Is something going on at The Guardian?

[Doobigetta]

Four articles in the last few days:

• Praising Obama for denouncing cancel culture- and we all know he said “verbs” but he meant “pronouns”. The article says “you can make people change the words they use, but you can’t make them change what they think”.
• One about a support group in Australia for women whose husbands come out as gay in later life, highlighting the particular unfairness of having to watch your husband being praised for his bravery in ripping your life out from under you. No mention of trans widows but the parallel is very obvious.
• A review of “Who are you calling fat” asks “what are the limits on matters of self-identification? Where do we end up if there are no such things as facts?”
• And then finally Catherine Bennett in her column about the abuse of MPs specifically included the treatment of TERFs as evidence of misogyny in public debate.

This seems quite a shift from a year ago, when only Hadley Freeman even came close to voicing GC thoughts. Is the tide turning?

I can't remember who it was who actually wrote the article, but it was one of the Guardian's regular women writers at the time.

Gaby Hinsliff. Here's a similarly dismissive article she wrote:

http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3391208-it-may-be-a-while-before-older-women-stop-feeling-erased

Oh, and the Guardian article about Cologne was written several days after all other news and media had covered it. The Guardian originally just blanked it for a few days, said nothing at all, until it became common knowledge because all other news outlet had covered it,

YY and also after the Hinsliff article they wrote an editorial where they reduced the number of estimated victims by 10x. I think they only included the ones that fulfilled some particular criteria. Their coverage was horrible.

Thank you for that, Ereshkigal It was indeed Gaby Hinsliff. Can still remember my total disbelief, and disorientation, at reading what she wrote about Cologne.

Really can't agree that it's too late for them. I think it would be fucking awesome - worth it for Owen Jones' face alone.

I'd be eagerly anticipating another sanctimonious slapdown from the even woker US Guardian. That would also be very amusing.

Can still remember my total disbelief, and disorientation, at reading what she wrote about Cologne.

YY I also stopped regularly reading the Guardian at that time. I used to buy it both days at the weekend and read it online. Fuck that. I'll read things if I am directed to them elsewhere and it's relevant to my interests but I don't browse. And they aren't getting a penny in their begging bowl from me.

I stopped reading the Guardian after Cologne, I think it was 4 days before their report. I’d been a reader for 20 years. It really opened my eyes.

There was (I thought) a really interesting article on how patriarchy is not the natural order. Said women and meant women

Opportunists always keep their nose to the wind.

That would be the media, then.

Could do with some help from the MN hive mind - a list of the ways the Guardian has failed to cover, or misrepresented, women's rights.

So far, thanks to this thread alone, we have:
*Nothing on Cologne for days, and when it did appear it was victim blaming
*Very little on the Yaniv case
*Nothing at all about M&S changing rooms
*Nothing about McKinnon
*Not a mention of the LGB Alliance or (I assume) the persecution of Allison Bailey

From my memory:
*Presenting the Martina peak transing story as 'Navratilova accused of transphobia'
*Continuing to fund and centre that spiteful little dickweasel misogynist Owen Jones
*The column from Owl (or Fox, who the fuck cares) lamenting that they were too scared to use the public swimming pool because nasty transphobes might object to a cock and balls in the women's changing room

What else have they deliberately missed or twisted?

amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/08/cologne-attacks-hard-questions-new-years-eve

For those who missed it. Hard questions to be asked about Cologne, yes, but not the ones Gaby is asking

I didn't see Hinsliff's Cologne article as victim-blaming so much as perpetrator-absolving, which is symptomatic of a hierarchy at the Guardian that always puts women last.

I don't think Hinsliff was quite saying that the attacks were the fault of women for having smartphones. She was saying that socially-excluded immigrant men who have nothing can be expected to take out their resentment on women. A feminist would have seen that as symptomatic of how men are conditioned to see women at the bottom of the hierarchy and as a legitimate target for their resentments. But Hinsliff accepted this as the natural order - her concern was all for the immigrant men. And that is how the hierarchy works at the Guardian - under cover of wokeness, it's the same old patriarchy as ever. They used at least to question it, now they just reinforce it.

From the article: "Journalism isn’t really journalism when it avoids stories for fear of how some might react."

You don't say.

The Grauniad can fuck off. Even the biggest mea culpa now (and I doubt one of those will be forthcoming) is too little, too late.

That said, it's never been a left wing newspaper. It's always been a middle class liberal newspaper with a veneer of one or two left wing columnists.

Long before any of this, we had its full-throated, neocon support for the Iraq war. It's always supported elite projects and concerns.

(I do buy into the Chomsky analysis that corporate media, including and especially supposedly leftist corporate media, acts to support establishment interests.)

When did it support the Iraq war?

What else have they deliberately missed or twisted?

