"We as citizens will need to be assured that a new government would have faith in democracy, Europeanism and freedom guaranteed by law,” Olga Tokarczuk’s says two weeks before Poland goes to the polls in a potentially pivotal election on 15 October.
"We need assurances that such a government would listen to us and respond to our needs, and not, like the present one, subordinate the majority of citizens to anachronistic ‘traditional values’ adhered to only by a 30% minority,”
The Guardian absolutelly is partisan, with journalists, opinion writters and editors who are almost all from a very narrow slice at the top of British society (basically those whose parents are high middle-class and above so could afford to send them to very expensive private high-schools and definitelly see the value in that kind of class segregated schooling of teens hence choose to send them there), and where opinion writters openly describe themselves as “opinion formers” (so they’re not there to inform, they’re there to make your opinion be something, an in my experience that’s far too often by selective picking of information, emotionally charged wording and deceitful presentation than by logical argumentation).
By broader European standards they’re not quite a “rag” but are certainly high on partisan propaganda and very low on independence, honesty and journalistic integrity - it’s quite instructive to read the european news coverage there and then read it in mainstream newspapers of other large Western Europe countries.
Of course in the horrible Press environment in the UK they’re very good by comparisson with pretty much all the rest, except with the Private Eye (which is not even a newspaper but a satirical weekly magazine) which is pretty much the only serious written press with a “no holes barred, no sacred cows” journalistic coverage over there (though in TV terms, Channel 4 isn’t bad).
Basically they’re “The Voice Of The Lib Dems”, which are a neoliberal party (an incredibly sane and well-balanced party by comparison with the present day Tory Party - who are Britain’s Republicans - but hardly left of center and maybe not even center, by broader European standards).
PS: This probably makes The Guardian “leftwing” by US standards, but that’s just the product of how far right from the historical average the Overtoon Window has moved in those two countries - Britain has pretty much followed the US in crazy-politics terms but overlayed it with this kind of dynastic class system which maintains segregation of wealth and power, which the US didn’t have quite as much before but in Britain is quite literally centuries old.
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The editor that published Edward Snowden’s revelations was kicked out not long after doing it and the Panama Paper revelations led to no significant prosecutions in Britain and that newspaper went really quiet really fast on that.
I lived and worked in Britain before and after living elsewhere in Europe, so I’m painfully familiar with the politics there (and have other references to compare it to) and sadly the Press is not even close to being the independent 3rd Pillar of Democracy in Britain, as it is (sometimes more, sometimes less) in other countries of Europe. This is because Britain has as First Fast The Post system where the 2 mainstream parties which alternate in government regularly have more than 50% of parliamentarians with little more than 30% of the vote, the monarch actually has some real power and there is a 2nd unelected chamber whose members are either nominated for life of inherit the position from their parents, so you could say it’s far from a proper Democracy and the Press has long been used as a tool to quell or channel away discontent from actually wanting changes to the System in place. It’s not by chance that Britain fell so easilly a very similar kind of Left-Right War In The Moral Plane (aka Identity Politics) that stays well away from things like Wealth Inequality, just like in the US - it keeps the structures of power and wealth in place and unchallenged.
One thing you must be aware about the upper classes in Britain (and than includes almost all journalists and editors at The Guardian except 2, as well as all members of Board) is that they’re all about image management (they literally are brought up to never share their true feelings or present anything but a carefully crafted positive image, and I say this from personal knowledge), so I’m not at all surprised people who haven’t lived over there long enough fall for the posh local smoke and mirrors.
I’m genuinelly shocked that you think partisanship (the cornerstone of Propaganda and the very opposite of Journalistic Integrity) is a good thing in Journalism. I guess you’re from the generation who grew up in the Post-Truth, Crumbling-Democracy Era and have always seen the various Press entities as natural tools used in Political Infighting, rather than as the independent Pillar Of Democracy that’s supposed to keep the Political and Judicial pillars as much as possible honest. Having never known anything but a Press corrupted by Politics in a post-truth environment of propaganda wars, you trully believe that’s what the Press should do (all of which has more than a passing wiff of Orwell’s “1984” to it)
One really has to have completelly lost track of (or never have really dug down enough to get it) the point of Democracy (and hence the rationalle for its architecture) to want the Press to be nothing more than a tool of Politics.
@Aceticon
What do you read? What’s a good media?
Well, the Press in my home country is surpringly decent (really surprisingly so, given that my home country is Portugal and I’m quite critical of it, but it was painfully visible just how much the difference is when I came back from Britain), so I tend to watch some local TV channels and read a local newspaper and magazine.
I used to read The Guardian a lot when living in Britain and for a while after, mainly because all others newspapers there really are rags, as well as watch Channel 4 (as the BBC is highly partisan in news terms), but The Guardian has for over a decade now been moving away from the hard-nosed journalism that published the Snowden Revelations back in the day (I would say that the kicking out of the editor that went ahead and published it was a turning point) and diving ever harder into Identity Wars and away from all else meaningfull for how society works, all the while the world is crumbling all around us (even when they talk about the Environment they’ll avoiding the elephant in the room which how Consumer Society is incompatible with it, so our Economic system too has to change) and certainly are not at all critical of The System for distributing Power and Wealth in Britain and elsewhere (as exemplified by their coverage of The Royals, which is fawning to the point of making it repugnant) plus they’ve become even more English-Exceptionalists (i.e. they believe they’re a superior nation with superior people) than before.
They also used to have a livelly comments section (which in the last few years often had more insightfull and well informed takes than the article itself) but it has become less and less open (it’s only in some articles, and nowadays none of the ones pushing a certain political line never has comments open) and more and more censored, so I stopped participating.
I actually have a tab on my browser open with The Guardian right now but last couple of times over the last few weeks I went there and had a look around, nothing really caught my attention, probably because for things like the coverage of the War In Ukraine, there are a few comentators on TV here in Portugal which are way, way ahead of that newspaper (in terms of both breath and depth of analysis) and The Guardian’s coverage on Europe is basically “Look at all those bad things over there and how we’re better than them”, plus as I said, certain takes on things have become “beyond and and all criticism” by not having comments open, so you really only get the Party Line.
(PS: it’s funny that Portugal, having had quite a revolutionary-leftwing period after the 1974 Revolution that overthrew Fascism, actually has quite a number of “intellectuals” who were once communist party youth members, so have spend long periods there, speak russian, have friends there and are reasonably familiar with both Ukraine and Russia, whilst being strongly pro-Democracy, so we have a few quite insightfull commentators on that war who don’t just fall for the Russia-Good partisan beliefs of tankies. It helps that, as my country doesn’t really have any national-exceptionalism beliefs, they tend to be open to understanding the ways of doing things abroad rather than the looking at everything from their own “superior” cultural standpoint that one so often gets in British coverage of foreign affairs)
@Aceticon
What is a good media company in your view? What do you read?