Lost trust in the media

[SuperSleepyBaby]

I feel the transgender issue has had a big effect on how i feel about the media.

Like the Guardian reporting on Wi-Spa. I used to like the Guardian but dont look at it anymore.

And every newspaper, TV channel using female pronouns for male rapists etc.

There’s an agenda being rammed down people’s throats.

It also makes me question other issues that are reported. I used to be more trusting.

Yes, but they swear a lot, so you can tell they're more grown up and serious.

Younger people are taking, generally, a lot longer to reach those critical adult milestones of having a job, getting married or settling down, having children, than they once did, and are still living a self centred lifestyle for a lot longer. Travelling the world, partying, socialising etc. It is easy to have high ideals when those ideals have yet to be tested in the real world. I do think with age and experience comes more practical wisdom and generally a lot less naivety.

Young people always think they are the only ones ever to have rebelled or questioned things; or engaged in mad experimentation etc Each generation seems to have to learn the same lessons as the previous one, anew each time.

https://x.com/notfarleftatall/status/1892175453621747770?s=46&t=ZX_bLozRqm8etdGICMcAvA

It’s quite funny after reading the Lambrini Girls with their punk/rebel messaging that this was reposted on my timeline. The ‘modern trans movement’.

I'm working class. Where do they get the idea Terfs are wealthy middle class women. Is it because of JKR? From what I've seen, many young TRA protesters appear to be university students/middle class. Not exactly deprived council estate residents living on benefits.

You’re describing almost the exact situation that Deptford’s People project experienced. Taken over by MC student activists to the detriment of local female WC population.

Indeed. They have zero clue about WC womens needs/concerns/priorities

Younger women railing at older women is a very common sign of defensive internalised misogyny.

Having bought their way to success the Lambrini girls seem to be fuelled by self hatred:

'While Phoebe grew up in Brighton and went to a “bang average state school”, Lilly moved from Germany to Portugal to England, and attended private school. “It’s really important to be transparent about these things; I would never sit here and say I didn’t grow up privileged because I did,” she explains.

... Things have gone quickly for us because we had this money that we were able to put into the band when it was the right time to strike. And there are so many bands that don’t have that to dip into.”

...“Success is bought. We wouldn’t be doing this interview now if we didn’t have a press person that City Slang, our label, is paying for,” she says. “You need money behind you, or nepotism...

“If we hadn’t had that £6k to put into the EP, if Lilly wasn’t in this band, I wouldn’t be in a band that was doing well because I don’t have the means. You can be the most talented cunt. You can be the most engaging musician who is doing something quote-unquote important. You can be all those things and still be fucking slept on because in order to be a successful musician you have to give every single bit of the essence of your being; all of your time needs to go into this thing. And unless mummy and daddy are paying your fucking rent, you can’t do that.”'

https://diymag.com/cover-feature/lambrini-girls-who-let-the-dogs-out-class-of-2025

I hope they grow up a bit soon, for their sakes. It's all a bit desperate and depressing.

Gosh, they were smug and clueless!

Sorry you are not engaging Ph3. I didn't think the emoji was snarky, I thought you were making the comment that all this junk in our newspapers is unbelievable - a reasonable comment and one I agree with.
For some reason MN is particularly snarky about some povs, too. 🙄

And does it not occur to them that an enemy power with warlike territorial ambitions might be far more transphobic than anything they would ever experience in England? Blithering idiots.

Now up to the part in the Harry Potter books when Cornelius Fudge has to admit to the Wizarding community that Voldemort has in fact returned and that Harry and Dumbledore were right all along.

There's definite parallels to the current desperate backpedalling by Scottish politicians and Scottish newspapers regarding the GRR bill and Peggie ET.

The same with the CBC here in Canada. They are really awful.

I first saw it with the trans issues, mainly they deal with it through strategic non-reporting which seems to be how left wing media make sure they give the narrative they want. Not fake facts but suppression of facts.

But soon enough I noticed it really egregiously around some indigenous issues, and then it was horrible around COVID. Some of their reporting around climate issues is also very shoddy.

These were three areas where I knew them to be suppressing or irresponsibly reporting, but I just think now, why would I believe anything they say?

I also think - it should be no surprise these are areas where many conservatives push back greatly, and sometimes have wacko theories. Because there is no real engagement it encourages the development of that kind of thing.

And it's not just media but academia, and the medical sector. I have no trust in their intellectual or social integrity of those people.

No, I don't think you are wrong, there has been a huge change in journalism.

