Don't you just love The Guardian sometimes...

Linas.P · September 3

I must admit, at one point I was regularly reading The Guardian and I thought it is reliable source of news... ohhh naive kid I was. Overtime, it became clear that it is more about "the message" than really a reliable news source. And to be fair, The Mail and The Sun etc. they not much better... the problem I describing is not whenever source is left or right leaning, or outright left/right wing, but their relationship with the TRUTH. Also to be fair, general news on the newspaper are reasonable, but the choice of columnist and their occasional columns are problem... who does the selection, don't they have editors?

I have long noticed the outright hate that is consistently perpetrated by The Guardian towards cars and everything to do with motoring in general, but I think this one takes the cake... just absolutely detachment from reality is amazing, it is hard to believe there could be intelligent, yet so close minded and ignorant person. I guess the "intelligent" part could be debated, but still we talking about the person with some critical thinking and yet he is either so detached from people living around him, or he is so dishonest that he can publicly state such absurd thing like "We all hate roads"... who are "we"? who are "all"? who "hate roads"? It is not the roads we hate, we hate that roads are shaite... is he confused? or is he malicious?

"We all hate roads. They pollute our lungs, destroy our hearing, degrade the environment and are a blight on the countryside. Driving on them can be a fraught experience, and it is a given that living next to a busy road is highly undesirable." - said some vegetable who clearly has some deep trauma related to driving on the road, but refuses hep and to be looked after by psychiatrist. Or maybe he is just a boy (literally by the level of intelligence) who loves trains and could not accept the reality where other people... just don't like it and would rather be in their own comfortable, quiet and airconditioned transportation?

Well - you can read the rest yourself, but I tough opening statement kind of also concluded his message... Somebody who irrationally hates roads and cars, who is frightened to drive, and who just could not even comprehend what other people actually thinks about them, nor why they are there, nor why budget to fix them is required... and then somebody is surprised that we have ECOmentalists chaining themselves to bridges and getting arrested? Sadly, I think such mindset is so toxic that it does need jail sentence to address...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/sep/02/road-plan-britain-16-highway-schemes

Malc1 · September 3

I tend to only read the on- line news that for me seems to be linked ( for reason I know not ) to the Birmingham Mail ! 😀

Sky News and the BBC News too cursorily

Birmingham Mail is a good informative read and possibly a-political hopefully …… there’s too much crud in the ordinary dailies for me

I’m also non social media, facebook. X and all else like that ……. Old and Knackered I might be but I’m not being influenced by devious reporters with their personal and Owners and political axes to grind

Just a simple soul me ☝️

Malc

Linas.P · September 3

Same, the problem with social media is that they can manipulate the type of news you see and basically silo you into certain source or sources.

Only read online, but tend to read across the spectrum to try not to silo myself into one source... like The Independent on WFP topic, they are generally now building new "angle" on the reality of how new government is anti-old people and make no mistake, this is coordinated Tory political campaign as an opposition party. Normal political stuff, but little substance.

Sadly, also on the other side of the spectrum The Guardian seems to be spiralling into ever deeper hole of extreme socialism and false perception of "justice". And They are self-validating, because it seems over time they have attracted cult following of all sorts of QWRTY+/WOKE/Vegan/Vegetables who could not accept the reality outside of their imaginary world order, where everyone has pink hair, everyone cycles, everyone drinks caffeine-free soya late and where everyone goes int rage mode every time somebody points out objective truth to them.

Malc1 · September 3

Interesting that Brazil, the biggest Democracy in the world ? has now banned X and Musk ……. and I’m also thinking India too banned Twitter long ago

I might be wrong here but can understand their thinking for sure

Malc

First_Lexus · September 3

I can’t remember the exact quote or who said it, but it was along the lines of ‘If you don’t read a newspaper you’ll be uninformed, but if you do read a newspaper you’ll be mis-informed.”

I think it has always been like this. Newspapers aren’t just to report the news, they are to report with opinion. Broadly people read newspapers that confirm their own opinions and bias. ‘‘Twas ever thus!

