I thought I would start this thread, inspired by a post in the Hell election thread.
Shipmates have their faves but are there any papers that just report the news anymore? Is there any decent real journalism?
If you are just going for pure news then the FT and Economist *news* sections are generally relatively good and accurate. The downside is that they are occasionally not complete.
The opinion and leaders are useful for other reasons (as @alienfromzog mentions elsewhere) as long as you treat them as such.
If you want to see how the media narrative is being shaped then it can be useful to take a poll of commentary from across the press.
Some news sources may be reliable on some things but not others. The Economist and Private Eye both carry anti-trans attacks so shouldn't be considered reliable on that. The Guardian/Observer are outright anti-trans, and a key driver of the current moral panic attacking trans people along with the Murdoch press, Mail, Express etc.
The FT is about the only half decent paper at the moment and even it's not been so great recently (Henry Mance did a poor interview with Judith Butler repeating anti-trans talking points)
The full extent of the press attack on trans people belongs in Epiphanies, but it's worth noting that currently almost no UK mainstream press/broadcasting are unaffected by the current moral panic. It really is that bad.
I think with all those sources one needs to be aware of when news slips into opinion, and as their circulation has become US heavy the Economist in particular has become poor on all 'culture war' issues, be that issues of sex, gender or race, and they have a tendency to try and normalise the far right as long as they are business friendly (their coverage of Bolsonaro, Millei and Meloni).
I find The Times is consistently excellent for lighting fires with, but not as good as it used to be in all other respects (except for the puzzles).
I used to buy The Times (and yes, the puzzles are good) but, these days, rely on my online link to The Guardian. I appreciate that the Grauniad has its faults, but the puzzles, cartoons, and many of the opinion pieces are excellent.
I'm afraid that the attacks on trans people mentioned by @Louise pass under my radar, but that's my fault, and no-one else's.
No single UK newspaper or news outlet, however *respectable*, is going to suit everyone.
Some news sources may be reliable on some things but not others. The Economist and Private Eye both carry anti-trans attacks so shouldn't be considered reliable on that. The Guardian/Observer are outright anti-trans, and a key driver of the current moral panic attacking trans people along with the Murdoch press, Mail, Express etc.
The FT is about the only half decent paper at the moment and even it's not been so great recently (Henry Mance did a poor interview with Judith Butler repeating anti-trans talking points)
The full extent of the press attack on trans people belongs in Epiphanies, but it's worth noting that currently almost no UK mainstream press/broadcasting are unaffected by the current moral panic. It really is that bad.
That's interesting. I stopped reading the Guardian because it seemed to be always hunting out the gender angle on every non-political story.
Some news sources may be reliable on some things but not others. The Economist and Private Eye both carry anti-trans attacks so shouldn't be considered reliable on that. The Guardian/Observer are outright anti-trans, and a key driver of the current moral panic attacking trans people along with the Murdoch press, Mail, Express etc.
The FT is about the only half decent paper at the moment and even it's not been so great recently (Henry Mance did a poor interview with Judith Butler repeating anti-trans talking points)
The full extent of the press attack on trans people belongs in Epiphanies, but it's worth noting that currently almost no UK mainstream press/broadcasting are unaffected by the current moral panic. It really is that bad.
That's interesting. I stopped reading the Guardian because it seemed to be always hunting out the gender angle on every non-political story.
Got chopped of by a poor connection . I wanted to say that those issues are not my fight, so it eventually became tiresome.
When I was growing up we used to have the Daily mirror. As an adult we had an evening paper ( Express and Star ) and a Sunday paper, the News of the world. We haven't had an actual newspaper for years. If ever I treat myself to a breakfast in a cafe, my read of choice is The Sun.
The Guardian manages to separate news from comment most of the time, the only newspaper to do that. On the other hand, I find the G dullsville. Of course, the right wing are, well, right wing.
I used to read the Torygraph, before they slid so far to the right they were practically falling off the edge (and in fairness, my own views have shifted quite a bit to the left over recent years). Their letters section used to be quite fun (David and I both had fairly facetious letters published there a couple of times), and we enjoyed their crossword.
When we lived in Canada, we discovered the Grauniad crossword online, which unlike the Times and the Torygraph, is free, and I've continued doing it as I usually find it to be just the right amount of a challenge for the porcine grey cells.
I also find their opinion pieces generally accord with my own opinions, especially John Crace's politics sketch, which is always worth a read.
