I also find their opinion pieces generally accord with my own opinions
Any time I find myself agreeing with every opinion piece in a newspaper, I make sure to buy a different one the next day. I read them to see what other people think, not to have my own thoughts reflected back at me.
I also find their opinion pieces generally accord with my own opinions
Any time I find myself agreeing with every opinion piece in a newspaper, I make sure to buy a different one the next day. I read them to see what other people think, not to have my own thoughts reflected back at me.
I can always count on Simon Jenkins to write something utterly moronic in The Guardian.
I also find their opinion pieces generally accord with my own opinions
Any time I find myself agreeing with every opinion piece in a newspaper, I make sure to buy a different one the next day. I read them to see what other people think, not to have my own thoughts reflected back at me.
I can always count on Simon Jenkins to write something utterly moronic in The Guardian.
Any time I find myself agreeing with every opinion piece in a newspaper, I make sure to buy a different one the next day. I read them to see what other people think, not to have my own thoughts reflected back at me.
My wife reads Certain Newspapers online (as much as is possible without paying!) for the same reason.[/quote]
I also find their opinion pieces generally accord with my own opinions
Any time I find myself agreeing with every opinion piece in a newspaper, I make sure to buy a different one the next day. I read them to see what other people think, not to have my own thoughts reflected back at me.
I'd go so far as to say I only buy newspapers I disagree with - I've got no wish to hand over money to someone to have my tummy tickled and beliefs/prejudices reinforced. Much better to start the day with a good 'you think what??' and stuff like Brexit comes as less of a surprise... When a print edition still existed I used to read the Independent because of the absolute car crash that was their comments page as it lurched from Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to Bruce Anderson and off after that in another direction! You didn't know what you were going to get when you opened it.
Agree about Simon Jenkins - I've come to the conclusion it might be a form of performance art and he does it knowingly.
How is it that most papers in London became center-right to right wing in their opinion pieces, their news coverage, or both? Was it always this way? I know the Independent was founded to be “different” so was it the case back then as well? Is the Mirror the only London paper with a history of supporting Labour? Why is it that the main “progressive” (at least historically) in the UK newspaper is The (Manchester) Guardian rather than any London paper? (I know The Guardian is nonprofit, which may have something to do with it, but is it something about London or Manchester in particular?)
How is it that most papers in London became center-right to right wing in their opinion pieces, their news coverage, or both?
Mainly down to media ownership by a handful of billionaire owners - some of the papers run at a loss (vanity outlets but on a different scale).
(I know The Guardian is nonprofit, which may have something to do with it, but is it something about London or Manchester in particular?)
Probably the non-profit connection; it's not necessarily the location (most national papers are based in London, and as per my prior posts they draw on the same set of people in terms of recruitment). The Manchester Guardian was originally founded as a form of controlled opposition - it was started by a cotton merchant right after the Peterloo Massacre and the closure of the more radical Manchester Observer.
My theory is it’s a reaction to big L Liberal domination of the ‘Establishment’ in the 19th century. The Times blows with the government, so in the 19th century was mostly Liberal, the Telegraph reacted to that then lurched further right in the early 20th century when it absorbed the Morning Post.
The Mail and Express both started late 19th century to give news to people who were neither the Liberal elite nor the old landed families.
There’s also an element of people selling what sells. We can all legitimately criticise Murdoch but he’s a newspaperman who happens to be an over powerful billionaire with too much power and influence.
But he created the (hard right) Sun out of the ashes of a left wing paper on its last legs because no one wanted to read it.
I know it’s chicken and egg, but there’s a big dose of ‘giving the people what they want’ alongside the ‘telling the people what they want’ and often that gets forgotten IMO.
So all that’s really happened is Tory hegemony in the 20th century making the Times a paper of the right. Watch. It’ll be Starmerite within minutes of the election result.
So all that’s really happened is Tory hegemony in the 20th century making the Times a paper of the right. Watch. It’ll be Starmerite within minutes of the election result.
While it endorsed Blair it was always pulling to the right. If it does come out for Starmer (it might well do) I doubt that will change.
I’m not saying it will come out for it, I’m saying it will be of it as soon as ‘it’ starts
I understood that, I just disagree - it might mouth support for Starmer but it will continue to trumpet a right wing agenda beyond what even Starmer would submit to.
For @stonespring and @ChastMastr's benefit, it's quite important to stress that when one talks of the Manchester Guardian being Liberal, that means in the British sense of that word, not what it means in the U.S. That remained to some extent the case until at least as late as the 1950s, and there are still sometimes traces of that identity even now it has moved to London. Although it has gradually over time shifted more to a Labour identity, it's not emphatically Labour in the way that the Daily Mirror is and that the Daily Telegraph is Conservative.
By Conservative and Reform standards, though, it's definitely more 'woke' than other newspapers, whatever the various protagonists for the hard right may mean by that.
Again, for the benefit of U.S. shipmates, I've picked up the impression that people in the U.S.A. respect the serious press more than people do here. This may be something to do with the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, with its express reference to freedom of the press. I sense you're higher minded towards the press/media, less cynical about it than we are. It's possible even that journalists, or some of them, are actually higher minded about their role. Although it was mocking a fictitious television station rather than a newspaper, could a programme like Drop the Dead Donkey have been the success in the US that it was here?
