The Haze was amused to read a recent slew of articles in The Guardian, insisting that the Labour Party has been afflicted by some terrible disease and is close to death. Voters are getting involved in politics it seems and this has got The Guardian terribly upset.
In this vitriolic piece Nick Cohen smears colleague Seamus Milne as being part of a Corbyn “insurgency” and Paul Mason for “taking braggart swagger and cocksure certainties of newspaper punditry into politics”. The article drips with anger and bile – but after reading it (and many others) it strikes us that it is not The Labour Party that is in danger of expiring – but The Guardian.
Rewind to December of last year and we see The Guardian Media Group losing money – losses so serious that GMG proposed axing 250 jobs (13% of its workforce) including 100 posts in editorial. Look at this chart of losses since 2008.
Not many companies can consistently lose this kind of money – the GMG can only do so because it had assets to sell, namely its stakes in Auto Trader and Ascential , these one-off windfalls are now behind it.
GMG is widely expected to lose more money this year. New editor Katharine Viner knew who was really to blame – social media! In this revealing article, poor Kath claims that Facebook and Twitter are “threatening the funding of public-interest reporting” and have “disrupted the truth”.
A more self-aware editor might pause and reflect on why people are turning away from the former flagship of the liberal media. A recent study from the LSE found that only 11% of articles about Jeremy Corbyn in the main UK print titles were free of distortion and bias – The Guardian fares better than The Daily Mail but if one were to include all the smear opinion pieces and insidiously dishonest Live Blogs then the gap between The Guardian and The Sun starts to look wafer thin.
The Guardian has been caught red handed inventing stories about sexist abuse against Laura Kuenssberg and anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. Its nakedly aggressive and dishonest campaign against Corbyn has poisoned the well of support from its own constituency – its coverage derided daily by its own online readership.
The Guardian no longer produces “public interest Journalism” but instead produces “Guardian interest journalism” – that is, news manufactured to defend the very cushy relationship that The Guardian has with the political establishment and the powerful.
John McDonnell’s critique of Labour MP’s plotting to oust Jeremy Corbyn was spot on when he said:
This coup isn’t about Jeremy Corbyn. This coup isn’t about him, this is about you…
This is the 1% telling the 99% to ‘get back in your place.’
…and that is also the function of The Guardian’s attacks on Corbyn – “voters, know your limits!”
The Guardian acts as THE gatekeeper of the so called “liberal” media. They use their dominant brand and position within the global marketplace to set limits and boundaries on what people are allowed to choose, think and discuss. It is because The Guardian colludes with the establishment in setting these limits that they are feted and rewarded by the very system that they are supposed to be holding to account.
Guardian staff get to hobnob with celebrity, wealth and power precisely because they are no threat to it. As we outlined some time ago The Guardian is owned and run by people with a vested interest in corporate power and that includes its journalists, paid opinion spinners and editors.
When one looks objectively at the role The Guardian now plays in the world one has to wonder if the stench of death can already be smelt over this media behemoth.
The Guardian batted for Ed Milliband and his weakly diluted neoliberal politics – the voters ignored them. Then they batted for Yvette Cooper in the Labour leadership election – the voters ignored them. Then they batted for the EU – the voters ignored them. Now they are waving all their fists with infantile rage against Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters – but he is more popular than ever and The Labour Party is now the biggest socialist movement in Europe.
What is the point of The Guardian now? Nobody with even a vague interest in progressive politics trusts it anymore. It cannot deliver swings in public opinion because its opinions are known in advance and vast chunks of its audience are no longer listening.
It doesn’t campaign for anything that might threaten the status quo – all its bluster about “fearless journalism” is just spin. The Guardian’s anticipatory compliance with the establishment view has been so exposed in recent years that its no longer even worth discussing.
Does the world really need another group of stenographers for the wealthy and powerful? I think we can all get through another week without another lecture from Polly Toynbee or Suzanne Moore on the evils of voters getting involved in politics.
The Guardian’s influence is eroding every day as it becomes a parody of its own neoliberal values. It is running out of money, haemorrhaging staff and shows not a trace of the self awareness needed to rebuild its brand. Katharine Viner and crew continue on their right wing suicide mission, blaming everyone else for their lack of integrity and relevance.
Against this backdrop, the Labour Party is ahead in the polls, has seen a quite extraordinary resurgence in membership and is dealing with its extreme right wing dinosaurs with each day that passes.
I would suggest to Nick Cohen and all the other smug shills at The Guardian that they should worry more about themselves than about The Labour Party.