Can someone please explain to an outsider exactly what kind of paper the Times of London is now and what it was like in recent history? In the little of history I have read it is talked about as being the most important paper in the UK at the turn of the 20th century. But now I hardly hear anyone mention it as a news source and the only non-tabloid newspapers form the UK I ever seem to hear about are The Guardian, The FT, The Daily Telegraph, The Economist, and The Independent (or whatever it is called now). Why is that?
Can someone please explain to an outsider exactly what kind of paper the Times of London is now and what it was like in recent history? In the little of history I have read it is talked about as being the most important paper in the UK at the turn of the 20th century. But now I hardly hear anyone mention it as a news source and the only non-tabloid newspapers form the UK I ever seem to hear about are The Guardian, The FT, The Daily Telegraph, The Economist, and The Independent (or whatever it is called now). Why is that?
I think becoming a Murdoch mouthpiece damaged it, and then a strict paywall removed it from online discourse which reduced its relevance.
It's part of the Murdoch press and is a vile culture war rag these days punching down on whichever minority the Right wants to kick in the teeth today. There are occasional decent people who write for it but if you're drawn in by that you're giving money to the pay for all the nasty parts of it as well.
It's the polite person's answer to The Sun, all the hatred but couched in longer fancier more polite words and more respectable to be seen with.
It's part of the Murdoch press and is a vile culture war rag these days punching down on whichever minority the Right wants to kick in the teeth today. There are occasional decent people who write for it but if you're drawn in by that you're giving money to the pay for all the nasty parts of it as well.
It's the polite person's answer to The Sun, all the hatred but couched in longer fancier more polite words and more respectable to be seen with.
Twenty years ago it was a small-c conservative broadsheet paper. Editorially and in terms of commentary it was mostly establishment and right of centre but with a good range of voices. It mirrored the Guardian quite well in this regard. Serious, in depth journalism.
It was under Murdoch's empire even then but there has been an undoubted change since.
(By comparison, in the early 2000s, the Telegraph was a serious paper with quality journalism but in contrast was large-C Conservative).
I don’t take a paper. Most of them are Tory mouthpieces. At least when the Tories agree with the owner. Murdoch group papers have been sued so many times for outright lies, not to mention dubious journalistic practices.
Quite apart from issues of ownership and political leanings, one must remember that newspaper circulation is far lower these days. That not only affects their influence, but also their ability to employ lots of staff.
I do wonder if the tabloids deliberately aim their front-page headlines at people who will see and unconsciously absorb them as they pass by, as much as at the folk who actually buy them.
It's part of the Murdoch press and is a vile culture war rag these days punching down on whichever minority the Right wants to kick in the teeth today. There are occasional decent people who write for it but if you're drawn in by that you're giving money to the pay for all the nasty parts of it as well.
It's the polite person's answer to The Sun, all the hatred but couched in longer fancier more polite words and more respectable to be seen with.
I do think there's a slight danger in measuring anything against any one yardstick though.
What I know about most is defence - there is not a single newspaper in the UK, not one*, that does that subject credibly IMO. So I tend to think that if they can't do what I know about properly then why on earth should I trust them on the things I don't know about?
Basically, regardless of where a publication stands on the culture war - and I do mean regardless from the vile to the ally - the chance of me still dismissing it overall as slanted drivel that misleads its readers is quite high...
*even the in-house Navy News is known as the 'Dockyard Dandy'
I don't read a newspaper and mostly browse the Guardian online. That said, I think the anti-trans thing is real, albeit something that doesn't directly affect my browsing as I don't read anything written by some notorious G commentators.
I do feel a bit dirty when reading it admittedly.
The few times I've enjoyed reading print publications in the last decade were The Tablet (a Catholic publication which mostly I didn't understand), the Irish Times, Pink News. It might well be the novelty I enjoyed.
I've also enjoyed the New Yorker and The Atlantic (as e-publications) but I find them harder to browse for daily British news.
I have a subscription to The National, which is a useful corrective to the English unionist press but which I mostly get to read a friend's comment pieces on Highlands and Islands issues.
It's also interesting to read the Morning Star sometimes because you know exactly what their biases are but because they're so different from the mainstream they still manage to illuminate different things. Remind yourself it's written by people who think reasonable people can disagree about the Soviet reaction to the Prague Spring and you're fine.
I have a subscription to The National, which is a useful corrective to the English unionist press but which I mostly get to read a friend's comment pieces on Highlands and Islands issues.
I had a subscription to the Welsh version but sadly it didn't survive. "Nation.Cymru" (online only) can be a useful alternative.
