Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

ok but surely you don't reject the premise that the guardian is a terrible paper and getting worse though, right? if you reject that then i feel like any follow up debate would not be in good faith.

(xp)

the washington is walking back the prism story (deleting "knowingly shared" from their report) and, without wishing to defend the likes of google, literally every organization implicated in the story is denying it pretty strenuously and unambiguously.

Nah, those denials are full of holes and they all hang on "direct access" or other massive caveats
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/06/07/the_prism_spin_war_has_begun

credit for those is apparently due to greenwald, not the guardian. xp

greenwald is a columnist (not journalist), is american, lives in the US, and often publishes his columns elsewhere at the same time as in the guardian, which started running them a year or so ago. until this he hadn't done any reporting for the paper.

― caek, Friday, June 7, 2013 11:51 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also the prism thing was in the washington post

― caek, Friday, June 7, 2013 11:55 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

...

the prism thing seems to be them non-exclusively publishing a deliberately leaked document one of their comment is free semi-freelance writers was chosen to be a recipient of, not investigative journalism.

― caek, Friday, June 7, 2013 2:11 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think they had to do a bit more than just publish the contents of the document but yeah, I agree it's not proper investigative journalism.

― Matt DC, Friday, June 7, 2013 2:22 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i am being ungenerous yes.

i think this being in the guardian doesn't so much reflect well on the guardian as very poorly on the nyt.

― caek, Friday, June 7, 2013 2:25 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

...

xpost The Guardian got the story first. Washington Post followed.

As to whether being the recipient of a leak counts as good journalism - yes, of course it does. Because to be the recipient of a leak as big as this you have to a) have spent years making excellent contacts b) spent years building trust that you will not betray those contacts c) spent years building trust that you will be able to deliver the best possible story for that leaked document. And you have to have editors astute enough to know who to hire who can do that stuff. It's not as if someone who had the stuff picked a name at random to send it to.

I do work for the Guardian, but this would hold true if it had been another paper that broke the story.

― If you tolerate Bis, then Kenickie will be next (ithappens), Saturday, June 8, 2013 5:15 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

xpost 2 Greenwald's a staffer for the Guardian. And while he may be a columnist, it's not in the sense of "what I did this week" - it's actual reporting in his columns.

― If you tolerate Bis, then Kenickie will be next (ithappens), Saturday, June 8, 2013 5:18 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

...

ok but surely you don't reject the premise that the guardian is a terrible paper and getting worse though, right? if you reject that then i feel like any follow up debate would not be in good faith.

― caek, Saturday, June 8, 2013 11:23 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i feel like *someone's debating in bad faith here, but it certainly isn't ithappens.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jun/14/glenn-greenwald-reader-profile-interactive#615

It's a good paper.

post where i state my case + post where matt basically agrees with me + post where someone who works with guardian disagrees with me + post where i imply the guardian is a bad newspaper.

i feel a right chump now.

all i'm saying, and surely this is something we can call agree on, is that the guardian is truly a toxic force for evil.

it's not just a "disagreement" though, is it? you stated that a) Greenwald was not a staffer but a freelancer for the Guardian, that b) that the piece was in the Washington Post and that c) Greenwald was just "a columnist (not a journalist)".

and the person from the guardian corrected you that a) Greenwald is actually a staffer at the guardian, that b) the Guardian ran the piece first, and c) that while Greenwald is a columnist he is also a journalist, not a "not journalist".

and rather than, i don't know, accept that you were wrong on those points and acknowledge that, you instead respond by challenging the poster from the guardian to nod in agreement with this thread's title, which would be an unusually stupid thing for someone who works for the guardian whose identity even "a columnist (not a journalist)" like you allege Greenwald to be would be able to work out.

i don't care whether you feel like a chump or not, and it might well pan out that the whole NSA story is an empty balloon, but i think its kind of NAGL to accuse someone of arguing in bad faith when you won't acknowledge when you're wrong and when you're expecting them to do something they couldn't really be expected to do without blowback upon themselves, and with which they might not even agree.

if you seriously thing i was seriously accusing him of debating in bad faith then i don't even

ok but surely you don't reject the premise that the guardian is a terrible paper and getting worse though, right? if you reject that then i feel like any follow up debate would not be in good faith.

― caek, Saturday, June 8, 2013 11:23 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i mean i honestly don't know what you're doing tbh, other than evading admitting that you were wrong about greenwald and the guardian, and it just makes me think you don't really know what you're talking about, but whatevs.

i absolutely agree with you that i was called out on a couple of points of fact. there.

but again, lmao if you seriously thing i was seriously accusing him of debating in bad faith.

serious post now:

the amount of credit the guardian deserves for this is not enormous because of the unusual nature of greenwald's relationship with the paper, and the self-mythologizing they've been doing on their own homepage for the past week is completely and utterly nauseating.

i also regret the existence of autotrader, because without that, the guardian wouldn't be able to afford to participate in the pseudointellectual race to the bottom it's currently winning handily.

