental gymnastics it take to get to that conclusion, any chance you could include your working out?

Well when I first heard the pejorative 'Gammon' and realised it exclusively applied to white middle aged men who support Brexit, my very first thought was 'in the same way that racist white people often liken black people to monkeys, racist black people often liken white people to pigs and reference pigskin in relation to white people.'

So 'gammon' used as a slur against a middle aged white man immediately had a bit of a racist whiff to me, not to mention the judgemental stereotyping of character that goes with it - as if voting a particular way offers a window into your soul.

No mental gymnastics were involved in arriving at this conclusion at all.

@HannibalHayeski

It's ironic hearing people frothing about "closing down free speech", when they literally have a whole TV station catering to their revolting views!

Which revolting views would they be then? Can you enlighten me? Have you spent more than ten minutes watching it? Because I've had it on all week, morning to night, instead of the radio this week, just to get the measure of it. Annoying technical glitches and a slightly amateurish production feel aside, (which I am sure will improve in time) I haven't found it remotely divisive or hateful. They've had a broad range of opinions and topics discussed and some great interviews. The one with Sajid Javid was a breath of fresh air.

The difference is that they are not afraid to allow the airing of strong views on both sides of a subject whereas the mainstream news programmes are no longer comfortable with that. GB News has been very hard on this government on a number of issues so I don't think anyone could accuse them of being completely one sided. It seems very fair and balanced to me so far.

@HannibalHayeski

It's ironic hearing people frothing about "closing down free speech", when they literally have a whole TV station catering to their revolting views!

It's like Julie Birchill complaining about being "cancelled" on 5 TV stations and 8 newspaper columns...

This 100%

@MissTrip82

Not sure I really believe that anyone who starts with anything as embarrassingly intellectually lazy as ‘is everyone a SJW these days’ is actually interested in hearing anyone else’s views at all.

I never understand people who say SJW like it’s a bad thing. What have we become as a society when people think wanting social justice is a bad thing?!

@JustAnotherPoster00

Anyone using words like gammon is rascist

Would love to see the mental gymnastics it take to get to that conclusion, any chance you could include your working out?

I'm not even white but I do think it's racist, or used by a certain kind of person

pretty sure gammon refers to skin colour [paleness and reddening]
sure, mocking racists is pretty inoffensive. But it's not just racists who have pale skin/blushed cheeks.

Mocking skin tone is racist of a group of people is a bit... isn't it? Because it's not just that bad group you're mocking.

Like body-shaming someone who is a bad person on Twitter. What about other people who look like that? It's still body shaming whether directed at that one person or not

I don't really get GB news. Andrew Neil worked at the BBC for a long time and is an intelligent and experienced journalist, he's well aware the bbc is the most unbiased media outlet in the country. I think its just a cash in on the fact more TV news is consumed by older and more right wing people, def Fox news ambitions!

I have no idea what what GB news is, or what this thread is about.

anyway I've just worked out from the thread that's it's a new News channel. just put it on. Yeah seems amateurish, but will be interesting to see what news they cover.

@DansMaPoche

Anyone using words like gammon is rascist

Would love to see the mental gymnastics it take to get to that conclusion, any chance you could include your working out?

Well when I first heard the pejorative 'Gammon' and realised it exclusively applied to white middle aged men who support Brexit, my very first thought was 'in the same way that racist white people often liken black people to monkeys, racist black people often liken white people to pigs and reference pigskin in relation to white people.'

So 'gammon' used as a slur against a middle aged white man immediately had a bit of a racist whiff to me, not to mention the judgemental stereotyping of character that goes with it - as if voting a particular way offers a window into your soul.

No mental gymnastics were involved in arriving at this conclusion at all.

And yet here you are, laying out your mental gymnastics in print.

I like Andrew Neil and I think we need some media that don't just follow the assumption that there is one right side of the argument. I haven't tuned in yet but unfollowed their social media because it seemed a bit too much like they were going for the 'frothing', stoking culture wars kind of controversy. What I would like to see is the return of intelligence and critical thinking and nuance. But then my politics is central and maybe theirs isn't. Good luck to them. I guess they simply cannot afford to be boring but I hope they aren't boringly controversial like the rentamob voices.

And yet here you are, laying out your mental gymnastics in print.

What shit. you may as well say that any thought that occurs to a person AT ALL must involval mental gymnastics. The term refers to making a huge, convoluted effort to find a conclusion or in something that isn't necessarily there, by hook or by crook.

The whole point was that I was immediately reminded of the black on white racial slur of 'pig' and how gammon refers to skin tone and therefore stereotyping and equating skin tone with opinions/views.

Therefore no gymnastics involved. None whatsoever.

Mental gynmastics - a definition:

'a miraculous mental process of weaving intricate threads of reasoning in complex, tangential, and often contradictory ways to give the mental gymnast the illusion that they has resolved the cognitive dissonance stemming from objective facts debunking their firmly held beliefs, thereby allowing the mental gymnast to continue on with life still holding onto the flawed beliefs while still acknowledging the objective facts.'