For @stonespring and @ChastMastr's benefit, it's quite important to stress that when one talks of the Manchester Guardian being Liberal, that means in the British sense of that word, not what it means in the U.S. That remained to some extent the case until at least as late as the 1950s, and there are still sometimes traces of that identity even now it has moved to London. Although it has gradually over time shifted more to a Labour identity, it's not emphatically Labour in the way that the Daily Mirror is and that the Daily Telegraph is Conservative.
By Conservative and Reform standards, though, it's definitely more 'woke' than other newspapers, whatever the various protagonists for the hard right may mean by that.
Again, for the benefit of U.S. shipmates, I've picked up the impression that people in the U.S.A. respect the serious press more than people do here. This may be something to do with the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, with its express reference to freedom of the press. I sense you're higher minded towards the press/media, less cynical about it than we are. It's possible even that journalists, or some of them, are actually higher minded about their role. Although it was mocking a fictitious television station rather than a newspaper, could a programme like Drop the Dead Donkey have been the success in the US that it was here?
So what do people rely on for solid journalism in the UK these days? The BBC? Over here in the US it’s considered a very good journalistic source.
On the whole - with the caveats above - the Guardian tries to be reliable and to separate out fact from opinion. (Although you can't separate out facts from opinion about what facts are important.)
So what do people rely on for solid journalism in the UK these days? The BBC? Over here in the US it’s considered a very good journalistic source.
I'm assuming you only get the World Service in the USA, which is much less interested in UK politics rather than world news and has less stake in the subject matter. Most people here are watching or listening to domestic channels.
There's been a lot of controversy here as to whether the BBC is too subservient to the government in power at the time. It has been particularly argued recently that the Conservatives have been using the threat of taking away their access to the licence fee to lean on it. So there has been quite a lot of concern expressed about how objective the BBC is on UK politics. There was quite a lot of criticism while Laura Kuennsburg was political editor. She's still there but has sidestepped to a parallel role and Chris Mason is her successor. There was also a suggestion in the Johnson era that the tone was too subservient because a comfortable relationship made it easier to get the story.
There has also been quite a lot of criticism that the BBC interprets its duty to be balanced in ways that is too partial to those whose views are reprehensible or quite simply wrong. So, to give 'balance', when covering a climate story, they'll wheel out one of the few climate deniers just so that they can't complain that they aren't getting enough air time. Likewise, Farage gets far more airtime than he deserves or his importance merits.
Perhaps surprisingly, the BBC is consistently critical of government on the failures and inadequacies of medical and social provision, and puts quite a lot of effort into reporting on this and encouraging people to feel let down and hard done by. It's not noticed or mentioned very much, but wonder if perhaps a subliminal perception of that is the source of a widespread moan on the right, both Conservative and Reform (Faragist), that the BBC is biased against them in its reporting, despite all the evidence the other way.
So what do people rely on for solid journalism in the UK these days? The BBC? Over here in the US it’s considered a very good journalistic source.
I'm assuming you only get the World Service in the USA, which is much less interested in UK politics rather than world news and has less stake in the subject matter. Most people here are watching or listening to domestic channels.
There's been a lot of controversy here as to whether the BBC is too subservient to the government in power at the time. It has been particularly argued recently that the Conservatives have been using the threat of taking away their access to the licence fee to lean on it. So there has been quite a lot of concern expressed about how objective the BBC is on UK politics. There was quite a lot of criticism while Laura Kuennsburg was political editor. She's still there but has sidestepped to a parallel role and Chris Mason is her successor. There was also a suggestion in the Johnson era that the tone was too subservient because a comfortable relationship made it easier to get the story.
There has also been quite a lot of criticism that the BBC interprets its duty to be balanced in ways that is too partial to those whose views are reprehensible or quite simply wrong. So, to give 'balance', when covering a climate story, they'll wheel out one of the few climate deniers just so that they can't complain that they aren't getting enough air time. Likewise, Farage gets far more airtime than he deserves or his importance merits.
Perhaps surprisingly, the BBC is consistently critical of government on the failures and inadequacies of medical and social provision, and puts quite a lot of effort into reporting on this and encouraging people to feel let down and hard done by. It's not noticed or mentioned very much, but wonder if perhaps a subliminal perception of that is the source of a widespread moan on the right, both Conservative and Reform (Faragist), that the BBC is biased against them in its reporting, despite all the evidence the other way.
Good summary. The BBC is the most trusted news source in the UK, with Channel 4 News second in a recent survey. It remains a home to some brilliant journalism but I am definitely among the critics who abhor the false balance and client journalism that has undermined their credibility. And I can point to data to support my assertions.
The right wing critics of the BBC fall into two groups: those whose real argument is with reality and those who are cynically doing it because they know that they can successfully pressure the Beep into a sympathetic tone.
So, to give 'balance', when covering a climate story, they'll wheel out one of the few climate deniers just so that they can't complain that they aren't getting enough air time. Likewise, Farage gets far more airtime than he deserves or his importance merits.
The same is true of economics - Patrick Minford isn't particularly representative of many economics, and neither are the people from the IEA/TPA/ASI (most of whom don't even have economics qualifications). Other commentators have pointed to the death of the 'industrial correspondent' which means that day to day commentary on the economy inevitably involves someone from finance (which generally means someone working at one of the big investment banks).
Perhaps surprisingly, the BBC is consistently critical of government on the failures and inadequacies of medical and social provision, and puts quite a lot of effort into reporting on this and encouraging people to feel let down and hard done by.
