Current Affairs the British Press thread

[Preki]

Speaking of the press does anyone out there regularly read an old fashioned newspaper any more?

Until about 5 or 6 years ago I'd probably bought the Sunday Times maybe most weeks and then the Saturday Mirror for a read of the sports section in particular on a morning to get my weekend going. But then I stopped for a while for no obvious reason and never went back. I kept up with buying the Evening Standard to read on a train home whenever I went into London but that was it.

Anyway- being in isolation this week I've had a paper every day to ease rhe boredom and absolutely loving it. But despite my politics being left of centre I just can't read the Guardian or even the Independent isn't half as readable as The Times in my opinion. I don't think it's particularly biased / right leaning but maybe I'm wrong?

Anyone else actually still read the British press?

Stopped during the Pandemic and haven't got back into the habit. Times is pretty Tory (and Murdoch owned) so best avoided in my opinion.

 

[Charlie Sweet]

Stopped during the Pandemic and haven't got back into the habit. Times is pretty Tory (and Murdoch owned) so best avoided in my opinion.

I'm not sure it is to be honest.

the main news item is their continued investigation to expose the corruptness of Prince Charles (cash for access).

The two main politics opinion pieces have Johnson being attacked by right-wingers for his tax and spend policy as basically betraying the whole basis of Brexit. The other one a preview of the coming cabinet reshuffle which ends with a summary that they are a shower of low calibre clowns unable or unwilling to flex muscles on a loose cannon PM. Neither are flattering!

 

[Ray Purchase]

I think we have moved on from a tribalistic reading of newspapers.

I grew up in a Daily Mirror reading home, but as an adult have bought the Guardian, The Independent (and latterly the i) and the Times.

I can't say reading any newspapers has influenced my politics or how I have voted.

 

[dead_soft]

I think we have moved on from a tribalistic reading of newspapers.

I grew up in a Daily Mirror reading home, but as an adult have bought the Guardian, The Independent (and latterly the i) and the Times.

I can't say reading any newspapers has influenced my politics or how I have voted.

I’m not sure we are always aware of the inherent biases and influences we take on

 

[Ray Purchase]

I’m not sure we are always aware of the inherent biases and influences we take on

I consider myself a mainstream social democrat, so as this is now Tory, you could be right.

 

[BigMick]

Job going - get your applications in!

https://jobs.theguardian.com/job/7427458/jerusalem-correspondent/#success

"Excellent knowledge of the Middle East, particularly Israel and the Palestinian territories" - that'll be a first! I wonder how they define 'excellent'?

"Language skills preferred, but not essential". No need for Hebrew or Arabic then - those NGO chiefs all speak English.

'Ability to copy and paste press releases from NGOs' seems to be the main skill of the majority of correspondents.

 

[Ray Purchase]

Job going - get your applications in!

https://jobs.theguardian.com/job/7427458/jerusalem-correspondent/#success

"Excellent knowledge of the Middle East, particularly Israel and the Palestinian territories" - that'll be a first! I wonder how they define 'excellent'?

"Language skills preferred, but not essential". No need for Hebrew or Arabic then - those NGO chiefs all speak English.

'Ability to copy and paste press releases from NGOs' seems to be the main skill of the majority of correspondents.

Get that application in mate.

One of the few balanced and informed posters on here ,re the whole Palestine-Israel question.

 

[BigMick]

Get that application in mate.

One of the few balanced and informed posters on here ,re the whole Palestine-Israel question.

Thank you Ray but I've been happily retired for 5 years! Any interest I have now is purely personal not professional.

Seriously, though, it should be the job of a lifetime for the right candidate. Credit to The Guardian for actually having a correspondent there, although most of the articles I've read could just as easily have been written from the UK - they tend just to skim the surface. Perhaps this explains the 'language skills not being essential'. Many foreign correspondents and heads of the bigger and foreign-funded NGOs live close to each other, socialise together, and exchange information. It's not that there aren't some fine, hardworking journalists, or NGOs doing good work, but the relationship between the groups can be more than a little incestuous, with the journalists spoon-fed stories which too often make it to print without being questioned, and NGOs producing documents containing unverified 'facts' taken directly from newspapers.

