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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

The Guardian: I'm boycotting it

113 replies

Merchfach · 17/04/2018 10:24

I've been reading the Guardian since I was 16, so that's 40+ years — and now I'm boycotting it. Every week there seems to be a pro-trans article on the front page of the online version and not a mention of the difficulties WPUK are having holding perfectly legal meetings to discuss changes to legislation. All power to Hadley Freeman and the other feminist staffers trying to raise the issue but it's too little and too late.

I'm looking for an alternative news source and for the first time in my life I'm actually considering the Times or the Telegraph, neither of which have been allowed over my threshold till now. I'm told the FT is good source of well-researched news but I don't think I can afford it.

Any other Mumsnetters in a similar situation? Any recommendations? I don't even want to click on the Guardian on line: it's dead to me and I'm not going to forgive and forget this betrayal.

OP posts:
AfricanPlume · 17/04/2018 16:07

The Times is doing great stuff for women’s rights recently.

If anyone in your house has a student card/Unidays, you can get a year’s subscription for £20.

Caldonia · 17/04/2018 16:12

Haven't bought The Guardian for months now. I buy The Times at the weekend (one of the days) and the I paper. Might dabble with the FT one weekend....

SuitedandBooted · 17/04/2018 16:20

They seem to be in need of cash and readers.
Does anyone currently have a subscription with the Guardian? Perhaps you could forward them this thread...

BeUpStanding · 17/04/2018 16:23

I'm going to check out the FT based on the recommendation of this thread.

rowdywoman1 · 17/04/2018 16:37

And another one who switched from the Guardian to the Times after decades. It's good to have my left wing views / assumptions challenged, they have had some fantastic investigative reporting into child abuse scandals, the police etc. A real mix of anti and pro Brexit articles and of course Janice T.

The Times still reads like an 'ethical' investigative newspaper while the Guardian appears to be censoring in order to shape the world in its on image IYSWIM?

LapdanceShoeshine · 17/04/2018 17:05

We still get the Guardian on Saturday but it’s a pathetic shadow of its former self so we were on the verge of giving it up - might switch to the Times (Telegraph a step too far to the R!)

Those of you currently on cheap trials of the Times - they have a cheap online subscription, which they don’t advertise, but will offer you if you ring to cancel - instead of £6 a week it’s £2-something. It’s phone only during the week (I think) plus tablet at weekends - because it suits the format better or something???

I prefer to use the website anyway as the app doesn’t show comments.

LapdanceShoeshine · 17/04/2018 17:08

I also have a Spectator sub - they have some interesting & intelligent stuff.

(I feel guilty not getting the NS too but as it’s still free online...Blush)

BobbinThreadbare123 · 17/04/2018 17:12

I've read the Telegraph for years. Used to read the Guardian alongside it and balance the viewpoints out, but now the Graun is shite and whiney. I might have to look into the Times. I do like the Saturday Telegraph though with all those crosswords!

Danglingmod · 17/04/2018 17:20

Another one who's switched from reading the Guardian at all to a Times subscription; will choose the Telegraph as my free paper. Also read/buy The Economist, FT and NS from time to time. The Times and the Telegraph have a broad range of opinion and do a better job of holding the government to account than either the opposition or the left wing press.

My politics are more centrist than left, though, so never had an obvious newspaper home but agree we should all read from a range of sources. It's fascinating not just the bias in different news sources (state the bleeding obvious) but the lack of coverage at all of some stories by some outlets. I don't think dyed in the wool supporters of one paper only (or political party...) get this at all.

OlennasWimple · 17/04/2018 17:20

HairyBall describes my news situation almost perfectly. I gave up on the Guardian post Cologne, after many many many years of buying and subscribing. I just can't pay money to that rag now, though I will occasionally go on the website to see their take on certain things (like education) as well as to read the wonderful Hadley and the usually amusing Lucy Mangan

The Telegraph is worth it for the Matt cartoons alone, TBH, but I also like their international coverage and the crosswords. I get a perverse enjoyment out of Norman Tebbitt's column - I rarely agree with him, but he does at least listen and engage with his readers and critics, and I like debate and reasoning.

I will probably subscribe to the Time when the current cheap offer expires, if only to support Janice Turner and Andrew Gilligan. I'm considering the New Statesmen, but find it less appealing overall.

Danglingmod · 17/04/2018 17:20

Free paper at Waitrose, obviously...

AsAProfessionalFekko · 17/04/2018 17:31

Even the freebie is banned in casa fekko. I took it as a student and was gobsmacked at how 'trendy trendy right on' it is now -was it ways that blatant? It actually gets me quite angry! I tend to skim through the whole paper and pick put juicy bits but I can't get through a page on the guardian without muttering 'oh fuck off' 'that's bloody stupid' 'grow up you tit'...

We got it a few times (free) with a waitrose shop. I wouldn't even use it as loo roll if I ran out.

lucydogz · 17/04/2018 17:36

does anyone remember a similar thread from a couple of years ago?
link
Back then, a lot of posters were very anti Murdoch papers like the Times, and more supportive of the Guardian. I wonder if the Guardian has changed - or has MN?

Butterymuffin · 17/04/2018 17:41

Lapdance I also still get a Saturday Guardian though I like Janice Turner's work in the Times a lot. It's true though that we all need to read news widely. Most news sources have at least something to recommend them - the Mail is abhorrent in many ways but did pursue the killers of Stephen Lawrence, for example.