I think this is a side effect of these issues being covered as part of "news and current affairs" as opposed to "politics", it probably doesn't hurt that this is the area of the state with which people are likely to have had interactions.
It's not noticed or mentioned very much, but wonder if perhaps a subliminal perception of that is the source of a widespread moan on the right, both Conservative and Reform (Faragist), that the BBC is biased against them in its reporting, despite all the evidence the other way.
Their animus seems to stem more from representational issues in non news coverage - the BBC tending to take a socially liberal stance on such things. Though the science coverage still animates a lot of their complaints - there's periodic grumbling about the coverage of climate issues, and during the pandemic they were quite vocal that more 'skeptical' voices weren't being platformed.
Again, for the benefit of U.S. shipmates, I've picked up the impression that people in the U.S.A. respect the serious press more than people do here. This may be something to do with the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, with its express reference to freedom of the press. I sense you're higher minded towards the press/media, less cynical about it than we are. It's possible even that journalists, or some of them, are actually higher minded about their role. Although it was mocking a fictitious television station rather than a newspaper, could a programme like Drop the Dead Donkey have been the success in the US that it was here?
Yes, I think Americans
and American like to think that journalism in this country has traditionally upheld the ideals of impartiality and of being committed to dig for the truth wherever it leads.
But Yellow Journalism intended to sell papers regardless of facts and to bring about the politics that paper barons wanted was the norm at the turn of the Twentieth Century. At about the same time, the US saw the rise of muckraker journalists and authors who exposed corruption and injustice, but I don’t know how influential they were in changing the standards of their profession at the time.
After World War II, both mainstream print and broadcast journalism (though broadcast journalism was required to by regulators) operated under a “fairness doctrine” of providing a “balanced” point of view on matters of public debate - but the national leadership and policies of the opposing political sides was not that different (New Deal anticommunist Liberalism, with the blip of Goldwater) until the 70’s, when Movement Conservatism became more influential in the Republican Party and became very vocal on the national stage in its accusations of Liberal bias. (Granted, the New Left in the 60’s also felt the media was biased against them.) Conservatives built their own media system through talk radio, cable news emerged and didn’t have to follow the fairness doctrine, and the country began to self-sort in terms people living with, interacting with, and working with people from the same educational and socioeconomic background, so more and more mainstream
started to come from the same liberal bubble, even if they still had nonpartiality drilled into them at journalism school and by their editors. This meant that although the mainstream press took pains not the be biased, you could still detect a liberal sentiment in the types of stories it chose to report on and in the type of language it used (especially as the culture wars over politically correct language, which go back to at least the 1980’s, made language a code through which many readers thought they could detect a reporter’s or a paper’s beliefs.
In the Trump era, the mainstream media very quickly decided that it had to be much more willing to say that a politician’s statement are not true when they were, but there was debate about calling them lies (some news outlets started doing this). And both broadcast and print media outside the conservative media ecosystem started to openly talk about abandoning impartiality in the face of politicians who were a threat to democracy. Then you had journalists arguing that less coverage should be paid to everything Trump says than to a usual candidate, because he intentionally baits the media with outrageous statements, gets free exposure in the media, and also drums up political support when the media acts all shocked st what he says and he claimed persecution by the liberal press. These journalists said that the press should only cover what Trump actually does and only what he says if it is not something he has said before.
We also have public radio and television, but very little of its funding is from the government, and almost all the rest is from individual, philanthropic, and corporate donations. The main difference with other media is that there isn’t a profit motive and that there aren’t ads (but major sponsors are acknowledged). Conservatives love to beat up NPR and PBS, and they make hay whenever a public media journalist is caught saying anything liberal or complaining of liberal bias at their own workplace. Public media in the US is much smaller and poorer than the BBC.
MSNBC has liberal hosts like Rachel Maddow. Not sure if aside from those host-driven commentary shows it is any more liberal than its parent NBC news in its coverage.
And you all know about Fox News and even scarier cable news networks to its right.
I prefer BBC News on its website. It seems to be more balanced than its broadcast journalism.
It has a fact checking section that drills down into political statements in some detail.
TV news isn't really aimed at grownups. Stories seem to be allocated time based on the availability of either attention grabbing visuals, or vox pops.
I agree. Although very distressing for those involved, I feel far too much time was/is being given to the Michael Moseley and Jay Slater stories. And, although it was lovely, did we really need to know about the penguin chick born at Edinburgh Zoo?
I agree with you about the fact checking, very useful.
I agree. Although very distressing for those involved, I feel far too much time was/is being given to the Michael Moseley and Jay Slater stories. And, although it was lovely, did we really need to know about the penguin chick born at Edinburgh Zoo?
I agree with you about the fact checking, very useful.
If only they used their fact checking results when interviewing politicians.
I have memories back in the 1960's that it was still then being published in Manchester, and that the move to London did not happen for quite some years later.
It began to be printed in London as far back as 1961, as the Wikipedia article says:
In September 1961, The Guardian, which had previously only been published in Manchester, began to be printed in London. Nesta Roberts was appointed as the newspaper's first news editor there, becoming the first woman to hold such a position on a British national newspaper.
The editor moved to London in 1964. Here's the Guardian's history, as told by itself:
I have never been interested in opinion pieces. I am perfectly capable of forming my own given the bare facts. And they are the very thing you don't get.
A positive note about the UK media. Notwithstanding the criticisms I made of the BBC above, they'll still the home of high quality journalism.