It's part of the Murdoch press and is a vile culture war rag these days punching down on whichever minority the Right wants to kick in the teeth today. There are occasional decent people who write for it but if you're drawn in by that you're giving money to the pay for all the nasty parts of it as well.
It's the polite person's answer to The Sun, all the hatred but couched in longer fancier more polite words and more respectable to be seen with.
I do think there's a slight danger in measuring anything against any one yardstick though.
What I know about most is defence - there is not a single newspaper in the UK, not one*, that does that subject credibly IMO. So I tend to think that if they can't do what I know about properly then why on earth should I trust them on the things I don't know about?
Basically, regardless of where a publication stands on the culture war - and I do mean regardless from the vile to the ally - the chance of me still dismissing it overall as slanted drivel that misleads its readers is quite high...
*even the in-house Navy News is known as the 'Dockyard Dandy'
This is a real thing. I remember, many years ago a flying instructor saying to me that he couldn't read any newspaper because when he read any article on aviation, he knew it was wrong and then he said very similar words to the ones you've just used there: "If I know they're wrong on something I know about, how can I trust them on something I don't know about?"
I often have the same experience when reading "medical news." Ben Goldacre has written extensively about how technical subjects are often not understood at all by trained journalists. I have lamented the misreporting of economics on several threads for the same reasons.
I have a subscription to The National, which is a useful corrective to the English unionist press but which I mostly get to read a friend's comment pieces on Highlands and Islands issues.
It's also interesting to read the Morning Star sometimes because you know exactly what their biases are but because they're so different from the mainstream they still manage to illuminate different things. Remind yourself it's written by people who think reasonable people can disagree about the Soviet reaction to the Prague Spring and you're fine.
I'm always fascinated by the National. I don't know how it keeps going with a daily ABC circulation of sub 3000 and sub 350 subscribers. It's *very* niche. I'm not knocking it - but if it's come up with a model that is anything other than some well - heeled patrons dipping their hands in their pockets as a vanity project (and the Telegraph is obviously the same, but on a larger scale so it's not uncommon) then it would be worth sharing with the rest of the print media!
I don't know how many online subs The National has. I would think there is some cross-subsidisation there but I don't know whether they have a sound business model.
I don't know how many online subs The National has. I would think there is some cross-subsidisation there but I don't know whether they have a sound business model.
Sorry - I thought that was in the ABC certificate but might be print subs looking again
I don't know how many online subs The National has. I would think there is some cross-subsidisation there but I don't know whether they have a sound business model.
Sorry - I thought that was in the ABC certificate but might be print subs looking again
I get that impression too, though the cert I looked at showed nearly 600 subs.
Agreeing with @betjemaniac and @alienfromzog - I had a similar experience. I knew how bad the Scottish History articles were and then I had to research stuff said in broadsheet science and medicine stories for a while- and wow! - as, soon as I spoke to the experts they'd quoted I found they were livid about how their work had been distorted and that it was just as bad.
There are very rare exceptions - but you have to know the journalist and follow them to look out for their pieces.
The problem with The National is that they happily platform Putin fans from Alba (Alex Salmond's outfit) and various other hate mongers from that fringe. It was a cynical replacement for a very good intelligent paper The Sunday Herald which was destroyed and The National plus the Herald on Sunday substituted (HoS - very pro Scottish Labour, dodgy on trans people, one good columnist).
The Scotsman is now as sick as The Telegraph, The Times et al. Would not buy.
While I was never a Telegraph reader, back in the day I used to read the obituaries and their religion reporting. But since about 2015 it's been such a dishonest far right rag that I don't touch it anymore.
The newspapers might be declining but unfortunately they still to a very large extent set the agenda for broadcast news on Radio and TV. So as they are overwhelmingly on the right and far-right, they continue to push radio and TV news to the right and to set the agenda on what is a story. This has never been properly addressed, so they continue to have a very malevolent influence.
What most distresses me is that we've known about moral panics, how cruel and destructive they are and how they work for decades, but this is still a major part of the business model of newspapers - repeated disproportionate monstering of minorities and nothing is done about it. It's an immoral unethical practice and it goes unchecked as the newspaper regulator IPSO refuses to accept it as a problem.