When I started at University one of the Professors instructed us (this was 1990) to buy and read the newspaper that we were LEAST likely to agree with. Broadly he noted (another mis-quote coming!) that we should “…read something so we could understand what our opponents were thinking.”

Boomer54 · September 3

1 hour ago, Linas.P said:

Same, the problem with social media is that they can manipulate the type of news you see and basically silo you into certain source or sources.

Only read online, but tend to read across the spectrum to try not to silo myself into one source... like The Independent on WFP topic, they are generally now building new "angle" on the reality of how new government is anti-old people and make no mistake, this is coordinated Tory political campaign as an opposition party. Normal political stuff, but little substance.

Sadly, also on the other side of the spectrum The Guardian seems to be spiralling into ever deeper hole of extreme socialism and false perception of "justice". And They are self-validating, because it seems over time they have attracted cult following of all sorts of QWRTY+/WOKE/Vegan/Vegetables who could not accept the reality outside of their imaginary world order, where everyone has pink hair, everyone cycles, everyone drinks caffeine-free soya late and where everyone goes int rage mode every time somebody points out objective truth to them.

They need a market. An audience. Truth, or better yet facts are not on the list of needs to survive. In their case a blind man on a fast horse can see they decided to go woker than woke and cuddle up to every idiot with an environment fear to peddle.

If I had the Guardian I would use it to fire up the Woodburner.

Over the years I have tended to just stick with The Times. In terms of agenda I think they do a decent job of not throwing it in your face and their articles are typically researched better.

Avantime · September 3

On the 10th August I gave up reading the Guardian, Mail, the Unherd website and LBC radio. I found that it made me angry, depressed, negative and the rest. Now I look at the guardian front page (mainly as there is no firewall), read the headlines out to my wife and delve briefly into an article if needed. Even in this short time I feel better for it and I have put Jazz, Classic FM, Absolute 80/90s and left on BBC2 on all my digital radios throughout. Again feel better for it. With the Mail (no offence to any Mail readers) you know what you were getting, but the Guardian has become some really self serving and quite at times nasty news site. This has also freed up more time to find a suitable LS400

Linas.P · September 3

25 minutes ago, Boomer54 said:

Over the years I have tended to just stick with The Times. In terms of agenda I think they do a decent job of not throwing it in your face and their articles are typically researched better.

That is what I am looking for in the news paper... I don't mind some bias as long as the facts remain true, every human has bias and that is fine, they can have opinion , they can put facts in perspective... all that is fine. The problem is when there are no facts to be found at all.

However, as you say The Guardian isn't even trying, some articles are so much far removed from reality and so much brain dead woke that you just read few sentences and start choking... Kind of sad as I don't believe it was always like that. Or less of shaite like this article, it is not even journalism, more some sort of propaganda.

And I guess the type of misinformation I hate the most is when the writer is smart enough to understand that they are wrong, but they still put it out for some end...

@First_Lexus - yeah, tend to agree, one will definitely be misinformed if they read newspapers as if it is true and believe them. Also also I think the only reason I read The Guardian, as well as The Mail... is because I know I disagree with both in quite fundamental way, but if I don't read them then I will be in bubble of may own and not much better than, then typical extreme-left or extreme-right leaning reader. That said nowadays the political polarisation is more obvious, before most of the news were mostly centre, but with slight right/left bias, now most of the news are getting further and further to extremes. The article above is in my view for far left-extreme that it can almost be called anarchist. Although, I guess the political spectrum that has only left and right is too simplistic and "2 dimensional" to explain certain extreme views.

Avantime · September 3

First Lexus, I did exactly that read left and right but there is so much s***e on the Mail and i felt I was getting drawn in to it all. It was some of the staff writers on the Guardian I couldn’t stand. John Harris wasn’t too bad and didn’t appear as London centric as the rest. I pick up news more in a more ambient way now, I’m still aware but no it just as as aware of it all, too much information overload. I’m a 70/80s child and I’m just loving the radio now.

If you haven’t already seen it can i direct you to this piece from the Guardian re reading the news. Very thought provoking and it in turn helped me with my new approach.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli