How did the Guardian become so corrupted?

[LittleWhingingWoman]

Who owns it all and how has it become like this - who are the key players?

It wants the US market

All it has cared about for a couple of decades since the internet took off

I'm not sure it's about who owns it, but more that the money has pretty much gone from traditional media, so they need to rely on subscribers, most of whom are in the US as it's such a big market.

Therefore they are beholden to university wokesters, and basically feed them a diet of what they want to hear to keep them paying.

Bari Weiss, a US journalist who used to work for the NYTimes did a good podcast with Triggernometry a few months ago about this.

I was thinking about this paper today funnily enough, remembering that I used to be fairly wedded to The Guardian. But now it is so strained by ideology that articles without that are rarer.

It’ll come down to funding model I guess.

I think I saw something about the US academic influence on The G.
I'll try and find it to link.
Obviously all the papers have their dark side, but the way that the Guardian are platforming obvious emotional manipulation and avoiding discussing the full picture is quite revealing.

They appointed Viner as editor.

The Scott Trust owns The Guardian

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Trust_Limited

Although the Scott Trust owns The Observer as well and that is a lot better

Melanie Phillips has a theory on that. You cans see her on her yet channel.

I don't know, but I knew they were really screwed up back when Laura Bates was writing her column about everyday sexism. A lot of the time the comments were very critical, because the columns were so, so bad. Making assertions about certain behaviors increasing because people who followed her on Twitter said so, or assuming certain behaviours which sometimes seemed like bizarre aberrations (someone throwing a sandwich comes to mind) were motivated by sexism.

Anyway, that is by the by, but people would often pint out that her the basic facts underpinning her column weren't particularly well supported.

The Guardian moderated these comments out in short order. And then, they asked readers in a special column what to do about all the criticism under their feminism articles (Jessica Valenti was the other writer who came in for a lot of similar critical comments.)

The readers responded with - please have the editors hold this stuff to a higher standard.

The Guardian response - disable comments under the articles.

So something had gone very wrong way back then, before gender issues were in the news much at all.

Shame they went down the free route really.

A lot of their staff were culled a few years ago for cost reasons, and the paper became increasingly run out of the New York office, I gather (largely by young, super-liberal US staff and stringers on the editorial side, and the website and tech/support side was especially dominated by US tech/IT staff). Their gender/women’s coverage became really dominated by US identity politics as a result.

The Observer’s always been separate, and seemed to withstand this a lot better (smaller staff maybe; not as dominated by the online side of things)?

What do you read now if you used to be a Guardian reader?

Mumsnet jewel

@Jewel1968

What do you read now if you used to be a Guardian reader?

I used to love the Guardian when I was late teens/ early 20's. Never thought I would be a subscriber to The Times, but hey ho.

I still occasionally have a sneaky look at what the Guardian is writing, but it just makes me angry and frustrated.

I assume it's largely down to the editor. Viner is presumably sympathetic to the trans activist cause and the Guardian has a young, woke staff. A couple of Guardian journalists are very shrill in their promotion of trans activism - notably Zoe Williams and Owen Jones. Combine that with the Guardian's decision to launch a US site, aimed at sheep-like American liberals, and it makes a certain amount of sense.

I believe the Observer senior editorial team are more sceptical about the whole issue. And I think there is historic rivalry between the two papers - the Observer wasn't entirely happy about being taken over by the Guardian - so this is one way the Observer can differentiate itself.

the saturday guardian used to be my treat, and the guardian online was where I went for news and comment.

but during the 00's it just became less and less good. there's only so much i want to read columns by a dad who lives in a london suburb and sometimes takes his children to a toddler group and therefore merits his own regular spot in the family section.

and the lifestyle stuff (making bunting, cakes with 77 ingredients) just made me feel faintly panicky.

It was actually with a sense of relief that I took the decision to never buy the saturday guardian again. i realised i had been buying it from a sense of obligation for a very long time. my life was enhanced by its removal.

This is worth a read.

gendercriticalwoman.blog/2019/07/15/why-are-the-guardian-suddenly-so-woeful-on-womens-rights/?amp=1

Trying to capture the US market has pulled them away from class as an issue and into ID politics. The Observer has seemed more old-school socialist for some years now.

[quote BraveBananaBadge]This is worth a read.

gendercriticalwoman.blog/2019/07/15/why-are-the-guardian-suddenly-so-woeful-on-womens-rights/?amp=1[/quote]
So very informative.It answers so many questions.Thanks for posting.

I've been appalled by some articles recently, and not just the TWAW drivel.

Last week a piece was in there about how the Falklands aren't actually ours, and two obituaries recently have been incredibly distasteful- Sarah Harding's and Tom Parker's did nothing but sneer.

Then there was the removal of my right to comment because I posed the belief that not being able to define what a woman is will affect Keir Starmer's chances of winning an election.

I've also detected a lot of misinformation and a political misrepresentation of facts when it comes to their covid coverage.

With all of this, combined with some ghastly columnists and their staff tearing chunks out of each other on Twitter, it's a wonder Kath Viner is still there, given she seems to have done absolutely nothing to tackle this.

[quote BraveBananaBadge]This is worth a read.

gendercriticalwoman.blog/2019/07/15/why-are-the-guardian-suddenly-so-woeful-on-womens-rights/?amp=1[/quote]
Indeed!

That is hair-raising and informative. So it is "follow the money" as usual.
This topic deserves a proper investigation by an investigative journalist, because there are probably more avenues to explore.