I won't buy any newspaper which scapegoats minority groups which basically limits me to subscribing to small specialist outfits like The Ferret, Pink News or Assigned Media plus the FT edit (their cheapo app for ipads iPhones etc. that shares some of their good stuff)
( https://theferret.scot/ for those who're interested - very good on environment and does fact checks
https://www.assignedmedia.org daily coverage of anti-trans propaganda by trans journalists. They're a US outfit but cover a lot of British stories)
I remember, many years ago a flying instructor saying to me that he couldn't read any newspaper because when he read any article on aviation, he knew it was wrong and then he said very similar words to the ones you've just used there: "If I know they're wrong on something I know about, how can I trust them on something I don't know about?"
With me it's trains and buses (what do you mean, you guessed that?). With my wife it's education and dance. Perhaps staff cutbacks mean that journalists have to cover a broader range of topics and can't specialise?
The kindest interpretation you can put on it is that journalists simplify matters for the benefit of the average reader.
As others have said, whenever there's something in the mainstream news on a subject that I thoroughly understand, it's a simplistic rendition at best, and very often total nonsense. Therefore I have very little faith in their reliability when it comes to matters where I know little or nothing. (Most things, in truth.)
I believe the reason why billionaires choose to subsidise the failing media section is that it gives them undue influence over government and society in general. The great mass of the population is still influenced, directly or indirectly, by the content of liepapers, By indirect, I mean, for example, that the BBC is always keen to tell us what is in the headlines. I bet the PM gets a digest every day too. These agendas, which are always in the interests of super-rich people, are not helpful to national political debate.
I think it is partly because journalists are trained to focus on a story - it reminds of Pratchett’s Thief of Time. I that book he conceptualises stories and entities that float through the world bending reality to fit them.
Coming from a US perspective, where liberals try to defend the integrity of the mainstream press, especially newspapers like The NY Times and The Washington Post from accusations of liberal bias or outright lying from Trump and his supporters, all this talk of newspapers being far to the right of “other sources of news” is a bit of a novelty. I get very nervous whenever anyone calls newspapers in general “liepapers” because it sounds like one of Trump’s epithets and more specifically like the “lugenpresse” phrase used by the Nazis and resurrected of late by people associated with the Alternative for Germany party.
I know Fleet Street is a different animal than the US press. Journalists at prestigious publications in the US do tend to come largely from the same schools and move to the same cities to live, but this concentration and consequent groupthink is much more amplified in the UK.
I also know that The Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, The Wall Street Journal is owned by the Murdochs, and The NY Times, although owned by a family, the Sulzbergers, that aren’t known for any broader business empire, is still accused by the anti-establishment left of reflecting the interests of a latte-sipping limousine liberal elite that clutches its pearls at Trump and parrots woke aphorisms but avoids asking itself tough questions about how many of the evils in the world they are enabling.
Is local journalism dying and are the few people left willing to pay for the news all concentrating their subscriptions in the same few national outlets? Yes. And if you’re a real Leftist, is every commercially or politically successful US institution right wing to you? Yes.
But is our beleaguered democracy (or oligarchy with democratic characteristics) better with the newspapers it has than without it? Yes. Are any of of the American national newspapers (even the Wall Street Journal (the non-opinion parts of it), or something more mass market like USA Today or the Christian Science Monitor) good to include in your mix of news sources, as long as it isn’t your only source of news. I think so.
Can’t comment on the UK though. Maybe the major political beef with the press in the UK comes from the left, whereas in the US it comes from the right. Not sure.
Coming from a US perspective, where liberals try to defend the integrity of the mainstream press, especially newspapers like The NY Times and The Washington Post from accusations of liberal bias or outright lying from Trump and his supporters, all this talk of newspapers being far to the right of “other sources of news” is a bit of a novelty. I get very nervous whenever anyone calls newspapers in general “liepapers” because it sounds like one of Trump’s epithets and more specifically like the “lugenpresse” phrase used by the Nazis and resurrected of late by people associated with the Alternative for Germany party.
I know Fleet Street is a different animal than the US press. Journalists at prestigious publications in the US do tend to come largely from the same schools and move to the same cities to live, but this concentration and consequent groupthink is much more amplified in the UK.
I also know that The Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, The Wall Street Journal is owned by the Murdochs, and The NY Times, although owned by a family, the Sulzbergers, that aren’t known for any broader business empire, is still accused by the anti-establishment left of reflecting the interests of a latte-sipping limousine liberal elite that clutches its pearls at Trump and parrots woke aphorisms but avoids asking itself tough questions about how many of the evils in the world they are enabling.