Recently they've done some in depth investigation work of people smuggling across the channel.
A few weeks ago, they published the story of how they tracked down a gang leader. I see from this report that their work has lead to the Scorpion being arrested.
On The Today Program today they reported on the crew who were responsible for the recent crossing where a 7 year old died. The online version of the story is here.
This is fantastic journalism. In this case from the Beeb, which is generally a cut above the rest. The Guardian still does proper investigative reporting as does Private Eye. The latter being the prime mover in the Post Office scandal. Historically, The Telegraph has also been good on this. I am happy to be corrected but I don't think they've had any major coups since the expenses scandal and they used potentially illegal means* to get confidential information for that one...
Anyway, in a landscape that could be discouraging, these are genuine high points.
AFZ
P.s. Not for this thread but the politics here is also notable. Labour has set out a specific policy for a serious task-force and international cooperation. The success of these investigations supports the notion that Labour is on to something here. It's no substitute for setting up safe and legal routes but it is part of the answer.
*The initial story was built on stolen confidential data. This is a crime. The police declined to prosecute on the grounds that a public interest defence may have been possible.
A few weeks ago, they published the story of how they tracked down a gang leader. I see from this report that their work has lead to the Scorpion being arrested.
On The Today Program today they reported on the crew who were responsible for the recent crossing where a 7 year old died. The online version of the story is here.
There's a BBC reporter called Simon Jones. His work consists of producing a constant steady stream of context free updates on the number of migrants arriving on boats at Dover. He used to occasionally get into a boat himself to shadow migrants as they struggled to keep their boats afloat.
I feel there's something similar going on here; it's obviously a tragic case, and there's a lot of local to-ing and fro-ing to catch one particular individual, without much discussion of the context, apart from this throwaway paragraph:
"After fleeing from Iraq 14 years earlier, Ahmed’s asylum claim in Belgium had been repeatedly rejected on the grounds that his hometown of Basra was now classified as a safe area. He had recently been warned he could be deported from Belgium within days. His children - all born in Europe - had grown up living with relatives in Sweden, but had also just been given a final order to leave the country."
There's a lot of complicity to go around in here that would be worthy of study, but it's easier to report on the more immediate problem, and less likely to get powerful people annoyed at you.
An indication of the effect the Express/Mail/Sun can have. On that Bookface thing someone posted a picture of dozens of police cars on the streets in Glasgow. The caption was "all this for a man with an England flag on his car".
A football joke, I think, about it being unwise to openly support England in Scotland generally, and places like Glasgow especially.
But no. Comments absolutely full of people who genuinely believed the caption and that people are routinely arrested for having an England or Union flag, and a load of bile about immigration, remainers and political correctness.
How could the idea that this could actually be true develop?
Right wing press - you did this, you stupid bastards.
The right wing critics of the BBC fall into two groups: those whose real argument is with reality and those who are cynically doing it because they know that they can successfully pressure the Beep into a sympathetic tone.
YMMV, of course.
AFZ
There probably is a third aspect that picks out different aspects/programmes.
Something like the newsquiz or now show is probably 70% left.
An indication of the effect the Express/Mail/Sun can have. On that Bookface thing someone posted a picture of dozens of police cars on the streets in Glasgow. The caption was "all this for a man with an England flag on his car".
A football joke, I think, about it being unwise to openly support England in Scotland generally, and places like Glasgow especially.
But no. Comments absolutely full of people who genuinely believed the caption and that people are routinely arrested for having an England or Union flag, and a load of bile about immigration, remainers and political correctness.
How could the idea that this could actually be true develop?
Right wing press - you did this, you stupid bastards.
There was a story in (I think) The Mail recently with a screaming headline that a London taxi driver was “banned” from flying an England flag on his cab. The story was full of the usual stuff about “wokeness” and authoritarian rules being imposed by the rabidly left wing Greater London Authority and the evil communist Sadia Khan. Right at the end, literally the final sentence, they quoted TFL (Transport For London) who stated that no flags of any kind are allowed to be displayed on London cabs.
The funny thing about this is, as far as I am aware, has always been the case with London cabs, long before Sadiq Khan was even born
The right wing critics of the BBC fall into two groups: those whose real argument is with reality and those who are cynically doing it because they know that they can successfully pressure the Beep into a sympathetic tone.
YMMV, of course.
AFZ
There probably is a third aspect that picks out different aspects/programmes.
Something like the newsquiz or now show is probably 70% left.
Well the Now Show is no more. I do still enjoy the News Quiz - however, I do think that when the Tories are in power it attacks them from the left, then when Labour are in power (or at least any Labour we've had since 1997) it still attacks from the left. But it's funny and I'm not sure it matters
More interesting to me is Private Eye and Have I Got News For You, which IME will attack a Labour government from the right when there is one, as well as from the left.
From 1997 there was a palpable shift - you could watch it in the guests' eyes - when they turned up and suddenly they were the target not the ones the panel were going to join in with in attacking the target. But then HIGNFY does tend to get politicians as guests in a way the News Quiz doesn't - personally I think the latter was better when the comedians felt more diluted by actual journalists (still playing for laughs, but as a rest from the day job).
An indication of the effect the Express/Mail/Sun can have. On that Bookface thing someone posted a picture of dozens of police cars on the streets in Glasgow. The caption was "all this for a man with an England flag on his car".
A football joke, I think, about it being unwise to openly support England in Scotland generally, and places like Glasgow especially.