I'd recommend learning both languages - it's amazing how many doors it will open; and, as beguiling as it is, get out of the Jerusalem bubble as much as possible.

 

[tsubaki]

The anxiety of being constantly judged by people who don't know you but think they do, who've made up their minds about you before you've even opened your mouth, can sometimes be crippling, even for someone as tough as me. It has, over the years, caused repeated bouts of depression.

from Sarah Vine’s column in today’s Mail, where she Captain Renaults herself

 

[brigadier]

North Korea could learn a thing or two from the uk press, living standards and justice are slowly disappearing whilst the rich have nothing but contempt for ordinary people just trying to live a honest life and somehow its immigrants and families on low incomes fault, I have no doubt they play a huge part in lowering the standards of humanity, shame on them.

 

[Wolf8312]

North Korea could learn a thing or two from the uk press, living standards and justice are slowly disappearing whilst the rich have nothing but contempt for ordinary people just trying to live a honest life and somehow its immigrants and families on low incomes fault, I have no doubt they play a huge part in lowering the standards of humanity, shame on them.

Journalists with actual integrity are now dying breed (or being driven underground) in Britain/the west and papers like the Guardian are increasingly controlled by US/UK intelligence. The Guardian itself is little more than a Neoconservative propaganda rag these days.

Here's what a real journalist John Pilger (who used to work for the Guardian) has to say about them:

John Pilger Responds

We asked former Guardian columnist John Pilger for his thoughts on ‘Capitalism’s Conscience’. He responded:

‘Liberal journalism, such as the Guardian’s, was always a loose extension of establishment power. But something has changed since the rise of Blairism. The spaces allotted to independent journalists (myself included) have vanished. The dissent that was tolerated, even celebrated when I arrived in Fleet Street in the 1960s, has regressed to a metaphoric underground as liberal capitalism sheds the last illusions of democracy.

‘This is a seismic shift, with the Guardian and the BBC – far more influential than those on the accredited right — policing the new “groupthink”, as Robert Parry called it, ensuring its politics and hypocrisies, its omissions and fabrications while pursuing the enemies of the new national security state.

‘Journalism students need to study this urgently if they are to understand that the true source of the contrivance known as “fake news” is not merely social media, but a liberal “mainstream” self-anointed with a false respectability that claims to challenge corrupt and warmongering power but, in reality, courts and protects it, and colludes with it.

‘This is the Guardian today. Rid of those journalists it cannot control, the porous borders they once crossed long closed, the Guardian more than ever represents the world view of its hero, Blair, the “mystical” lost leader the paper promoted with evangelical fervour and has since done its best to rehabilitate, a man responsible for human carnage beyond the imagination.

‘To its credit, Des Freedman’s anthology includes a scattering of sharp honesty, especially the chapters by Alan MacLeod, Mark Curtis and Matt Kennard. But the omissions are shocking: notably the Guardian’s “nuanced” (a favourite weasel word) support for the dismemberment of nations: from Yugoslavia to Syria, and for its immoral backing of the current MI6/CIA propaganda war against nuclear-armed powers Russia and China.

‘An example of this is a recent stream of US-sourced “human rights” propaganda from Taiwan, much of it publicly discredited, that beckons war with China. This has yet to match the output of the Guardian’s chief Russiaphobe, Luke Harding, who ensures that all evil leads to Vladimir Putin.

‘We are given scant idea how the people of these hellish places live and think, for they are the modern “other”. That the Chinese, according to Harvard, Pew and numerous other studies, are the most contented human beings on earth is irrelevant, or to quote Harold Pinter, “it didn’t matter, it was of no interest”.

‘It was Harding and two others who claimed in the Guardian that Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, had held secret talks with Julian Assange at the Ecuadorean embassy. Discredited by the former Ecuadorean consul Fidel Narvaez as ‘fake’ (and by those like myself who were subjected to the security screening at the embassy), the story was typical of the decade-long smear campaign against Assange.