There is nothing complex or tangential or contradictory in my belief that as the phrase 'gammon' applies to skin tone and attributes negative characteristics to people of that skin tone, it is by its very nature a racist, bigoted slur. Attributing negative characteristics to people on account of their skin tone is the first and most fundamental definition of racism.

It would take some serious mental gynmastics to try to deny this, however.

I'm a bit of an outlier in that I'm a lefty but I absolutely hate the approach the "mostly left" has taken in recent years towards what they see as wrong think.

I've watched GB news and may watch it again, although it's definitely not slick, in the same way as I read both the Times and the Guardian, because I think it's important not to become entrenched in my views.

Yes it's capitalism but frankly I think that campaigning for ads to be pulled from a channel before even really understanding how that channel will look is a bit pathetic. There's not one "right" political position to take and all others are the baddies.

Completely agree with everything you've said CallMe and I am the same - although I am a right leaning centrist I read three or four newspapers including the Guardian and I am constantly seeking out articles and blogs for viewpoints that challenge my own. They don't often make me change my mind about much but they force me to really examine why I think what I think. That can only be a good thing.

To campaign to silence a media outlet or shame companies for advertising with them because they are 'right wing' is no more acceptable than campaigning to stamp out something perceived to be 'left wing.' They are both valid political positions and understanding the dangers of the extremities of both right and left should hopefully help us remain somewhere safely in the centre. Which we are. We always are and pretty much always have been in most people's living memory. Anyone who thinks otherwise needs to try actually living under the sort of regime they love to accuse this government of being, ie. fascist, dictatorial and racist.

It's funny that people have assumed GBN is 'right wing' purely because it has stated it won't kowtow to cancel culture, wokery, left wing censorship and the totalitarianism that is creeping in. But there are plenty of dyed in the woo, lifelong socialists deserting the Labour party in their droves because they don't identify with any of that stuff either.

Has it not occurred to anyone complaining about GBN that it might just turn out to be completely fair and balanced and representative of a range of views on the most important topics that currently consume us? No, they haven't, because fair and balanced and representative is exactly what a very noisy and judgemental minority are afraid of.

IKEA tweeted that GB News didn't follow its values. I'd be interested to know just what those values are given that it was founded by a fascist and was recently implicated in espionage.

Most of the companies involved have back pedalled and blamed rogue social media teams. An insider at Vodafone called them "blue and purple haired lunatics".

JustAnotherPoster00

Would love to see the mental gymnastics it take to get to that conclusion, any chance you could include your working out?

Judging someone by the colour of their skin.

Doesn't seem to take much in the way of "mental gymnastics" to get there.

Also your are insulting many people with a medical condition, Well done for that.

racist black people often liken white people to pigs and reference pigskin in relation to white people.

When used as a slur, 'pigs' is a reference to the police, not to white people in general.

I'm one of the advertisers who has blacklisted GBNews from our advertising plans. We're a charity and the right-wing rhetoric doesn't align with our brand values. Therefore we don't want to fund a platform that exists to promote views that are against what we believe in. The money given to us is given by donors and supporters who expect every penny to go toward the benefit of our beneficiaries and GBNews does not do that. I'd imagine corporate companies are withdrawing for the same reasons.

Advertisers are under no obligation to give money to a platform they don't believe in, and would alienate their audiences. It's not attracting the size of audience advertisers need and those who watch GBNews can be reached elsewhere.

GBNews isn't owed a living and they'll have to prove their with if they are to attract advertisers. Probably something they should have thought about in advance to be fair.

Blacklisted is considered a racist term by some. Just saying.

@Classica

Advertisers will do what works for advertisers. I thought everyone knew that.

Absolutely Classica it's really just that simple. The advertisers know their audiences and they'll act accordingly. No-one's trying to stifle free speech, it's a business decision 🤷‍♀️

I couldn't care less about GBNews. I won't watch it, I'm not the target audience, but I won't find them. Why should they feel entitled to be funded if their content alienates their audiences?

M0nkeybars

SO do you think that its ok that MN had exactly the same issues with a group lobbying companies to remove their adverting if MN didn't conform to their views?

Because IMO this is less about a company deserving advertising and more about stopping opposing views being allowed.

M0nkeybars

How is this a business decision for twitter?
They are hardly the target audience and those on twitter would be unlikely to watch GB news anyway.

When used as a slur, 'pigs' is a reference to the police, not to white people in general.

White people call police officers pigs too. Not all POs are white. The term pink pig or pigskinned or anything similarly pig-themed is not exclusively directed at the police.

I liked that the tv news programmes in the UK tried to be factual and unbiased. This was true whichever channel you watched. If you wanted biased news, you could always read the papers. I think the creation of GB News is a backwards step for this country and I won’t be watching it.