But no. Comments absolutely full of people who genuinely believed the caption and that people are routinely arrested for having an England or Union flag, and a load of bile about immigration, remainers and political correctness.
How could the idea that this could actually be true develop?
Right wing press - you did this, you stupid bastards.
There was a story in (I think) The Mail recently with a screaming headline that a London taxi driver was “banned” from flying an England flag on his cab. The story was full of the usual stuff about “wokeness” and authoritarian rules being imposed by the rabidly left wing Greater London Authority and the evil communist Sadia Khan. Right at the end, literally the final sentence, they quoted TFL (Transport For London) who stated that no flags of any kind are allowed to be displayed on London cabs.
The funny thing about this is, as far as I am aware, has always been the case with London cabs, long before Sadiq Khan was even born
It's better than that - the rule was introduced in 2012 by Johnson.
The right wing critics of the BBC fall into two groups: those whose real argument is with reality and those who are cynically doing it because they know that they can successfully pressure the Beep into a sympathetic tone.
YMMV, of course.
AFZ
There probably is a third aspect that picks out different aspects/programmes.
Something like the newsquiz or now show is probably 70% left.
It is true that the satirical output has a left wing bias on the BBC. But l am extremely unsympathetic to that complaint.
Because:
1. It is not news, it is entertainment.
2. There is no editorial reason for this: it reflects where anti-establishment satire is coming from.
3. See (2.) This is 100% about free speech.
4. These programs also mock Labour and the LibDems. The main reason that the Tories have been the focus is because they were in government. This will change now, in the same way that it was different pre-2010.
5. Right wing voices do get on, such as Geoff Norcott and Hugo Rifkin. Not to mention several other Tories on the Newsquiz.
6. To some extent the mocking of the Tories is due to their argument with reality (as in my previous post). It is not a left/right thing, it's the fault of these right wingers deciding not to live in the real world
7. Left wingers are just funnier.*
8. To reiterated point 1, this is not news/commentary, it is entertainment.
AFZ
*Obviously I don't really mean this one, although it's not an entirely facetious point...
An indication of the effect the Express/Mail/Sun can have. On that Bookface thing someone posted a picture of dozens of police cars on the streets in Glasgow. The caption was "all this for a man with an England flag on his car".
A football joke, I think, about it being unwise to openly support England in Scotland generally, and places like Glasgow especially.
But no. Comments absolutely full of people who genuinely believed the caption and that people are routinely arrested for having an England or Union flag, and a load of bile about immigration, remainers and political correctness.
How could the idea that this could actually be true develop?
Right wing press - you did this, you stupid bastards.
There was a story in (I think) The Mail recently with a screaming headline that a London taxi driver was “banned” from flying an England flag on his cab.
Reminiscent of the Stewart Lee sketch, which often gets uses as a meme on social media:
There's been a lot of debate in France about political bias in satire. One major point is that left-wing satire is just funnier, because it hits up, where right-wing satire hits down.
There's been a lot of debate in France about political bias in satire. One major point is that left-wing satire is just funnier, because it hits up, where right-wing satire hits down.
Exactly. This has been a cultural rather than political shift in my lifetime. The right-wing comics of the 70s and 80s have simply disappeared. The minority of right wing comics of today are very different.
There's been a lot of debate in France about political bias in satire. One major point is that left-wing satire is just funnier, because it hits up, where right-wing satire hits down.
It’s comedic cakeism - satirists mock the right because it’s the right. When the ‘left’ get into power they mock it because it’s not the right left…
Really, at about 0330 last Friday morning Labour left the Rebel Alliance and became the Empire.
There's been a lot of debate in France about political bias in satire. One major point is that left-wing satire is just funnier, because it hits up, where right-wing satire hits down.
It’s comedic cakeism - satirists mock the right because it’s the right. When the ‘left’ get into power they mock it because it’s not the right left…
You could always suggest examples of right wing comedians who you think the BBC/media in general should platform instead.
There's been a lot of debate in France about political bias in satire. One major point is that left-wing satire is just funnier, because it hits up, where right-wing satire hits down.
It’s comedic cakeism - satirists mock the right because it’s the right. When the ‘left’ get into power they mock it because it’s not the right left…
You could always suggest examples of right wing comedians who you think the BBC/media in general should platform instead.
I don't think there's really a problem - but it is what it is
An indication of the effect the Express/Mail/Sun can have. On that Bookface thing someone posted a picture of dozens of police cars on the streets in Glasgow. The caption was "all this for a man with an England flag on his car".
A football joke, I think, about it being unwise to openly support England in Scotland generally, and places like Glasgow especially.
But no. Comments absolutely full of people who genuinely believed the caption and that people are routinely arrested for having an England or Union flag, and a load of bile about immigration, remainers and political correctness.
How could the idea that this could actually be true develop?
Right wing press - you did this, you stupid bastards.
There was a story in (I think) The Mail recently with a screaming headline that a London taxi driver was “banned” from flying an England flag on his cab. The story was full of the usual stuff about “wokeness” and authoritarian rules being imposed by the rabidly left wing Greater London Authority and the evil communist Sadia Khan. Right at the end, literally the final sentence, they quoted TFL (Transport For London) who stated that no flags of any kind are allowed to be displayed on London cabs.
The funny thing about this is, as far as I am aware, has always been the case with London cabs, long before Sadiq Khan was even born
It's better than that - the rule was introduced in 2012 by Johnson.