There's tons. They reported the attack on Julie Bindel by Edinburgh University, for example, by talking mainly about the resignation of the LGBT committee in protest at her talking in the first place.

They covered the NSPCC/Munroe Bergdorf story by painting everyone who objected to the Bergdorf appointment as evil bigots.

Their response to Girl Guiding UK sacking Helen Watts was a story about the organisation defending its decision, rather than reporting the sacking itself.

It isn't even new. Eight years ago they published a shameful article by Libby Brooks (who also wrote the Edinburgh/Julie Bindel story) about "dubious claims" of Muslim gangs grooming white girls. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/jan/07/grooming-racialising-crime-tradition

www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/01/trojan-horse-the-real-story-behind-the-fake-islamic-plot-to-take-over-schools

Oh yeah this didn't happen either apparently.

They didn't report the attack on Maria MacLachlan at Speaker's Corner, nor the numerous threats and attacks on Woman's Place UK meetings, including the latest one in Brighton.

They didn't report the sacking of Maya Forstater.

They didn't report the malicious prosecution of Linda Bellos and Venice Allan by a trans activist.

They only ran one story on the Karen White case, long after everyone else had covered it, and then only in the most cursory way. They didn't run any comment pieces on it, as you would normally expect.

Their story about lesbian protesters at Pride in 2018 was very hostile to the protesters and didn't explain what they were protesting about.

They didn't cover the suspension of Jess Bradley from the NUS.

They didn't cover the conviction of David Challenor for raping a child or the Green Party's shameful willingness to allow Aimee Challenor to hire their father as an election agent, though they did run an awful, point-missing comment piece by Caroline Lucas about how it shouldn't matter that Aimee was trans.

I could go on. Give me time, and I probably will.

Every time I look at the guardian home page articles and headlines I'm struck by how fully and clearly they understand what women and girls and men and boys are.

It's just when it comes to the T their brains fall out of their heads. It's weird.

When did it support the Iraq war?

When didn't it, would be the more accurate question. It did manage a mea culpa but only when it was embarrassing not to.

I come from a Guardian reading family. My grandparents read the Guardian, my parents read the Guardian. As for others their appalling attitude to the Cologne attacks was a turning point, though for me it was the final straw rather than the beginning of the end. I was already fed up with their attitude towards the Rotherham and other victims, their attitude towards the Charlie Hebdo attacks, their ridiculous articles by Paris Lees and Fred McConnell, their constant obsession with skin colour as if no other marker of ethnicity matters.

They may be back peddling now, but now people across the world are openly contemptuous of 'wokeism' and a huge backlash is brewing. They're just trying to cover their own arses.

They did report a fawning interview of Challenor while David Challenor was in court.

They did publish a column by the USA’s first legal non-binary person, but they didn’t publish his follow up article where he states it’s all rubbish and he has AGP.

They did report how questioning puberty blockers for kids is all a right wing media attack but they didn’t report how the British Medical Journal, hardly the bastion of right wing media, had the issue as front page news.

They did report how trans people suffer lower standards of healthcare but they don’t see fit to extend this to children being given treatments that lack evidence and result in permanent body harm.

They do moderate the fuck out of anyone who questions the ideology. The Guardian is the very embodiment of “cancel culture”. They “cancel” their own readers if they don’t comply.

The US arm of the paper did write an editorial that, remarkably, stated that their journalism must be “grounded in the principle that trans women are women”, so you have it clear in black and white that the paper doesn’t care about facts, only ideology.

And I love the story of what Deborah Orr said to Viner. Brilliant. Deserves it.

All of your examples in your OP do not "hint" at GC views in the slightest.

I agree with pp above that the Guardian are silencing GC feminists, have done so for far too long, OJ is a misogynistic twerp, nothing will make the Guardian good (again) in my eyes, (tbf, about 5-10 years ago they were airing sensible voices and not using offensive terms like "pregnant people" or "people who menstruate" like they do now) I left as a reader long ago and will never go back.

I've never actually read that article before. The Hinsliff NY one. It's...breathtaking.

We had the guardian in the house every day when I was growing up. I have no idea who reads it now. My parents - Labour voting working class people - won't buy it. I wouldn't touch it with a copy of The Daily Express.

I do think it is sad because it used to stand for something. Now it's just a sad analogy for the Labour Party.

They do moderate the fuck out of anyone who questions the ideology.

And this is one of the things that's annoyed me the most about them. If the Guardian isn't reporting on stuff accurately, or not at all, then the comments section should be a place where you can inform people about what's going on or present an alternative view. But I've lost count of the number of times I've had polite, reasonably-worded comments deleted because they were gender-critical. And I'm not the only one.

They were in deep financial trouble. Only rescued by the woke US Guardian and its supporters. Cannot move away overall from the woke position as money talks.US are in control.