But if the unthinkable should happen and The Guardian were to close….who would miss it? Tony Blair?
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Very sound article except that I wonder whether the power “elite” would let it fail considering that £40M a year is peanuts for a few corporations (let alone all of them).
And even if it persuades no sceptics it still provides those converted who want to be ego-strokingly preached to anyway.
The Guardian should go back to Manchester, discover it’s roots and original purpose and recruit new young ‘edgy’ northern journalists in touch with the zeitgeist.
It’s still the most left wing mainstream publication in the UK. That makes these changes dangerous, but losing it altogether would be all the more so. Who would miss it? Everyone who doesn’t want the Daily Sun Express to become even more dominant.
If there was much likelihood that a truly progressive publication would rise up to take its place then fine, but there isn’t.
I agree, like the BBC The Guardian has some semblance of neutral reportage and is definably not as dishonest as the bulk of the UK national press. No point throwing our only toy out of the pram just because it’s not perfect.
I have stopped reading it after 38 years. Now it is just rubbish. Apart from the Morning Star the rest is dreadful. Only 10% of the public get their news from papers, whereas 38% get it online. The Guardian’s end is nigh…
Brilliant article – spot on! I stopped buying the Guardian a long time ago for the reasons you have cited. I’ll be glad to see it fold.
I recommend the “i” – neutral, in the good sense of reporting both sides of most arguments – and only 40p.
Great article – thanks. I stopped buying the print edition of the Guardian some years ago and only ever look at the online version now. I use an ad-blocker which they hate, but I refuse to put a penny into the pockets of these journalistic charlatans. The Guardian is now nothing more than another right-wing neoliberal rag, masquerading as a centre-left, progressive, ‘the facts are sacred’ trailblazer of truth.
The Guardian used to be ‘my’ paper – I read it pretty much every day, and it’s been painful and difficult to see it morph into the crappy, lifeless thing it has become. I really hope something comes together to replace it at this time of need. The progressive left needs a powerful voice. Perhaps some form of alliance of left-progressive voices is the answer; there is plenty of talent out there writing good stuff, but without the resources of a largish media outlet, they do sometimes seem to be ‘voices in the wilderness’. Could some collaborative effort be made I wonder, including the talented people behind such excellent sites like Sodium Haze, The Canary, Off-Guardian, Vox Political, Craig Murray … etc?
I’d miss the Guardian Football Podcast to be honest. But after over a decade of reading it for news and comment Jonathan Jones article that you had in your worst anti-Corbyn article was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I hardly ever go on the site, and if I do it’s only for sport (with AdBlock turned on).
I actually have to thank the Guardian for it’s extreme anti-Corbynism stance – if I hadn’t been so disgusted at their non-journalistic lie, smear and spin campaign, I might never have investigated further – and joined the Labour Party! Thankfully, the online below-the-line comments sections (once you get past the usual insults and silliness) are a hot-bed of informative discussion and debate, with a much more pro-Corbyn contribution base – definitely worth a look!
The Guardian HAS become part of the establishment and I wonder whether Newspapers as a whole are on the way out. The Internet provides far more up to date information and I have only a passing interest in reading what happened yesterday, unless the journalism is high quality which it rarely is. I am more likely to read more specialised magazines or simply rely on social media for my news and info. I can’t really see much of a future for daily newspapers once the older non computer user passes away, or that poorer people have better access to computers.
I’ve only sampled a relatively few examples of reporting in the ‘Independent’ over the past few months, but it seems they have at least one foot in the impartial reporting camp.
So maybe it could emerge as a robust alternative to the Guardian and increase its efforts and step up to the mark.
I’ve not bought the Guardian for a long while, but some articles I’ve read online, have left me feeling as though they were personal attacks on my views, integrity and sanity.
The Guardian is what it always has been – a serious newspaper of the centre-left. It’s just as good, bad and indifferent as it ever was. As always it hosts a range of writers from Simon Jenkins to Owen Jones and George Monbiot. And as for it being in a crisis – it’s the second most widely read newspaper online (after the Daily Mail). Its influence is wider than ever and that’s great. All we are seeing here is the same sort of fanaticism and intolerance that marred the Scottish referendum campaign. Like Nick Cohen, I am a leftwing socialist with little time for Jeremy Corbyn and Stop the War etc. etc. You may not like that, but you’ll just have to live with it as you guys own neither the left nor the Labour Party.
That you can offer that sentence for serious consideration is almost beyond satire. I see the GMG is set to post losses of £96 million this year. Enjoy your ‘socialist’ warmongers like Cohen while you can.