Is local journalism dying and are the few people left willing to pay for the news all concentrating their subscriptions in the same few national outlets? Yes. And if you’re a real Leftist, is every commercially or politically successful US institution right wing to you? Yes.
But is our beleaguered democracy (or oligarchy with democratic characteristics) better with the newspapers it has than without it? Yes. Are any of of the American national newspapers (even the Wall Street Journal (the non-opinion parts of it), or something more mass market like USA Today or the Christian Science Monitor) good to include in your mix of news sources, as long as it isn’t your only source of news. I think so.
Can’t comment on the UK though. Maybe the major political beef with the press in the UK comes from the left, whereas in the US it comes from the right. Not sure.
Not really. The billionaire owners of newspapers lose money but they're prepared to for the huge influence it buys them.
I think the way into this is that the Daily Mail / Express are essentially Fox News in print form. It's not bias I object to per se. It's the complete lack of facts and ethics. Trump would fit right in in most of the UK's editorial rooms. Indeed our own Trump-wannabe former 'leader' is paid a considerable sum to write for one of these publications...
Coming from a US perspective, where liberals try to defend the integrity of the mainstream press, especially newspapers like The NY Times and The Washington Post from accusations of liberal bias or outright lying from Trump and his supporters, all this talk of newspapers being far to the right of “other sources of news” is a bit of a novelty. I get very nervous whenever anyone calls newspapers in general “liepapers” because it sounds like one of Trump’s epithets and more specifically like the “lugenpresse” phrase used by the Nazis and resurrected of late by people associated with the Alternative for Germany party.
I know Fleet Street is a different animal than the US press. Journalists at prestigious publications in the US do tend to come largely from the same schools and move to the same cities to live, but this concentration and consequent groupthink is much more amplified in the UK.
I also know that The Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, The Wall Street Journal is owned by the Murdochs, and The NY Times, although owned by a family, the Sulzbergers, that aren’t known for any broader business empire, is still accused by the anti-establishment left of reflecting the interests of a latte-sipping limousine liberal elite that clutches its pearls at Trump and parrots woke aphorisms but avoids asking itself tough questions about how many of the evils in the world they are enabling.
Is local journalism dying and are the few people left willing to pay for the news all concentrating their subscriptions in the same few national outlets? Yes. And if you’re a real Leftist, is every commercially or politically successful US institution right wing to you? Yes.
But is our beleaguered democracy (or oligarchy with democratic characteristics) better with the newspapers it has than without it? Yes. Are any of of the American national newspapers (even the Wall Street Journal (the non-opinion parts of it), or something more mass market like USA Today or the Christian Science Monitor) good to include in your mix of news sources, as long as it isn’t your only source of news. I think so.
Can’t comment on the UK though. Maybe the major political beef with the press in the UK comes from the left, whereas in the US it comes from the right. Not sure.
Not really. The billionaire owners of newspapers lose money but they're prepared to for the huge influence it buys them.
I think the way into this is that the Daily Mail / Express are essentially Fox News in print form. It's not bias I object to per se. It's the complete lack of facts and ethics. Trump would fit right in in most of the UK's editorial rooms. Indeed our own Trump-wannabe former 'leader' is paid a considerable sum to write for one of these publications...
AFZ
Yes, I think the revolving door between right wing pseudo-journalists and the Parliamentary Conservative Party is worth highlighting. Johnson, Gove, Osborne...
Coming from a US perspective, where liberals try to defend the integrity of the mainstream press, especially newspapers like The NY Times and The Washington Post from accusations of liberal bias or outright lying from Trump and his supporters, all this talk of newspapers being far to the right of “other sources of news” is a bit of a novelty.
Can’t comment on the UK though. Maybe the major political beef with the press in the UK comes from the left, whereas in the US it comes from the right. Not sure.
The media class in the UK is incredibly incestuous and concentrated in one part of the country. In addition, there's a revolving door between journalists and political parties (latterly that has been much more obvious on political right, but the same thing happened - to a lesser extent - when Labour were in power) including ties of family and marriage.
Most of the print media is owned by a handful of rich people to the point where as a journalist you have to keep people on side as there are a limited number of career paths and prize jobs.
The result is a kind of herd mentality in terms of what can be mentioned and when. On a few occasions the US papers have broken a story about the UK media, and the result has been an impressively disciplined silence.
At the moment a couple of British journalists have gone over to work at the post, and result has been a revisiting of a scandal (Phone hacking) that was never properly investigated in the UK as it involved senior figures in media:
I remember, many years ago a flying instructor saying to me that he couldn't read any newspaper because when he read any article on aviation, he knew it was wrong and then he said very similar words to the ones you've just used there: "If I know they're wrong on something I know about, how can I trust them on something I don't know about?"