I am somewhat sceptical about the posters saying they don't read any (mainstream) news at all as they inform themselves from other sources, but won't say what they are. As a pp said, few people have the time to do that much research themselves. Come on folks, share where you go! Or we'll be left suspecting it's The Canary or Breitbart or something...

HairyBallTheorem · 17/04/2018 17:43

Yes, Oleannas - I get the rage over their (non) coverage of Cologne even now.

They maintained a news blackout for getting on for a week. Then they systematically underestimated the number of attacks by a factor of between 5 and 10 relative to other sources (reputable sources - I checked out the Frankfurter Allgemeine, Die Zeitung, New York Times, Washington Post). Then they commissioned one of their female columnists to write one of the shittiest pieces of victim blaming I've ever seen, basically saying "well, if western women will go around flaunting their mobile phones, what do they expect?"

Now I totally get the need for caution and careful reporting. "They [unspecified racial other ] are over here raping our women" is one of the oldest tropes in wartime and peacetime propaganda. So it's quite easy for reports of this sort of thing to have a lot to do with racism, so you have to fact-check. And one of the reasons it's such a prevalent trope is because it's very often true - except that of course "they are raping our women" should be supplemented with "and what's more when the circs are reversed, we rape their women" (see behaviour of UN peacekeeping troops in Bosnia and countless other countries, for instance). Add to that the fact that as Julie Bindel once wrote in an excoriating article, rape might as well be legal given the chances are next to zero of you managing to report, get it through the police and CPS gatekeeping without it being "no-crimed", then get a conviction, given that men can apparently have sex with paralytically drunk women they've never even spoken to, accidentally fall penis first into women's vaginas (again drunk and unconscious women), leave women bleeding from their vaginas and in tears, and apparently juries still think the men in question could have reasonable belief in the woman's consent. So yes, rape is commonplace, carried out by men of all colours, nationalities and religions, frequently used as a weapon of war, or as a means of one male group sending a statement to another male group via "violating their women...", and rarely punished, if at all.

None of this changes the fact that what happened in Cologne was horrific, and should have been reported accurately, and that a decent follow-up op-ed piece would have discussed Taharrush Gamea as a form of what anthropologists call "corrective rape" (in this case applied to women who have the temerity to step into public spaces), as something which happens in Middle Eastern culture (and which many people in the Middle East are fighting against), and which up until the events of Cologne had not been seen in most of western Europe since WWII (this sort of rape as a weapon of war was horrifyingly widely used during the Balkan genocide).

Weezol · 17/04/2018 17:58

Merch Thanks for this thread. I'm in a similar position. Have been pondering a punt on The Times for a while.

I used to buy the Graun every Saturday without fail. 15 years.

I stopped buying about 12 months ago. Read online for a while but I gave up completely at Christmas - exceptions are I usually check for Rhik Samadder's kitchen gadget column on a Wednesday and I still have a thing for him and a couple of favourite columnists.

Although this thread has made me realise I haven't even been doing that for a few months.

23 year old me is looking over my shoulder as I write and screaming 'The fucking Times! What the actual...'

OlennasWimple · 17/04/2018 18:04

Back then, a lot of posters were very anti Murdoch papers like the Times, and more supportive of the Guardian. I wonder if the Guardian has changed - or has MN?

I think the Guardian has changed, MN has changed, and the world has changed

Flicketyflack · 17/04/2018 18:17

I thought it was just me!

Stopped getting the guardian on. Saturday three weeks ago & have not missed it. Really sad there is nothing left wing out there anymore (including political partiesGrin)

Terfmore · 17/04/2018 18:21

Used to buy the guardian on a Saturday, now buy the Independent or Times.

InTheRoseGarden · 17/04/2018 18:34

Yeah the Guardian is dead to me too! Without meaning to sound like The Donald: it seems a bit too full of fake news.

TerfsUp · 17/04/2018 18:50

I have just stopped reading The Guardian and will be getting a subscription to The Times.

As I've said elsewhere - The Guardian cannot die a horrible flaming fiery financial death soon enough. Their circulation figure keep dropping so it's only a matter of time that they go to paywall or they close shop.

ALittleAubergine · 17/04/2018 18:55

It's an interesting question about murdoch.

Ereshkigal · 17/04/2018 19:15

YY Olenna. I stopped reading it regularly after Cologne, and was incensed by the coverage. The social engineering in the comments on trans issues (back when they originally allowed them) with not even mildly gender critical comments being allowed to stand while misogyny always seemed to get a free pass (CIF is full of angry little MRAs) was the nail in the coffin.

NotBadConsidering · 17/04/2018 22:03

I've ranted complained about the Guardian a lot here recently. I actually don't think the readers/commenters are the problem, it's The Guardian itself, especially with trans issues. Take a look at this recent article:

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/08/understand-solar-system-gender-ignorant-transgender

Look at the comments and which have the most recommends. It was really good to see. Clearly readers have peaked, but that comment section is typical of the Guardian's current policy. Close it the second it's not going the way it should. They didn't even have comments on Hadley's article. They stifle debate and censor, and I can't stand the hypocrisy. I said recently I had a comment removed that criticised a line in an article for being anti-abortion. I think that's when I "peak-Guardianed".

I keep wanting to boycott and I think I am one of the majority of readers who see they're wrong on so many issues, but I do enjoy it when they get hauled over the coals in the comments.

LoveCompost · 17/04/2018 22:35

I'm going to try The Spectator as they have been so supportive in at least three articles and I'm grateful for that. That and Radio 4 should be enough!