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

theguardian.com

41–50 of 87 posts

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

#41
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 Guardian is terrible these days. You will notice that all the mistakes that they admit to are things from decades ago. There is absolutely no reflection on the current positions that they take. It's essentially more virtue signalling from them.

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

#42
post #3

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

Media Lens have done great work analysing the Guardian's output over the years, particularly their support for wars: https://www.medialens.org/?s=guardian

I think anyone really interested in the Guardian's failings will learn more from Media Lens than any self-critical piece published by the paper itself.

Their books Guardians of Power and Propaganda Blitz examine the Guardian's output too.

(Disclosure: I'm currently the webmaster for the site.)

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

#43
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…

Then pay for it.

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

#44
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!'

I don't care for Glenn too much but he's better than a lot of the other crappy grifters out there like the tool in the thread you linked to.

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

#45
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…

How absurd, a 200 year old British paper only winning one American award that was only founded in the 20th century.

It started out as a UK newspaper but it has had an international presence for a while now (admittedly a small part of that 200 years).

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

#46
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 can be sure that the rightwing press aren't engaging in this kind of reflection, however flawed. You aren't going to see "what went wrong at the News Of The World that led to its collapse" or "the Sun apologizes for its Hillsborough coverage" or "why the Times published a climate change denialist for years" or "has the Spectator engaged in systemic racism".

More people should pay attention to Hugh Grant and his Hacked Off campaign about the abuses of the mainstream media in the UK.

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

#47
post #16

Guardian's "WikiLeaks: Secrets and Lies" Documentary: Guardian hacks continue PR war against WikiLeaks wikileaks.org/Guardian-s-WikiLeaks-Secrets-and.html

That Guardian's treatment of Assange has been awful. I collected a bunch of attack-pieces and lies about Assange published by them here: https://theguardian.fivefilters.org/assange/

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

#48
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!'

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

Maybe it’s both

Glenn has good reason to be paranoid. As someone who read his work for years, I’d say that within the past couple of years his writings have become more and more delusional. He left The Intercept over a fact-checking spat in which his editors were in the right, but he claimed censorship. The issue was over Joe Biden’s son, so a big step down from privacy, surveillance, and the work he did before.

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

#49
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…

That’s journalism today. I read an article about the voting changes in Texas.

“Massive backwards move in voting rights”. Wow! This sounds bad. So I search the article for what changed (so I can judge for myself). A few paragraphs about the civil right battles of the 60’s. A few more paragraphs about attempts to stop the new law. Ok...one sentence with vague comments about the changes - harder to do absentee ballots (how?) and you limits on helping people vote (like what?). Ok. Well those could be good or bad, depends on the details, right?

Well I finished the article and I still don’t know what these changes are or whether they are bad, because a 10 page news article didn’t explicitly say what they are.

And I’m not arguing the newspaper is wrong in their conclusion. But I read the news to be educated, not force fed opinions.

A better approach would be - explicitly lay out what the changes are (quoting the law is good!), then interview people from both sides on their viewpoints. I’m smart enough to understand the changes and determine which side is right. Hell, maybe both sides are kind of right? Crazy I know.

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

#50
post #19
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…

Given that the Pulitzers are only given for work that appears in a US publication, that's not terribly surprising. And saying that the Guardian 'doesn't do real journalism' is fundamentally unserious. I have huge problems with their editorial decision-making, and their attitudes to a number of issues I know about and care deeply about. But they are a serious newspaper, doing far better journalism than the vast majori…

I'll concede that they occasionally do real journalism, but they also publish falsehoods and they either don't retract/correct at all or quietly edit published articles. Their fact-checking is awful, and you can just see on twitter how they deal with that. To me that's disqualifying, but you do you.

Greenwald's journalism in Brazil has gotten Lula out of prison. Lula is likely to run for president, and that might change future of the country. The impact of the journalism Greenwald does is hard to overstate. What does it tell you about the Guardian that they dismiss him as a crank?

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