I didn't think you were accusing me seriously of debating in bad faith. But … Greenwald's relationship with the paper is not "unusual". He is a paid employee. And if it were unusual, surely the Guardian would deserve extra credit for working out a way to use someone who can bring in scoops like this. The fact is, because of Greenwald and because of the unusual ways the Guardian is presenting itself, Snowden came to it, rather than to any of the other msm outlets he says he's suspicious off. The Guardian did well.

suspicious of, sorry.

yeah fair enough.

and as said elsewhere, fair credit for making his prose less febrile. he seems like a handful.

publishing that g-8 story seems pretty shitty

btw i feel like there are enough pictures of snowden's face on the homepage at the moment. dunno if you can pass that thought on to rusbridger?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/18/nigella-lawson-domestic-goddess-violence

It's hard to think of a sadder and more brutal undoing of such a high-profile image than what has happened to Lawson. In the past few days, she has gone from domestic goddess to the face of domestic violence.

this feels pretty off. calling her the "face of domestic violence" because... she was a victim of it who happens to be famous. it implies guilt on her part.

and also why would her husband seeming to be a domestic abuser affect her status as "a domestic goddess"? like however showbiz that rep is it's one she built by her work as a writer and a broadcaster - i fail to see how the fact she is in an abusive relationship makes her disingenuous as a tv chef, unless you blame her for saatchi's behaviour.

I don't think it's meant to imply guilt, or even disingenuousness in relation to her TV show, but it's not the most coherent of articles.

Was she even married to Saatchi when the domestic goddess stuff was coined?

No, she was still married to John Diamond.

HF is usually the voice of otm on celeb "controversies" but yeah that's not a good article. I don't really know what this sentence means:

Tina Turner, Lana Turner and, of course, Rihanna have all suffered from it and, just because they all had the means to leave their abusive partners, many of them stayed for some time.

and also why would her husband seeming to be a domestic abuser affect her status as "a domestic goddess"? like however showbiz that rep is it's one she built by her work as a writer and a broadcaster - i fail to see how the fact she is in an abusive relationship makes her disingenuous as a tv chef, unless you blame her for saatchi's behaviour.

― Shamrock Shoe (LocalGarda), Tuesday, June 18, 2013 9:27 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

HF seems to be saying that the "Domestic Goddess" image was tied up with having an apparently blissful home life and it turns out you can't bake your way to a happy family. Or something.

http://i.guim.co.uk/n/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/6/21/1371831337646/Edward-Snowden-composite--009.jpg

really enjoying this image. very noise board.

http://i.imgur.com/xbiovho.jpg

they are just doing this for/to caek i assume

http://i.imgur.com/9nXK1BY.jpg

oh man

**shrugs, a'la Arshavin..**

http://i.imgur.com/OfO6vBE.jpg

I love this.

Haha, so do I

I've updated my map of Edward Snowden's travels to reflect what we know so far.

= line from hawaii to hk, line to moscow

"Ian Brady mental health tribunal - in tweets"

the real problem with that is they embed the journalist's personal twitter so a few below her tweets about a child-murderer you have her saying "yay, bike holiday in france..."

important to know what ordinary decent people who are not monsters do

The Army admitted Thursday to not only restricting access to The Guardian news website at the Presidio of Monterey, as reported in Thursday's Herald, but Army-wide.

ffs

10 essential gifs for when you can't move your face
22 May 2013:

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett: If Botox renders you unable to express your emotions through your face, an animated gif may have to do the job
59 comments

http://www.guardian.co.uk/info/2013/jun/30/taken-down

Taken down: deals to hand over private data to America

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 30 June 2013 00.04 BST
This article has been taken down pending an investigation.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/img/charles/2013/06/29/ZZ46BF10B3.jpg

It's taken down from the website but the Observer already had it in print on today's front page.

This is from a week back but a friend is really unhappy with this piece:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/22/ask-grownup-why-african-people-poor

I agreed it could have been written a lot better but couldn’t see a huge problem with it, but my friend finds it incredibly objectionable, and inherently racist. Do they have a point?

Another reason is to do with the way Africa was colonised by Europe. Countries such as Britain, France and Belgium would put the most cooperative African tribes in power. This made other tribes jealous and caused lots of trouble. Corrupt leaders would sell Africa's minerals, for instance gold and copper, and keep the money for themselves.

That's a pretty bizarre reading of colonialism. Ah sure, we just put some cooperative Africans in charge...

the reason why europeans are rich, of course, is that foreigners helped them with their farming

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/01/internet-trolls-guide-to-different-flavours

While telling a woman not to leave the house at night if she doesn't wish to be raped would attract general contempt and disgust, it still seems to be perfectly acceptable to tell individuals not to go online if they don't wish to be trolled or cyberbullied.

lol

lol "cooperative" xp

http://i.imgur.com/uOfGWA2.png

zenkaon

09 July 2013 3:04pm
Recommend
50

What about the human rights of the people who got murdered. There is no hope for them. There are no human rights for them. They are dead.

Once again the human rights of the perpetrators of crimes come above those of the victims.

Are Daily Mail and Telegraph readers who troll the Guardian comments threads worse than they used to be?

there are exactly as worthwhile as the guardian readers who troll daily mail comment threads, so it's zero sum i guess.