This is also my experience and assumption. I assume that journalists are similarly inaccurate on the subjects I don't know about as they are on the ones I do know about, which means their level of accuracy falls somewhere between "I heard a bloke in the pub use words that sounded a bit like these ones in vaguely this order, so let's pretend that this is right", and a GCSE-level textbook.
I remember, many years ago a flying instructor saying to me that he couldn't read any newspaper because when he read any article on aviation, he knew it was wrong and then he said very similar words to the ones you've just used there: "If I know they're wrong on something I know about, how can I trust them on something I don't know about?"
With me it's trains and buses (what do you mean, you guessed that?). With my wife it's education and dance. Perhaps staff cutbacks mean that journalists have to cover a broader range of topics and can't specialise?
Astronomy and palaeontology stories are often badly and inaccurately treated, although we do seem to have finally got through to them what dinosaurs are (and more importantly in this context, what they are not).
I remember, many years ago a flying instructor saying to me that he couldn't read any newspaper because when he read any article on aviation, he knew it was wrong and then he said very similar words to the ones you've just used there: "If I know they're wrong on something I know about, how can I trust them on something I don't know about?"
This is also my experience and assumption. I assume that journalists are similarly inaccurate on the subjects I don't know about as they are on the ones I do know about, which means their level of accuracy falls somewhere between "I heard a bloke in the pub use words that sounded a bit like these ones in vaguely this order, so let's pretend that this is right", and a GCSE-level textbook.
Combine this with the revolving door with politics and you can understand why we get ridiculous government policies like Gove's dickering about with GCSEs and A-Levels. Except it's worse in education because everyone's been to school so don't even bother picking up a textbook.
My God, this is depressing. I would’ve assumed that there would’ve been better newspapers in the UK than we have here. There’s nothing over there that’s equivalent to something like the New York Times or the Washington Post?
My God, this is depressing. I would’ve assumed that there would’ve been better newspapers in the UK than we have here. There’s nothing over there that’s equivalent to something like the New York Times or the Washington Post?
My God, this is depressing. I would’ve assumed that there would’ve been better newspapers in the UK than we have here. There’s nothing over there that’s equivalent to something like the New York Times or the Washington Post?
I was at university with multiple US people who now work for the NYT and Washington Post*... the high profile ones all know the high profile UK ones. So the idea that there's a power nexus in the UK between journalism and government (which is true) doesn't look *that* distinct from the US. It's still all the same people.
*usually spending their summers interning for Democrat senators.
Comments
The opinion and leaders are useful for other reasons (as @alienfromzog mentions elsewhere) as long as you treat them as such.
If you want to see how the media narrative is being shaped then it can be useful to take a poll of commentary from across the press.
The Grauniad is OK up to a point. The best one for investigative reporting is Private Eye.
The FT is about the only half decent paper at the moment and even it's not been so great recently (Henry Mance did a poor interview with Judith Butler repeating anti-trans talking points)
The full extent of the press attack on trans people belongs in Epiphanies, but it's worth noting that currently almost no UK mainstream press/broadcasting are unaffected by the current moral panic. It really is that bad.
I put it here to people a chance to rant about how awful the papers are. If it doesn’t go that way I will am happy to ask for it to be moved.
I used to buy The Times (and yes, the puzzles are good) but, these days, rely on my online link to The Guardian. I appreciate that the Grauniad has its faults, but the puzzles, cartoons, and many of the opinion pieces are excellent.
I'm afraid that the attacks on trans people mentioned by @Louise pass under my radar, but that's my fault, and no-one else's.
No single UK newspaper or news outlet, however *respectable*, is going to suit everyone.
That's interesting. I stopped reading the Guardian because it seemed to be always hunting out the gender angle on every non-political story.
Got chopped of by a poor connection . I wanted to say that those issues are not my fight, so it eventually became tiresome.
When we lived in Canada, we discovered the Grauniad crossword online, which unlike the Times and the Torygraph, is free, and I've continued doing it as I usually find it to be just the right amount of a challenge for the porcine grey cells.
I also find their opinion pieces generally accord with my own opinions, especially John Crace's politics sketch, which is always worth a read.
I'm enjoying the Beeb's fact checking at the moment.
When I have one - very rare these days - it tends to be the i.