It pre-dates Johnson by a very long way. When I was a kid I was in the scouts with a lad whose dad was a London cabby. He had been ticked off just for having an AA sticker in his windscreen
(That’s the motoring organisation, not Alcoholics Anonymous)
I quit listening to the News Quiz (I got it in podcast form here in America) because they were happy to have well-known TERFs on as panelists and you could hear the audience responding to them positively.
I understand in the UK that's not inconsistent with the show having a generally center-left outlook, though, your anti-trans folks seem to be more evenly spread across the political spectrum than ours are.
The Beeb rather than a newspaper (although as reported in the Mirror) is getting calls for Laura K to be dropped for her "congratulations, I suppose" remark to Ed Davey. In the picture a little way down the page, she does look rather as if she's swallowed a wasp ... 🙃
I quit listening to the News Quiz (I got it in podcast form here in America) because they were happy to have well-known TERFs on as panelists and you could hear the audience responding to them positively.
I understand in the UK that's not inconsistent with the show having a generally center-left outlook, though, your anti-trans folks seem to be more evenly spread across the political spectrum than ours are.
I'd probably say that in order to be a TERF you have to first be an F, and feminism as a whole tends somewhat left. Most of the anti-trans rhetoric in the US comes from social conservatives who aren't any kind of feminist at all.
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Any time I find myself agreeing with every opinion piece in a newspaper, I make sure to buy a different one the next day. I read them to see what other people think, not to have my own thoughts reflected back at me.
I can always count on Simon Jenkins to write something utterly moronic in The Guardian.
Yes. I now give his Stuff a miss.
I'd go so far as to say I only buy newspapers I disagree with - I've got no wish to hand over money to someone to have my tummy tickled and beliefs/prejudices reinforced. Much better to start the day with a good 'you think what??' and stuff like Brexit comes as less of a surprise... When a print edition still existed I used to read the Independent because of the absolute car crash that was their comments page as it lurched from Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to Bruce Anderson and off after that in another direction! You didn't know what you were going to get when you opened it.
Agree about Simon Jenkins - I've come to the conclusion it might be a form of performance art and he does it knowingly.
Mainly down to media ownership by a handful of billionaire owners - some of the papers run at a loss (vanity outlets but on a different scale).
Probably the non-profit connection; it's not necessarily the location (most national papers are based in London, and as per my prior posts they draw on the same set of people in terms of recruitment). The Manchester Guardian was originally founded as a form of controlled opposition - it was started by a cotton merchant right after the Peterloo Massacre and the closure of the more radical Manchester Observer.
The Mail and Express both started late 19th century to give news to people who were neither the Liberal elite nor the old landed families.
There’s also an element of people selling what sells. We can all legitimately criticise Murdoch but he’s a newspaperman who happens to be an over powerful billionaire with too much power and influence.
But he created the (hard right) Sun out of the ashes of a left wing paper on its last legs because no one wanted to read it.
I know it’s chicken and egg, but there’s a big dose of ‘giving the people what they want’ alongside the ‘telling the people what they want’ and often that gets forgotten IMO.
While it endorsed Blair it was always pulling to the right. If it does come out for Starmer (it might well do) I doubt that will change.
I understood that, I just disagree - it might mouth support for Starmer but it will continue to trumpet a right wing agenda beyond what even Starmer would submit to.
By Conservative and Reform standards, though, it's definitely more 'woke' than other newspapers, whatever the various protagonists for the hard right may mean by that.
Again, for the benefit of U.S. shipmates, I've picked up the impression that people in the U.S.A. respect the serious press more than people do here. This may be something to do with the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, with its express reference to freedom of the press. I sense you're higher minded towards the press/media, less cynical about it than we are. It's possible even that journalists, or some of them, are actually higher minded about their role. Although it was mocking a fictitious television station rather than a newspaper, could a programme like Drop the Dead Donkey have been the success in the US that it was here?
So what do people rely on for solid journalism in the UK these days? The BBC? Over here in the US it’s considered a very good journalistic source.
There's been a lot of controversy here as to whether the BBC is too subservient to the government in power at the time. It has been particularly argued recently that the Conservatives have been using the threat of taking away their access to the licence fee to lean on it. So there has been quite a lot of concern expressed about how objective the BBC is on UK politics. There was quite a lot of criticism while Laura Kuennsburg was political editor. She's still there but has sidestepped to a parallel role and Chris Mason is her successor. There was also a suggestion in the Johnson era that the tone was too subservient because a comfortable relationship made it easier to get the story.
There has also been quite a lot of criticism that the BBC interprets its duty to be balanced in ways that is too partial to those whose views are reprehensible or quite simply wrong. So, to give 'balance', when covering a climate story, they'll wheel out one of the few climate deniers just so that they can't complain that they aren't getting enough air time. Likewise, Farage gets far more airtime than he deserves or his importance merits.
Perhaps surprisingly, the BBC is consistently critical of government on the failures and inadequacies of medical and social provision, and puts quite a lot of effort into reporting on this and encouraging people to feel let down and hard done by. It's not noticed or mentioned very much, but wonder if perhaps a subliminal perception of that is the source of a widespread moan on the right, both Conservative and Reform (Faragist), that the BBC is biased against them in its reporting, despite all the evidence the other way.
