The Guardian
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| —Pat Condell, complimenting Sweden[1] |
The Guardian (Sunday edition: The Observer[2]) is a British centre-left newspaper (beloved of organically-grown, muesli-wearing, sandal-hugging, tree-eating, disabled lesbian atheistic feminist social workers and teachers) with one of the most popular websites in the UK.[3]
Surprisingly, it is also home to one of the worst and most draining concentrations of Internet stupidity in the world, in the comments section of its 24/7 blogorama, Comment is Free. But, at least it's sort of free, so we can't complain too much.
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[edit] Columnists
Its columnists include self-confessed misanthrope Charlie Brooker,[4] a rare breed of politically-aware comedian David Mitchell,[5] excellent science writer and sceptic Ben Goldacre[6] (who had his legal fees paid by the paper during his lawsuit with woo-peddler Mattias Rath) and Ariane Sherine,[7] who was responsible for setting up the atheist bus campaign, although since late 2009 she has gone back to writing and journalism. It also hosts the anti-science and anti-mathematic screeds of Simon Jenkins.[8]
Its science section also features sometime RationalWiki contributor The Lay Scientist (under his IRL name Martin Robbins).[9] During the 2010 general election Robbins wrote analytical commentaries to the major parties' responses to science-related questions asked by Brian Cox, Simon Singh and David Nutt.
More recently, Glenn Greenwald[10] has done massive work covering privacy issues post-PATRIOT. In 2013, he formally resigned and is working on new projects.
[edit] The Grauniad
The papper was once notorios for it's many toyps and other ovbious mistakes, so that Private Eye always refereed to it as "The Grauniad" after it was said to hve msprinted its own name - an epethet which became comon usige. www.grauniad.co.uk redirects to the propper name, and Wikiipeida has a similiar redirect.
Example: "The audience was encouraged to wander over the stage and activate hidden censors"
[edit]
“”Comment is free, but facts are scared
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| —P. C. Scott[citation NOT needed] |
Comment is Free (CiF) is the comment and opinion... "section" on The Guardian's website that publishes content submitted by, well, potentially anyone. Authors are free to suggest themselves, and, if approved, get to write a column. While there are some editorial standards, it's not considered a part of the Guardian proper and it's not supposed to reflect the paper's stance - it's intended to be something of an open forum in the spirit of attracting page views the open exchange of ideas, page views intellectual debate, and page views the accumulation of hundreds of posts with varying level of stupidity in the comment section of each column.
Due to the controversial nature of some contributions, there's the inevitable suspicion that The Guardian is trolling its own audience for page views, and even then there are "WTF were they thinking when they approved this?" moments, such as when CiF invited contributions from members of the Occupy St Paul's movement in 2011 and Freeman on the land garbage got a free airing in a national newspaper.[11]
[edit] Criticisms
In the past few years the paper was accused of supporting anti-Semitic commentators. In the past it has written approvingly of Gilad Atzmon, portraying him as a mere pro-Palestine activist and glossing over his dodgy statements about "the Holocaust religion" and Jewish conspiracies;[12] however, a September 2011 column by Andy Newman finally denounced Atzmon and criticised the British left for ignoring anti-Semitism.[13] The paper has also written approvingly about Raed Salah, depicting him as an innocent victim of prejudice rather than a purveyor of medieval anti-Jewish sentiment.[14] In 2012 the paper was criticized for running a cartoon which depicted Benjamin Netanyahu as a "puppetmaster" for members of the British Government, including Tony Blair — playing on the anti-Semitic stereotype that Jews are cunning manipulators and that Tony Blair isn't capable of thinking on his own.[15] Guardian editors seemed to have embraced false dichotomy in this aspect — that you have to have to be a raving nut of an anti-Zionist to critique Israel's human rights record.
Senior members of the British Parliament have claimed that The Guardian may be guilty of treason in leaking data given to them by Edward Snowden regarding the NSA's spying operations. British Prime Minister David Cameron has accused The Guardian of "aiding the enemies" of the United Kingdom.[16] This claim, on the other hand, is probably bullshit.
[edit] Crossword
The Guardian crossword -- a standard British cryptic-style puzzle, in which the definition is only part of each clue, is a long-time favourite of cruciverbalists. The puzzle is devised by a rotating team of some 30 compilers, each with his/her characteristic style and special interests.
Access to the online version is free, and various cheat levels are available up to instant solution of the entire puzzle at the click of a mouse.
[edit] Columnists
[edit] See also
- The Daily Mail, its polar opposite
- Daily Telegraph, its ideological rival.
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ http://youtu.be/D4YMbsEm3ms?t=2m9s
- ↑ Effectively - The Observer began as a separate Sunday newspaper in 1791 and predates the then Manchester Guardian by 30 years. Guardian Media Group acquired The Observer in 1993 as its Sunday organ.
- ↑ Statistics Summary for guardian.co.uk
- ↑ The Guardian - Charlie Brooker
- ↑ The Guardian - David Mitchell
- ↑ The Guardian - Ben Goldacre
- ↑ The Guardian - Ariane Sherine
- ↑ The Guardian - Simon Jenkins
- ↑ The Guardian - The Lay Scientist
- ↑ http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/glenn-greenwald
- ↑ "commonly known as Dom" airs his views in the "law" section of this article and gets totally schooled a couple of days later.
- ↑ http://cifwatch.com/2011/10/02/jew-hatred-as-liberal-commentary-guardian-provides-platform-to-vicious-antisemitie-gilad-atzmon/
- ↑ http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/25/gilad-atzmon-antisemitism-the-left
- ↑ http://hurryupharry.org/2011/10/30/friends-of-raed-salah-is-the-guardian-a-newspaper/
- ↑ http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/91164/antisemitic-guardian-gaza-cartoon-shows-jews-puppeteers
- ↑ http://www.thehopkinsonreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/steepling-positive-body-language.jpg