‘The campaign was one of the lowest points in British journalism. While collecting the kudos, circulation, profit and book and Hollywood deals for Assange’s work, the Guardian played a pivotal role. Although Mark Curtis touches on the latter years, young journalists need to know the whole disgraceful saga and its significance in crushing those who challenge power from outside the liberal fence and refuse to join the “club”.

‘The principal Guardian ringmaster was Alan Rusbridger, who was editor in chief for 20 years. (Rusbridger also oversaw the Observer, the Guardian’s sister paper, which during the build-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 ran a rabid pro-war campaign that included fabrications about WMD for which its reporter, David Rose, later personally apologised – unlike his editors).

‘Rusbridger has lately re-invented himself as a media moralist. “Only those with the highest professional and ethical standards,” he wrote in 2019, “will rise above the oceans of mediocrity and malignity and survive.” While Rusbridger rises above the oceans to promote his new book on the ethics of “proper news”, Julian Assange, the truth telling journalist betrayed by the Guardian, remains in solitary confinement in Belmarsh prison.

‘Much of Freedman’s anthology is the work of media academics, whose takeover of the training of journalists is relatively recent – well, it’s within my own career. Some have done fine work, including Freedman himself. But the question begs: how have they and their colleagues changed the media for the better when so much of it has become an echo chamber of rapacious, mendacious power? The craft of journalism deserves better.’ (Email to Media Lens, 9 March 2021)

 

[gonetomorrow]

Even though it's pretty naff I faithfully get our local paper because I know what a lifeline it is for elderly and infirm folk who can't get local news any other way. I read for a talking newspaper and we have blind listeners who were upset during lockdown because we weren't recording.

TV and Radio no longer cover local news adequately in towns and areas of our cities.

 

[BigMick]

'Ability to copy and paste press releases from NGOs' seems to be the main skill of the majority of correspondents.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...n-human-rights-groups-terrorist-organisations

Sadly, a classic case of 'copy and paste' journalism from the Guardian's outgoing Jerusalem correspondent, Harriet Sherwood. Is she still in Jerusalem? This could just as easily have been written in a cosy office in London. A good editor would have drop-kicked it straight back to her, perhaps with the following notes:

1. Why now? The links between these organisations and the PFLP have been known for years, in some cases for more than a decade, so why designate them now? What new evidence is there and has any of it been made public?

1a. Did the 2019 PFLP bomb attack that killed 17-year-old Rina Shnerb cause a change of Israeli policy towards these organisations? What about the PFLP's role in May's Gaza war?

2. The outcry from their fellow NGOs is a given - do any of them actually deny the links?

3. Have the PFLP said anything? Do they deny the links?

4. Were Prime Minister Bennett and Foreign Minister Lapid consulted about the decision? (Apparently not).

5. How have the rest of the government reacted? Is it a threat to the stability of the coalition?

6. Did personal ambition play any part in Benny Gantz's decision? Is he shoring up his right-wing credentials with a view to a future leadership bid?

7. Last week it emerged that the Palestinian Authority had suspended payments to the PFLP - coincidence?

8. Is there a possibility the matter was discussed during the recent meeting between Gantz and PA President Abbas?

I appreciate that a lack of space may be constrictive and I know she already has one foot out of the door, but the inclusion of some of those points, plus a couple of other changes, and there might have been a bit more substance to the article, rather than a slap-dash effort that must have taken all of five minutes to write.

 

[tsubaki]

Journalists with actual integrity are now dying breed (or being driven underground) in Britain/the west and papers like the Guardian are increasingly controlled by US/UK intelligence. The Guardian itself is little more than a Neoconservative propaganda rag these days.

Here's what a real journalist John Pilger (who used to work for the Guardian) has to say about them:

John Pilger Responds

We asked former Guardian columnist John Pilger for his thoughts on ‘Capitalism’s Conscience’. He responded:

‘Liberal journalism, such as the Guardian’s, was always a loose extension of establishment power. But something has changed since the rise of Blairism. The spaces allotted to independent journalists (myself included) have vanished. The dissent that was tolerated, even celebrated when I arrived in Fleet Street in the 1960s, has regressed to a metaphoric underground as liberal capitalism sheds the last illusions of democracy.