Good summary. The BBC is the most trusted news source in the UK, with Channel 4 News second in a recent survey. It remains a home to some brilliant journalism but I am definitely among the critics who abhor the false balance and client journalism that has undermined their credibility. And I can point to data to support my assertions.
The right wing critics of the BBC fall into two groups: those whose real argument is with reality and those who are cynically doing it because they know that they can successfully pressure the Beep into a sympathetic tone.
YMMV, of course.
AFZ
The same is true of economics - Patrick Minford isn't particularly representative of many economics, and neither are the people from the IEA/TPA/ASI (most of whom don't even have economics qualifications). Other commentators have pointed to the death of the 'industrial correspondent' which means that day to day commentary on the economy inevitably involves someone from finance (which generally means someone working at one of the big investment banks).
I think this is a side effect of these issues being covered as part of "news and current affairs" as opposed to "politics", it probably doesn't hurt that this is the area of the state with which people are likely to have had interactions.
Their animus seems to stem more from representational issues in non news coverage - the BBC tending to take a socially liberal stance on such things. Though the science coverage still animates a lot of their complaints - there's periodic grumbling about the coverage of climate issues, and during the pandemic they were quite vocal that more 'skeptical' voices weren't being platformed.
Yes, I think Americans
and American like to think that journalism in this country has traditionally upheld the ideals of impartiality and of being committed to dig for the truth wherever it leads.
But Yellow Journalism intended to sell papers regardless of facts and to bring about the politics that paper barons wanted was the norm at the turn of the Twentieth Century. At about the same time, the US saw the rise of muckraker journalists and authors who exposed corruption and injustice, but I don’t know how influential they were in changing the standards of their profession at the time.
After World War II, both mainstream print and broadcast journalism (though broadcast journalism was required to by regulators) operated under a “fairness doctrine” of providing a “balanced” point of view on matters of public debate - but the national leadership and policies of the opposing political sides was not that different (New Deal anticommunist Liberalism, with the blip of Goldwater) until the 70’s, when Movement Conservatism became more influential in the Republican Party and became very vocal on the national stage in its accusations of Liberal bias. (Granted, the New Left in the 60’s also felt the media was biased against them.) Conservatives built their own media system through talk radio, cable news emerged and didn’t have to follow the fairness doctrine, and the country began to self-sort in terms people living with, interacting with, and working with people from the same educational and socioeconomic background, so more and more mainstream
started to come from the same liberal bubble, even if they still had nonpartiality drilled into them at journalism school and by their editors. This meant that although the mainstream press took pains not the be biased, you could still detect a liberal sentiment in the types of stories it chose to report on and in the type of language it used (especially as the culture wars over politically correct language, which go back to at least the 1980’s, made language a code through which many readers thought they could detect a reporter’s or a paper’s beliefs.
In the Trump era, the mainstream media very quickly decided that it had to be much more willing to say that a politician’s statement are not true when they were, but there was debate about calling them lies (some news outlets started doing this). And both broadcast and print media outside the conservative media ecosystem started to openly talk about abandoning impartiality in the face of politicians who were a threat to democracy. Then you had journalists arguing that less coverage should be paid to everything Trump says than to a usual candidate, because he intentionally baits the media with outrageous statements, gets free exposure in the media, and also drums up political support when the media acts all shocked st what he says and he claimed persecution by the liberal press. These journalists said that the press should only cover what Trump actually does and only what he says if it is not something he has said before.
We also have public radio and television, but very little of its funding is from the government, and almost all the rest is from individual, philanthropic, and corporate donations. The main difference with other media is that there isn’t a profit motive and that there aren’t ads (but major sponsors are acknowledged). Conservatives love to beat up NPR and PBS, and they make hay whenever a public media journalist is caught saying anything liberal or complaining of liberal bias at their own workplace. Public media in the US is much smaller and poorer than the BBC.
MSNBC has liberal hosts like Rachel Maddow. Not sure if aside from those host-driven commentary shows it is any more liberal than its parent NBC news in its coverage.
And you all know about Fox News and even scarier cable news networks to its right.
It has a fact checking section that drills down into political statements in some detail.
TV news isn't really aimed at grownups. Stories seem to be allocated time based on the availability of either attention grabbing visuals, or vox pops.
I agree with you about the fact checking, very useful.
If only they used their fact checking results when interviewing politicians.
I have memories back in the 1960's that it was still then being published in Manchester, and that the move to London did not happen for quite some years later.
In September 1961, The Guardian, which had previously only been published in Manchester, began to be printed in London. Nesta Roberts was appointed as the newspaper's first news editor there, becoming the first woman to hold such a position on a British national newspaper.
The editor moved to London in 1964. Here's the Guardian's history, as told by itself:
https://www.theguardian.com/gnm-archive/2002/jun/06/1
They moved to better offices in London in 1976, which may be what @Gee D is remembering.
This example of what constitutes serious journalism on its broadcast outlets seems to vindicate your decision: https://x.com/scottygb/status/1805526037515657350
Recently they've done some in depth investigation work of people smuggling across the channel.
A few weeks ago, they published the story of how they tracked down a gang leader. I see from this report that their work has lead to the Scorpion being arrested.
On The Today Program today they reported on the crew who were responsible for the recent crossing where a 7 year old died. The online version of the story is here.
This is fantastic journalism. In this case from the Beeb, which is generally a cut above the rest. The Guardian still does proper investigative reporting as does Private Eye. The latter being the prime mover in the Post Office scandal. Historically, The Telegraph has also been good on this. I am happy to be corrected but I don't think they've had any major coups since the expenses scandal and they used potentially illegal means* to get confidential information for that one...
