God I hate the Guardian

[StraferJack]

say what you will about the Guardian and the Mail but it's quite the ding dong they are having at the moment

[????]

Even I would admit the Guardian>Mail....however the comments on Guardianonline are often on a par with those on mailonoline in terms of mad, prejudice bile!

[StraferJack]

to be honest, if it's not behind a paywall, I just assume that the commentators on any article for any paper constitutes a smallish percentage of that paper's readership

Obviously you can tell from the tone, vocab and content when it is a stereotypical reader of said paper - but mostly it's just the same online nutterdom that has (largely) done for this place

* edited to had a meek "100" claim*

[El Pibe]

all new site comments are a hair's breadth from youtube commentary in quality.

[Loz]

StraferJack Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> say what you will about the Guardian and the Mail

> but it's quite the ding dong they are having at the moment

Interesting, because there has always seemed to have been an unofficial agreement that papers/editors didn't attack one another, but the Mail seems to have thrown that aside. Mind you, the Guardian has been sniping at the Mail for years (almost obsessively so), so perhaps they finally snapped.

[StraferJack]

Sniping attacking

Mutual sniping for years but the anti leveson (govt have no business telling us what to do!!!) mail quickly replaced by

Pro government (newspapers shouldn't judge what government deems important!) mail

Mail is increasingly looking genuinely unhinged to me, even by its standards

[Loz]

Well this was an interesting idea, if not really an interesting read.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/12/left-daily-mail-paul-dacre

The Guardian invited Paul Dacre (editor, Daily Mail) to write an article, which he (unimaginatively) titled, "Why is the left obsessed by the Daily Mail?". The rest was fairly predictable... except did he rail against the Guardian? No! He hops into the Beeb with nary a mention of the Gruin. Subtext: The Guardian has far too small a readership for the Mail to worry about.

The comments section is the predictable outpouring of bile, but worth five mins and a cup of coffee to laugh at. Though they all completely seemed to have missed the Gruin snub.

[Otta]

I've often wondered whether a lot if the stereotypical comments on newspaoer websites are plants by that paper so set the tone and say what they maybe can't say in the articles themselves.

[DaveR]

"Mutual sniping for years but the anti leveson (govt have no business telling us what to do!!!) mail quickly replaced by

Pro government (newspapers shouldn't judge what government deems important!) mail"

I'm no fan of the Mail, but you can hardly say that it's somehow inconsistent to suggest that newspapers know better about maintaining a free press and governments know better about maintaining national security.

[StraferJack]

Edited because I can't find a way to make my point without being a snarky git

[StraferJack]

.

[StraferJack]

I look forward to the mail standing shoulder to shoulder with the guardian to protect press freedoms

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/28/david-cameron-nsa-threat-newspapers-guardian-snowden

[Loz]

There are quite a number of journos that have worked for both rags. 20 pieces of silver and they'll knock up 1000 words on anything I suppose.

[StraferJack]

"There are quite a number of journos that have worked for both rags. 20 pieces of silver and they'll knock up 1000 words on anything I suppose."

not sure how that pertains to the issue Loz?

Leveson enquiry = most papers saying "no political interference! Free press is important etc"

NSA revelations = not a peep from most of these upholders of freedom

[Loz]

It was the 'guardian standing shoulder to shoulder with the mail' comment you seemed surprised about.

[????]

StraferJack Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I look forward to the mail standing shoulder to

> shoulder with the guardian to protect press

> freedoms

>

>

> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/28/david

> -cameron-nsa-threat-newspapers-guardian-snowden

And this is Precicesly what happens when you start making the press accountable to bodies other than the law politicians start making this type of veiled threat......

[StraferJack]

Dave would be less willing to make "veiled" threats if he didn't feel the rest of the newspaper industry would pile in behind him

it has nothing to do with bodies other than the law - it's the same cosy politicians/media/law circle that saw papers get away with so much for so long

After being initiatlly defensive, the US have accepted the need for this debate (surveillance) but Cameron is way behind the curve. If this country's press was worth fighting for it would be shaming him over this

[DaveR]

"Dave would be less willing to make "veiled" threats if he didn't feel the rest of the newspaper industry would pile in behind him

it has nothing to do with bodies other than the law - it's the same cosy politicians/media/law circle that saw papers get away with so much for so long

After being initiatlly defensive, the US have accepted the need for this debate (surveillance) but Cameron is way behind the curve. If this country's press was worth fighting for it would be shaming him over this"

The Leveson:Snowden parallel you are so desperate to draw is just bollocks, though. Govts (and indeed individuals) have always been able to go to court to get an injunction to prevent unlawful publication of material, but the key word is 'unlawful' - you have to satisfy a High Court judge that you've got a good case, and you have to have some evidence. And High Court judges don't exactly have a record of doing whatever govt wants them to, even when national security is involved.

What Cameron said was the govt was prepared to go to court if necessary - nothing new there. The implied suggestion is that in the past papers exercised more discretion about what they printed when there was an obvious potential security angle, and that's also true. What the right balance is a matter of legitimate debate. However, whether you believe in total and unfettered publication of everything, or that the wider public interest is served by some things staying secret, everybody knows that the ultimate backstop is a court applying the law. That's the opposite of what Leveson is proposing.

[StraferJack]

Couldn't be put more succinctly or clearly

From ex editor of the sun

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/29/leveson-humility-former-sun-editor-i-know

[DaveR]

Except the entire article is one long non sequitur

All the examples that he gives of terrible stories printed by him or others either already involved some sort of illegality, or would still be pretty much unimpeachable even in a post Leveson world, unless the new Code contained exactly the sorts of restrictions that worry serious critics of his proposals.

It's worth remembering that both the McCanns and Chris Jefferies took their cases to court and won. I agree with Levson's conclusion that existing legal remedies are not sufficient, and his proposals for free (or very cheap) fast track proceedings for individuals with a decent case are entirely sensible. I just don't see the need to hitch them to a quasi-legislative structure involving a whole bunch of essentially political appointees setting out to define the limits of public interest journalism.

[StraferJack]

He did say the law should be enough. But it clearly isn't

And he also refutes the idea that it's government oversight of the media/end of free press

Seems people just want it to be something it isn't

[????]

Says far more about David Yelland than anything else by my reading

[StraferJack]

And. What. Exactly. Would that be?

[????]

act like a scumbag for years whilst editor of a scummy paper and then do some highly publicised Mea Culpa, to, at best, appease your guilt, or more likely angle for some 'grown up' gig now you're not a tabloid editor - sod the actual important matter.

[El Pibe]

I was reading this much shared tale a couple of days ago http://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/cahirodoherty/Mass-grave-of-up-to-800-dead-babies-exposed-in-County-Galway-.html

And it struck me that this is the world that bleeeding hearts have eroded. The UK was almost as bad as Ireland except we only had judgementalism, conservatism and hatred of differnce to blame, we can't even pretend it was the church; you only have to look at how single mums are still villified as welfare bludgers, just doing it to skip the housing queue, like those immigrants...

And the calls to roll back these gains, the attitudes of live and let live, multiculturalism, acceptance of gays; this clamour is getting louder as more and more jump on to it realising there's safety in numbers, everyone's doing it, aaah that Clarkson just saying what we all did at school, that's fine.

I fear for the country I really do, woebetide if the polls are true and people really do follow up the euro votes in the general election....