‘This is a seismic shift, with the Guardian and the BBC – far more influential than those on the accredited right — policing the new “groupthink”, as Robert Parry called it, ensuring its politics and hypocrisies, its omissions and fabrications while pursuing the enemies of the new national security state.

‘Journalism students need to study this urgently if they are to understand that the true source of the contrivance known as “fake news” is not merely social media, but a liberal “mainstream” self-anointed with a false respectability that claims to challenge corrupt and warmongering power but, in reality, courts and protects it, and colludes with it.

‘This is the Guardian today. Rid of those journalists it cannot control, the porous borders they once crossed long closed, the Guardian more than ever represents the world view of its hero, Blair, the “mystical” lost leader the paper promoted with evangelical fervour and has since done its best to rehabilitate, a man responsible for human carnage beyond the imagination.

‘To its credit, Des Freedman’s anthology includes a scattering of sharp honesty, especially the chapters by Alan MacLeod, Mark Curtis and Matt Kennard. But the omissions are shocking: notably the Guardian’s “nuanced” (a favourite weasel word) support for the dismemberment of nations: from Yugoslavia to Syria, and for its immoral backing of the current MI6/CIA propaganda war against nuclear-armed powers Russia and China.

‘An example of this is a recent stream of US-sourced “human rights” propaganda from Taiwan, much of it publicly discredited, that beckons war with China. This has yet to match the output of the Guardian’s chief Russiaphobe, Luke Harding, who ensures that all evil leads to Vladimir Putin.

‘We are given scant idea how the people of these hellish places live and think, for they are the modern “other”. That the Chinese, according to Harvard, Pew and numerous other studies, are the most contented human beings on earth is irrelevant, or to quote Harold Pinter, “it didn’t matter, it was of no interest”.

‘It was Harding and two others who claimed in the Guardian that Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, had held secret talks with Julian Assange at the Ecuadorean embassy. Discredited by the former Ecuadorean consul Fidel Narvaez as ‘fake’ (and by those like myself who were subjected to the security screening at the embassy), the story was typical of the decade-long smear campaign against Assange.

‘The campaign was one of the lowest points in British journalism. While collecting the kudos, circulation, profit and book and Hollywood deals for Assange’s work, the Guardian played a pivotal role. Although Mark Curtis touches on the latter years, young journalists need to know the whole disgraceful saga and its significance in crushing those who challenge power from outside the liberal fence and refuse to join the “club”.

‘The principal Guardian ringmaster was Alan Rusbridger, who was editor in chief for 20 years. (Rusbridger also oversaw the Observer, the Guardian’s sister paper, which during the build-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 ran a rabid pro-war campaign that included fabrications about WMD for which its reporter, David Rose, later personally apologised – unlike his editors).

‘Rusbridger has lately re-invented himself as a media moralist. “Only those with the highest professional and ethical standards,” he wrote in 2019, “will rise above the oceans of mediocrity and malignity and survive.” While Rusbridger rises above the oceans to promote his new book on the ethics of “proper news”, Julian Assange, the truth telling journalist betrayed by the Guardian, remains in solitary confinement in Belmarsh prison.

‘Much of Freedman’s anthology is the work of media academics, whose takeover of the training of journalists is relatively recent – well, it’s within my own career. Some have done fine work, including Freedman himself. But the question begs: how have they and their colleagues changed the media for the better when so much of it has become an echo chamber of rapacious, mendacious power? The craft of journalism deserves better.’ (Email to Media Lens, 9 March 2021)

Some legitimate criticisms there but a lot that absolutely discredits the rest. The Chinese being the most content people on Earth, for example. Then there is the Putin segment.

 

[Wolf8312]

Some legitimate criticisms there but a lot that absolutely discredits the rest. The Chinese being the most content people on Earth, for example. Then there is the Putin segment.