Anyway, in a landscape that could be discouraging, these are genuine high points.
AFZ
P.s. Not for this thread but the politics here is also notable. Labour has set out a specific policy for a serious task-force and international cooperation. The success of these investigations supports the notion that Labour is on to something here. It's no substitute for setting up safe and legal routes but it is part of the answer.
*The initial story was built on stolen confidential data. This is a crime. The police declined to prosecute on the grounds that a public interest defence may have been possible.
There's a BBC reporter called Simon Jones. His work consists of producing a constant steady stream of context free updates on the number of migrants arriving on boats at Dover. He used to occasionally get into a boat himself to shadow migrants as they struggled to keep their boats afloat.
I feel there's something similar going on here; it's obviously a tragic case, and there's a lot of local to-ing and fro-ing to catch one particular individual, without much discussion of the context, apart from this throwaway paragraph:
"After fleeing from Iraq 14 years earlier, Ahmed’s asylum claim in Belgium had been repeatedly rejected on the grounds that his hometown of Basra was now classified as a safe area. He had recently been warned he could be deported from Belgium within days. His children - all born in Europe - had grown up living with relatives in Sweden, but had also just been given a final order to leave the country."
There's a lot of complicity to go around in here that would be worthy of study, but it's easier to report on the more immediate problem, and less likely to get powerful people annoyed at you.
A football joke, I think, about it being unwise to openly support England in Scotland generally, and places like Glasgow especially.
But no. Comments absolutely full of people who genuinely believed the caption and that people are routinely arrested for having an England or Union flag, and a load of bile about immigration, remainers and political correctness.
How could the idea that this could actually be true develop?
Right wing press - you did this, you stupid bastards.
There probably is a third aspect that picks out different aspects/programmes.
Something like the newsquiz or now show is probably 70% left.
There was a story in (I think) The Mail recently with a screaming headline that a London taxi driver was “banned” from flying an England flag on his cab. The story was full of the usual stuff about “wokeness” and authoritarian rules being imposed by the rabidly left wing Greater London Authority and the evil communist Sadia Khan. Right at the end, literally the final sentence, they quoted TFL (Transport For London) who stated that no flags of any kind are allowed to be displayed on London cabs.
The funny thing about this is, as far as I am aware, has always been the case with London cabs, long before Sadiq Khan was even born
Well the Now Show is no more. I do still enjoy the News Quiz - however, I do think that when the Tories are in power it attacks them from the left, then when Labour are in power (or at least any Labour we've had since 1997) it still attacks from the left. But it's funny and I'm not sure it matters
More interesting to me is Private Eye and Have I Got News For You, which IME will attack a Labour government from the right when there is one, as well as from the left.
From 1997 there was a palpable shift - you could watch it in the guests' eyes - when they turned up and suddenly they were the target not the ones the panel were going to join in with in attacking the target. But then HIGNFY does tend to get politicians as guests in a way the News Quiz doesn't - personally I think the latter was better when the comedians felt more diluted by actual journalists (still playing for laughs, but as a rest from the day job).
It's better than that - the rule was introduced in 2012 by Johnson.
It is true that the satirical output has a left wing bias on the BBC. But l am extremely unsympathetic to that complaint.
Because:
1. It is not news, it is entertainment.
2. There is no editorial reason for this: it reflects where anti-establishment satire is coming from.
3. See (2.) This is 100% about free speech.
4. These programs also mock Labour and the LibDems. The main reason that the Tories have been the focus is because they were in government. This will change now, in the same way that it was different pre-2010.
5. Right wing voices do get on, such as Geoff Norcott and Hugo Rifkin. Not to mention several other Tories on the Newsquiz.
6. To some extent the mocking of the Tories is due to their argument with reality (as in my previous post). It is not a left/right thing, it's the fault of these right wingers deciding not to live in the real world
7. Left wingers are just funnier.*
8. To reiterated point 1, this is not news/commentary, it is entertainment.
AFZ
*Obviously I don't really mean this one, although it's not an entirely facetious point...
Reminiscent of the Stewart Lee sketch, which often gets uses as a meme on social media:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkCBhKs4faI (warning vulgarity towards the end)
Exactly. This has been a cultural rather than political shift in my lifetime. The right-wing comics of the 70s and 80s have simply disappeared. The minority of right wing comics of today are very different.
It’s comedic cakeism - satirists mock the right because it’s the right. When the ‘left’ get into power they mock it because it’s not the right left…
Really, at about 0330 last Friday morning Labour left the Rebel Alliance and became the Empire.
The Tories are now just another flavour of rebel.
You could always suggest examples of right wing comedians who you think the BBC/media in general should platform instead.
I don't think there's really a problem - but it is what it is
It pre-dates Johnson by a very long way. When I was a kid I was in the scouts with a lad whose dad was a London cabby. He had been ticked off just for having an AA sticker in his windscreen
(That’s the motoring organisation, not Alcoholics Anonymous)
I understand in the UK that's not inconsistent with the show having a generally center-left outlook, though, your anti-trans folks seem to be more evenly spread across the political spectrum than ours are.
I'd probably say that in order to be a TERF you have to first be an F, and feminism as a whole tends somewhat left. Most of the anti-trans rhetoric in the US comes from social conservatives who aren't any kind of feminist at all.