I was at university with a lot of budding journalists, all doing a degree in journalism - something that didn't exist in my grandfather's time. These were middle class kids who were determined to be activists, Few were interested in hard news, most wanted to do features and opinion type stuff.

This is quite different from the older type of person who became a journalist, many of who were wc and had never been to university. Most had other careers before journalism.

In the old days regional press used to recruit from their local communities and no degree was necessary. So you had working class journalists from all over the country entering the system. The best got recruited onto the national papers so you had working class journalists entering the national system too. They were recruited on experience, ie ability to deliver a good story.

Nowadays I believe the main pipeline into the national press is through their own traineeship programmes which favour university graduates and those who meet their own 'vision' of how their journalists should think.

Also the slow demise of traditional journalism means more job insecurity so people are less inclined to rock the boat with opinions deemed to not fit.

And when media outlets go on about ‘misinformation’ now - i just think ‘but you pretend men are women’.

I also think they mean by 'misinformation' stuff they don't agree with. Censorship, and they do not even hide it.

I don't know if there was ever a Golden Age when journalists reported nothing but the facts.

I grew up knowing which newspaper supported which political party, in fact you could know which way a family voted by whether they were an Irish Press or and Irish Independent family, and in the evening an Evening Press or an Evening Herald family. In the past you could probably even make a good guess at their religion, if they read the Irish Times.

You knew the editorial slant, and made allowances for it; and not all stories were susceptible to editorial slant anyway.

Now that there is access to not only a whole range of news outlets, but also to authoritative, referenced research papers online, it's possible to arrive at a reasonably acceptable version of things. It's also possible to identify individual journalists who, over the years, you have assessed as being reliable.

For instance, a PP mentioned being unhappy with media coverage of climate change - fortunately, there is lots of research published online, you can check the credentials of the authors, you can crosscheck opposing views and their sources, and make your own mind up.

So we are not totally dependent on the media, or worse still Social Media, if we want to form our own opinions on contentious subjects. I still use the 'MSM' to supply me with the topics, but I rely on myself for the opinions.

There was always slant, but I do think there was a qualitative difference in terms of commitment to journalistic ethics. There was a belief that you had to report the facts as honestly as you could without trying to slant the story. Did that always happen, no, but it was very much considered the ideal and something to strive for.

Many of the best journalists were essentially cynics, or counter-cultural types, who questioned everything, even if they had party allegiances. If you look at some of the great 20th century writers, a lot of them started as journalists, Hemmingway, Graham Greene, Joan Didion, George Orwell. Even where they were associated with the left, they didn't tend to be tribalistic.

Spot on.

I had the same feeling, the realisation that we are being bombarded with constant articles about trans kids, trans celebraties, state funded trans parades, trans storylines, trans education in schools and workplaces and language policing.

The media have been the propaganda arm of the state, either enthusiastically joining in or meekly following the language policing, so much for a free press, no different to North Korea.

no different to North Korea.
Well maybe just a tiny bit different, Herewegoagain29, if you apply some of the level-headed unbiased critical analysis we expect of journalists.

I have retired family members who spend a good portion of their day reading the news. One of them, who I think is pretty pro-Palestine, did acknowledge he thought the BBC had a pro-Palestine bias. But he also takes what the BBC has to say about Trump at face value, which means he cannot understand (or perhaps doesn't want to understand) the American voters' perspective. Nor can he understand why the Russians "love Putin so much". This is from a man who would have been on the receiving end of this same lack of empathy when he voted for Brexit.

Being able to understand someone else's views (even if you don't share them, or find them abhorrent) is a seriously important skill to develop. These days I find that looking at a variety of opinions across social media is a good way of figuring out a more nuanced issue - or even one that seems to have a blatantly "correct" side. Unfortunately it can be very difficult to tell whether an opinion is grounded in truth or a lie, as there's misinformation all over the place and fact checkers cannot always be trusted to be impartial.

I am surprised to see this published in the Guardian as it pretty much descibes their mindset.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/feb/19/leftwing-activists-less-likely-work-political-rivals-other-uk-groups-study

I agree, but maybe it will encourage readers to see that shutting out the opinion of others is a demonstration of intolerance, not purity.

Being able to understand someone else's views (even if you don't share them, or find them abhorrent) is a seriously important skill to develop. These days I find that looking at a variety of opinions across social media is a good way of figuring out a more nuanced issue - or even one that seems to have a blatantly "correct" side. Unfortunately it can be very difficult to tell whether an opinion is grounded in truth or a lie, as there's misinformation all over the place and fact checkers cannot always be trusted to be impartial.

Great post