Well as an ex-pat living here I don't know if I'd say they are the most contented people in the world either. Seems like a stretch to me but he was citing a Harvard researcher, who I assume meant contented with the political direction they are heading in along with their national unity. And that is undeniable.

Having lived in China for 15 years I do know that the belief most westerners seem to share, that people living in China (and Russia too probably) live in mortal terror of their government and the police (you're probably far more likely to be beaten to death by a policeman in the US than in China) is a delusion informed by our own media/propaganda apparatus which is controlled by US/UK intelligence as Pilger quite rightly pointed out.

China's is an authoritarian government but is at the end of the day a system of government that the Chinese people themselves support. Just as you believe their authoritarian system is a crime against the individual they think council estates infested with teenage thugs and drug lords, is a crime against the majority.

I have to say too that China is an incredibly safe country compared to the UK and US as many others will tell you.

I also believe Pilger is correct in saying that all evil does not lead back to Vladimir Putin as things are never nearly as black and white as The Lord Of The Rings western media narratives about evil Russia/China would have westerners believe. If our media was to be trusted they would be telling us the same thing about our own leaders who are instead invariably portrayed as bungling and incompetent but never evil, as foreign powers (or rather powers that do not comply with the US) such as Russia and China are portrayed.

Take Syria as an example in the context of the so-called War On Terrorism. A war that has been waged solely to expand American hegemony as laid down explicitly in the Project for a New American Century (the authors whose wish dreams came to fruition when they were all coincidentally in power when their "major catalysing event" took place in 2001 followed on by their Hitlerian enabling (patriot) acts and wars of aggression (Afghanistan and Iraq) which as Pilger points out were crimes against humanity beyond human imagination.

People seem to forget that it was not Putin, Russia or China who during the last 20 years have invaded and devastated one sovereign Muslim nation after another, rampaging through Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and then Syria killing millions of people, while each time using the very same justification and pretext for doing so by insisting that the leaders of all of these sovereign Muslim nations were "evil bad men" (just as they insist Putin is) who needed to be overthrown because... ethics!

Incredibly even after the Iraq war and WMD (dodgy dossiers) and the British public surely knowing by now it is being lied to, it still happily accepts anything it is fed by British and American intelligence when it comes to Russia and China, even when they are almost undoubtedly being subjected to the same tired old demonizing propaganda which goes something like:

We must help these poor oppressed people from the evil [insert evil super villain] eg. Taliban, Saddam, Gadaffi, Assad, etc. by invading and destabilizing the [Poor language removed] out of their countries and stealing all their resources (oh and we can use enhanced' interrogation' techniques to spread our freedom).

Who the hell are we or our despicable moral whore of a media to lecture anybody else about ethics really?

Do the US or UK governments and the media they surreptitiously control really give two shits about the rights of people in Ukraine or Taiwan? What is US democracy now but a tacky American franchise which allows the US to infiltrate and subvert other countries' political systems?

Was it not more likely that in defending Syria (at the invitation of the official Syrian Government) and preventing the US from claiming its latest middle eastern victim Russia was designated the new evil supervillain from which the world again had to be saved?

And is it not more likely that instead of the Chinese committing an illogical (and utterly unproven) genocide in Xinjiang that in actual fact the US simply wishes to destroy China economically, by making it a global pariah, it being the greatest threat to its own global position and hegemony as the top dog?

And one final thing. Agree with me or not about this, but ask yourself why on any other social media platforms in such a supposedly free and democratic society a post such as this would now be deleted and removed?

Take the John Piger article I posted and try to post it on Youtube then refresh the page and see if it remains...

Why are they so afraid of people expressing these opinions if there is no truth to them?

This is not medical misinformation, and they are now carrying out censorship of political opinions which they do not want the mainstream public to be exposed to. Millions of people posting similarly non-mainstream opinions are also finding the same thing.

People are so fixated on the rights and freedoms of people's halfway across the world that they are seemingly blind to their own rights and freedoms being flushed down the toilet. Remember it is big tech that controls and censors information online in China, not the police so don't fall for that oh but they're private company bullshit, the west is heading in exactly the same direction!