Hadley Freeman on Woman's Hour shortly

[RoyalCorgi]

Talking about why she left the Guardian!

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001fvx6

Go for it Hadley. The Guardian censorship is shameful and I say that as a regular G reader.

@Sashohoho "I suspect it's related to the Trustees and dosh. There's a lot of money invested into these movements and organizations, to the detriment of many women and children."

Yes, it would be interesting to see the paper trail here. The Guardian is losing 'real world' readers, the sort who buy the paper or subscribe, but remains without a paywall - all the better to reach young eyeballs who like things that are free. Who is funding it to stay unpaywalled, and how much leverage are they having over who is silenced and which line is promoted?

The problem I have with CM is she has built a whole career on being an outspoken feminist, it's basically her unique selling point/.

She's not really an outspoken feminist, in my view. She just gives the illusion of being one. I feel quite conflicted about this because I used to love CM's writing and still enjoy some of her stuff. She's funny, she has a clever turn of phrase, and she writes well about the impact of poverty and the importance of reproductive rights.

But she's a lightweight. All her feminist reference points are to do with pop stars and media people. She doesn't seem to have any awareness of the long history of feminist campaigners and writers who did so much to change things for women. She doesn't grasp important analytical ideas about the structure of sex inequality and the way women are oppressed as a class. For all that she comes from a working-class background, she is at heart a liberal feminist, who is mostly interested in how individual women can progress within the system as it exists.

Who is funding it to stay unpaywalled

The Guardian's financial position is far more healthy than its jounalistic one:

pressgazette.co.uk/news/guardian-media-group-cash-surplus/

The Guardian’s endowment fund, amassed from the sale of its share in Trader Media Group and other investments, grew to a record level of £1.284bn (up from £1.148.5bn a year ago).

The Guardian does not need to make a profit. The remit of its owner the Scott Trust is to protect the journalism of The Guardian in perpetuity.

Two things occur to me. The first is that The Guardian might be around for quite some time. The second is that its strategy of being a provider of what a global left-leaning audience wants is making some headway.

Amazing that journalists would whisper to Hadley that they can't voice their views because their teenagers wouldn't like it. When did parents become so desperate for their children's approval that it prevents them doing their jobs and acting on their consciences properly? My parents never gave a flying one about my political opinions, which were totally contrary to theirs.

www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/07/20/guardian-editor-handed-inflation-busting-150000-pay-rise/

'GMG also paid its former chief executive Annette Thomas £795,000 after she left following a clash with Ms Viner over the direction of the business. Ms Thomas received a “one-off” payment on top of her £630,000 base salary, meaning she made £1.5m in 15 months on the job.

The group is still looking for a replacement for Ms Thomas and is currently headed by interim chief Keith Underwood, who was previously chief financial and operating officer.

Annual revenues at GMG climbed 13pc to £255.8m and profits rose nearly four-fold to £11.7m.

The Guardian does not have a paywall but instead relies on donations made by readers.

Over one million people made monthly contributions of at least £1 a month, while another 500,000 readers made one-off payments.

It received a total of £76.1m from its online audience, up from £68.7m the year before.

Print and advertising generated revenues of £71.5m and £73.7m respectively. The remainder was made by marketing and philanthropy.

The company is supported by its proprietor, the Scott Trust, which runs a £1.3bn investment fund. The trust said it is continuing with a strategy to invest more money in private equity funds, which have "the potential to achieve higher returns compared with traditional asset classes".

Last year the Guardian claimed that private equity is "draining British business dry".'

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Trust_Limited

Also, taken from the Guardian info at the foot of an article:

'Traffic from outside of the UK now represents around two-thirds of the Guardian’s total digital audience.'

Thank you, Arabella - good stuff. The bleak truth is that a bunch of feminists in the UK cancelling their print subscriptions isn't going to make a dent in the Guardian's income. While they are raking it in from donations from online readers (mostly young and woke, I imagine) and advertising from US companies, they really don't care that their traditional readership have given up on them.

There's an interesting subtext there, actually - who ARE these overseas readers, and are they actually leftwing? Or does having a progressive brand espousing deeply regressive sex roles and race essentialism appeal to a certain faction of the online audience?

(No, I don't think they're all bots. But maybe the Guardian's readership is progressive in name only, which means so is the Guardian...)

maybe the Guardian's readership is progressive in name only, which means so is the Guardian

I'm sure the billion-pound fund that runs the Guardian and the editor on half a million salary have the interests of ordinary folk at heart.

It would be unlikely - but amusing - to see a rash of GC articles written by women journalists in the coming days in order to refute Hadley's claims.

Really interesting ArabellaScott, thank you.

I expect it appeals to the audience of US liberals, who aren't leftwing at all in the traditional sense, but have embraced identity politics wholeheartedly. That would be why the US part of the site is even more ridiculous than the UK part, their inaccurate and offensive reporting of the Wii spa incident being a prime example.

Hadley Freeman is a mensch.

This from the transcript that @nauticant posted (thank you!) slightly bothered me:
EB: I'll also interject we're a bastion of left-leaning journalism ...

HF ... absolutely ...

EB: ... at the BBC like The Guardian absolutely wants to be

Am I taking that out of context? Because the BBC is supposed to be impartial. It's on p.8, 21:18, if anyone wants to check.

As for presenters not being allowed to have opinions, I can think of one who, due to being a 'contractor', is allowed to spout some really quite toxic things elsewhere.

Yes, that brought me up short too, but for a different reason to you, I think (although I absolutely understand your issue with it); my first thought was that, despite the right-wing trope of the BBC being full of lefties, I'm sure I've read that research into it shows that it in fact tacks slightly right.

That puzzled me too. I didn't actually hear her saying that in the interview. One does miss things. But am surprised she would say that. Was wondering if she was referring to an opinion that is often said of the BBC, rather than it being her own opinion.

That was one of the sections that I struggled over @EdithStourton and @DameHelena. I listened carefully to it a number of times and came to the conclusion that what I was doing my best to transcribe accurately was actually EB mis-speaking in some way.

And @Abitofalark.

I heard that, or something very like it, and I thought EB was being ironic.

Whoops, didn't mean to post so quickly. 'But we at the BBC are the bastion of left-leaning journalism...' eye-roll — because that's how the BBC is always characterised. And I thought Hadley's 'Absolutely' was joining in the joke.

Yes I took it as a joke too... a reference to the trumpian types who see the bbc as a communist organisation.

Oh, that makes sense, I've only read the transcript so maybe if you listen you get a different sense of it.

Yes I think that's true- although Emma isn't the best at jokes!

Oh, okay - I need to go and actually listen to that bit again. It didn't give me a jolt when I listened to the interview.

I also took it as a joke, though maybe a clunky one.