I think becoming a Murdoch mouthpiece damaged it, and then a strict paywall removed it from online discourse which reduced its relevance.
It's the polite person's answer to The Sun, all the hatred but couched in longer fancier more polite words and more respectable to be seen with.
In one!
Twenty years ago it was a small-c conservative broadsheet paper. Editorially and in terms of commentary it was mostly establishment and right of centre but with a good range of voices. It mirrored the Guardian quite well in this regard. Serious, in depth journalism.
It was under Murdoch's empire even then but there has been an undoubted change since.
(By comparison, in the early 2000s, the Telegraph was a serious paper with quality journalism but in contrast was large-C Conservative).
Both are pretentious rags, these days, sadly.
AFZ
I do wonder if the tabloids deliberately aim their front-page headlines at people who will see and unconsciously absorb them as they pass by, as much as at the folk who actually buy them.
I do think there's a slight danger in measuring anything against any one yardstick though.
What I know about most is defence - there is not a single newspaper in the UK, not one*, that does that subject credibly IMO. So I tend to think that if they can't do what I know about properly then why on earth should I trust them on the things I don't know about?
Basically, regardless of where a publication stands on the culture war - and I do mean regardless from the vile to the ally - the chance of me still dismissing it overall as slanted drivel that misleads its readers is quite high...
*even the in-house Navy News is known as the 'Dockyard Dandy'
I do feel a bit dirty when reading it admittedly.
The few times I've enjoyed reading print publications in the last decade were The Tablet (a Catholic publication which mostly I didn't understand), the Irish Times, Pink News. It might well be the novelty I enjoyed.
I've also enjoyed the New Yorker and The Atlantic (as e-publications) but I find them harder to browse for daily British news.
It's also interesting to read the Morning Star sometimes because you know exactly what their biases are but because they're so different from the mainstream they still manage to illuminate different things. Remind yourself it's written by people who think reasonable people can disagree about the Soviet reaction to the Prague Spring and you're fine.
This is a real thing. I remember, many years ago a flying instructor saying to me that he couldn't read any newspaper because when he read any article on aviation, he knew it was wrong and then he said very similar words to the ones you've just used there: "If I know they're wrong on something I know about, how can I trust them on something I don't know about?"
I often have the same experience when reading "medical news." Ben Goldacre has written extensively about how technical subjects are often not understood at all by trained journalists. I have lamented the misreporting of economics on several threads for the same reasons.
I do not know where that leaves us, though.
AFZ
I'm always fascinated by the National. I don't know how it keeps going with a daily ABC circulation of sub 3000 and sub 350 subscribers. It's *very* niche. I'm not knocking it - but if it's come up with a model that is anything other than some well - heeled patrons dipping their hands in their pockets as a vanity project (and the Telegraph is obviously the same, but on a larger scale so it's not uncommon) then it would be worth sharing with the rest of the print media!
I get that impression too, though the cert I looked at showed nearly 600 subs.
There are very rare exceptions - but you have to know the journalist and follow them to look out for their pieces.
The problem with The National is that they happily platform Putin fans from Alba (Alex Salmond's outfit) and various other hate mongers from that fringe. It was a cynical replacement for a very good intelligent paper The Sunday Herald which was destroyed and The National plus the Herald on Sunday substituted (HoS - very pro Scottish Labour, dodgy on trans people, one good columnist).
The Scotsman is now as sick as The Telegraph, The Times et al. Would not buy.
While I was never a Telegraph reader, back in the day I used to read the obituaries and their religion reporting. But since about 2015 it's been such a dishonest far right rag that I don't touch it anymore.
The newspapers might be declining but unfortunately they still to a very large extent set the agenda for broadcast news on Radio and TV. So as they are overwhelmingly on the right and far-right, they continue to push radio and TV news to the right and to set the agenda on what is a story. This has never been properly addressed, so they continue to have a very malevolent influence.
What most distresses me is that we've known about moral panics, how cruel and destructive they are and how they work for decades, but this is still a major part of the business model of newspapers - repeated disproportionate monstering of minorities and nothing is done about it. It's an immoral unethical practice and it goes unchecked as the newspaper regulator IPSO refuses to accept it as a problem.
