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What we got wrong: the Guardian’s worst errors of judgment over 200 years

theguardian.com

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Re: What we got wrong: the Guardian’s worst errors of judgment over 200 years

#31

Post by uniqueid »

gizmo wrote: post #12

The Guardian has in 200 years only won one Pulitzer, for Glenn Greenwald's reporting on intelligence agency wiretapping and other malfeasance. And what does the Guardian do? They repeatedly malign Greenwald and publish falsehoods about him. See this thread for a typical example: https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1388826988736126976 The problem isn't just that the Guardian gets major stuff wrong, and that they don…

My impression of Glenn Greenwald is that he is either paranoid, or willing to stoke his readers' paranoia in order to attract attention.

This seems like standard behavior for Greenwald: https://twitter.com/themattdimitri/status/138969371391236917... It's the same refrain as always: 'everyone is out to get me!'

Re: What we got wrong: the Guardian’s worst errors of judgment over 200 years

#33

Post by bavell »

GlennS wrote: post #26
dazc wrote: post #3

No mention of your support for the invasion of Iraq then?

Still possible the Iraq war could turn out to have been the right course of action. Probably not, but unclear at this point.

Our wars in the middle east over the last 3 decades are objectively catastrophic failures. The liberties we have ceded, the lives lost and displaced, the destabilization of an entire region, the resources spent on the military industrial complex.... I could go on but it's abundantly clear that the negatives far outweigh any marginal benefits that may have occurred.

Re: What we got wrong: the Guardian’s worst errors of judgment over 200 years

#34

Post by koheripbal »

slx26 wrote: post #29

Ah, the eternal question. How do you respond to this? Applaud and encourage even more thorough self-reflection, or criticize because the self-reflection was not thorough enough?

You will notice that the errors they chose to list are ones that accentuate their current political agenda.

It is therefore not self-reflection at all. It is merely doubling down on existing dogma by recasting contradictory prior politics as "wrong".

It actually highlights exactly what's wrong with "journalism". The Guardian doesn't report, it advocates.

It intentionally provides biased views in order to sway readers - the exact opposite of what I'm looking for in a news outlet.

I want news that has LOTS of contradictory points of views. One that presents facts without opinion, and strives to relate events without an agenda.

The Guardian is a failure of journalism. If you are not paying for news media, you are the product, not the consumer.

Re: What we got wrong: the Guardian’s worst errors of judgment over 200 years

#35

Post by ploika »

thu2111 wrote: post #17

A rather strange article. In some ways quite perceptive and reflective, but in other ways the opposite. One of the first examples is a little odd. errors of scientific understanding resulted in a 1927 article that promoted the virtues of asbestos It's a bit unclear what "errors of scientific understanding" means here, but in context this makes it sound like the Guardian writers mis-understood scientists who were warn…

An editorial is not the same thing as an article from the opinion pages.

Re: What we got wrong: the Guardian’s worst errors of judgment over 200 years

#36

Post by koheripbal »

rjzzleep wrote: post #22
dazc wrote: post #3

No mention of your support for the invasion of Iraq then?

What do you mean? Iraq, Afghanistan and Lybia were mistakes? I thought the only mistakes were that the public found out what human rights abuses happened and that the facts were made up. /s These publications all have blood on their hands. "We made a mistake" that isn't even honest doesn't cut it. The only real unfortunate thing here is that people like Trump get to use these peoples lies to push even greater lies.

Saddam gassing Kurds was made up?

Re: What we got wrong: the Guardian’s worst errors of judgment over 200 years

#37

Post by Tarsul »

slx26 wrote: post #29

Ah, the eternal question. How do you respond to this? Applaud and encourage even more thorough self-reflection, or criticize because the self-reflection was not thorough enough?

Is it an eternal question? Because I have a hard time finding examples where cynicism is the better course of action than pragmatic encouragement.

Re: What we got wrong: the Guardian’s worst errors of judgment over 200 years

#38

Post by c06n »

koheripbal wrote: post #34
slx26 wrote: post #29

Ah, the eternal question. How do you respond to this? Applaud and encourage even more thorough self-reflection, or criticize because the self-reflection was not thorough enough?

You will notice that the errors they chose to list are ones that accentuate their current political agenda. It is therefore not self-reflection at all. It is merely doubling down on existing dogma by recasting contradictory prior politics as "wrong". It actually highlights exactly what's wrong with "journalism". The Guardian doesn't report, it advocates. It intentionally provides biased views in order to sway readers…

Unironic: I get more actual news from the world socialist website than from the Guardian. Aside, there is axios.com, or the news section of Wikipedia.

Re: What we got wrong: the Guardian’s worst errors of judgment over 200 years

#39

Post by fenderbluesjr »

No mention of Nazi Germany, I'm curious to know what their position was. My understanding is that The Times was very sympathetic to Hitler's claims of not having bad intent regarding Czechoslovakia and regularly railed against the government for not giving their support

Re: What we got wrong: the Guardian’s worst errors of judgment over 200 years

#40

Post by mrec »

slx26 wrote: post #29

Ah, the eternal question. How do you respond to this? Applaud and encourage even more thorough self-reflection, or criticize because the self-reflection was not thorough enough?

Call me cynical, but this report was commissioned back in July of last year. Releasing it today, when it's guaranteed to be eclipsed by dramatic local and by-election results here in the UK, has a bit of an odour to it.

(The report has had some attention from the influential political muckraking blog Order Order over the past few days, which is probably why they didn't feel they could sit on it any longer.)

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