I won't buy any newspaper which scapegoats minority groups which basically limits me to subscribing to small specialist outfits like The Ferret, Pink News or Assigned Media plus the FT edit (their cheapo app for ipads iPhones etc. that shares some of their good stuff)
( https://theferret.scot/ for those who're interested - very good on environment and does fact checks
https://www.assignedmedia.org daily coverage of anti-trans propaganda by trans journalists. They're a US outfit but cover a lot of British stories)
As others have said, whenever there's something in the mainstream news on a subject that I thoroughly understand, it's a simplistic rendition at best, and very often total nonsense. Therefore I have very little faith in their reliability when it comes to matters where I know little or nothing. (Most things, in truth.)
I believe the reason why billionaires choose to subsidise the failing media section is that it gives them undue influence over government and society in general. The great mass of the population is still influenced, directly or indirectly, by the content of liepapers, By indirect, I mean, for example, that the BBC is always keen to tell us what is in the headlines. I bet the PM gets a digest every day too. These agendas, which are always in the interests of super-rich people, are not helpful to national political debate.
Or did it come naturally to him?
I know Fleet Street is a different animal than the US press. Journalists at prestigious publications in the US do tend to come largely from the same schools and move to the same cities to live, but this concentration and consequent groupthink is much more amplified in the UK.
I also know that The Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, The Wall Street Journal is owned by the Murdochs, and The NY Times, although owned by a family, the Sulzbergers, that aren’t known for any broader business empire, is still accused by the anti-establishment left of reflecting the interests of a latte-sipping limousine liberal elite that clutches its pearls at Trump and parrots woke aphorisms but avoids asking itself tough questions about how many of the evils in the world they are enabling.
Is local journalism dying and are the few people left willing to pay for the news all concentrating their subscriptions in the same few national outlets? Yes. And if you’re a real Leftist, is every commercially or politically successful US institution right wing to you? Yes.
But is our beleaguered democracy (or oligarchy with democratic characteristics) better with the newspapers it has than without it? Yes. Are any of of the American national newspapers (even the Wall Street Journal (the non-opinion parts of it), or something more mass market like USA Today or the Christian Science Monitor) good to include in your mix of news sources, as long as it isn’t your only source of news. I think so.
Can’t comment on the UK though. Maybe the major political beef with the press in the UK comes from the left, whereas in the US it comes from the right. Not sure.
Not really. The billionaire owners of newspapers lose money but they're prepared to for the huge influence it buys them.
I think the way into this is that the Daily Mail / Express are essentially Fox News in print form. It's not bias I object to per se. It's the complete lack of facts and ethics. Trump would fit right in in most of the UK's editorial rooms. Indeed our own Trump-wannabe former 'leader' is paid a considerable sum to write for one of these publications...
AFZ
Yes, I think the revolving door between right wing pseudo-journalists and the Parliamentary Conservative Party is worth highlighting. Johnson, Gove, Osborne...
The media class in the UK is incredibly incestuous and concentrated in one part of the country. In addition, there's a revolving door between journalists and political parties (latterly that has been much more obvious on political right, but the same thing happened - to a lesser extent - when Labour were in power) including ties of family and marriage.
Most of the print media is owned by a handful of rich people to the point where as a journalist you have to keep people on side as there are a limited number of career paths and prize jobs.
The result is a kind of herd mentality in terms of what can be mentioned and when. On a few occasions the US papers have broken a story about the UK media, and the result has been an impressively disciplined silence.
At the moment a couple of British journalists have gone over to work at the post, and result has been a revisiting of a scandal (Phone hacking) that was never properly investigated in the UK as it involved senior figures in media:
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/washington-post-publisher-and-incoming-editor-are-said-to-have-used-stolen-records-in-britain/
My sense is that the Times went downhill rather earlier than the Telegraph did.
This is also my experience and assumption. I assume that journalists are similarly inaccurate on the subjects I don't know about as they are on the ones I do know about, which means their level of accuracy falls somewhere between "I heard a bloke in the pub use words that sounded a bit like these ones in vaguely this order, so let's pretend that this is right", and a GCSE-level textbook.
Astronomy and palaeontology stories are often badly and inaccurately treated, although we do seem to have finally got through to them what dinosaurs are (and more importantly in this context, what they are not).
Combine this with the revolving door with politics and you can understand why we get ridiculous government policies like Gove's dickering about with GCSEs and A-Levels. Except it's worse in education because everyone's been to school so don't even bother picking up a textbook.
The Guardian is probably the closest equivalent.
I was at university with multiple US people who now work for the NYT and Washington Post*... the high profile ones all know the high profile UK ones. So the idea that there's a power nexus in the UK between journalism and government (which is true) doesn't look *that* distinct from the US. It's still all the same people.
*usually spending their summers interning for Democrat senators.