Actually, I think it’s more likely that we Americans call that paper the “London Times” or the “Times of London” so as to distinguish it from the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Times of India or possibly the Washington Times, much more so than the Manchester Times. (Where I come from, any reference to the Times means the New York Times.)
I have found several stories on The Guardian’s website. But I’ve never been able to get a clear idea of just what it is that The Guardian is about. It seems to be devoted to some principle involving the public’s right to freedom from government interference. But I’m not sure just what it is.
Assuming there is some single guiding principle that The Guardian adheres to, can you summarize for us just what it is The Guardian stands for?
I certainly never hear “London Times” in the UK, though I would know what it meant. For that matter, I don’t actually know of any “Manchester Times” at all, though there could well be one I don’t know. I assumed (though do not know) the same as Dewey Finn said.
(The Guardian was originally called the “Manchester Guardian” and I’d still say that if I needed to disambiguate it.)
On the broadsheet/tabloid bit: Although most broadsheets are downsizing their physical layout for fiscal reasons, the original meaning was that of paper size, not depth or quality of coverage. A broadsheet was the size of USA Today or the Telegraph (before any recent downsizing that may have happened), and was typically sold folded horizontally in the middle of the front page. A tabloid was half that size, as if someone had cut the paper for the broadsheet along the initial vertical fold and then printed the resulting sheets “sideways” relative to the way they would have been printed in broadsheet format. (In both cases text is perpendicular to the long axis of the page, but the tabloid page is equivalent to the horizontally-folded broadsheet.
The connotation of ‘shallow’ or ‘inadequate’ journalism results from the fact that the most respected papers in the two great news centers, New York and London, published in broadsheet format, while the ‘popular’ press which simplified stories and tended toward the sensational were mostly tabloids. The New York Daily Mirror and the New York Graphic were typical of this sort of paper, as was the Daily News of the time (the News has significantly improved its coverage over the last 40 years, as has the Post). I believe this was the case in other cities as well. Chicagoites? Torontonians – wasn’t the Globe and Mail broadsheet and the Star tabloid, with the same ‘serious’ vs. ‘sensational’ reputation?
What’s wrong with you Brits? You read newspapers? Haven’t you heard of teh Internets?
There is no single guiding principle, but I’m pretty certain they’re not in favour of freedom from government interference, not any more than other newspapers are.
The Guardian supported the Liberal Democrats at the last election, but often support Labour; it would take too long to summarise their stances properly, but Labour are centre-left and relatively authoritarian and the LibDems are socially centre-left, fiscally a mix of left-wing and conservative and more libertarian in their outlook than the other major parties - but this is all by British standards, not American.
Just want to say that when the family of an actor (The bloke who played Rene’ in Allo Allo ) tried to put a complaint in to the Press Complaints Commission about The Daily Sport, the P.C.C. said that" actually we don’t consider The Sport to be a newspaper".
I have no cite but that is what was told to me.
If you don’t mind a link to TV-Tropes.org, there’s a fairly good rundown of the UKs papers;
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BritishNewspapers
As a rule of thumb, TV channels tend to show much less political bias (although the BBC has a reputation for supporting whoever happens to be in charge).
‘Guardian reader’ is the closest British translation of ‘liberal’ (a word usually reserved here for members of the Liberal Party, rather than a general philosophy).
I’m not familiar with this reputation - and if the last few years are anything to go by, it’s something of an undeserved reputation.
Really? With whom does it have this reputation? I’ve never heard it.
In Chicago, the Tribune is in broadsheet format and the Sun-Times is in tabloid format, but (at least until Rupert Murdoch took over the Sun-Times, anyway) they were both considered serious newspapers, the Tribune being the conservative paper and the Sun-Times being the liberal paper.
The Sun-Times is still definitely seen as a serious newspaper. I think they do a better job at local investigative journalism than the Tribune (see: Hired Truck scandal, for instance). Heck, I’d say all around it’s a better paper than the Trib, but I am a Sun-Times subscriber, so I may be a bit biased. (Although I used to be a Tribune reader for the longest time.)
It stands for the growing of bodily hair upon women, the playing of bongo drums upon the streets, the weating of sandals on the feets, the chewing of tofu and other imitation meat products with the teeths so as to save the poor fluffy baby lambs from their inevitable fate and the abolition of spell checking programmes. At least, so I hear. But I live in a Tory constituency, so I could be wrong.
Umm… not IMHO. IMHO they’re vehemently anti-Tory and pro-Palestine. Note that those don’t equate with being pro-Labour or anti-Israel.
The BBC is a great tool for sorting which side of the political divide one lies on - those on the left think it is the right-wing mouthpiece of the political establishment, while those on the right think it is run by leftie liberal arty types. In reality it is obliged to be impartial, partly by it’s charter obligations, and partly because of the fear of being fucked over by any political party it happens to piss off that may one day happen to wield power and bear a grudge. The BBC news output is the most respected source in the world, and many British newspapers don’t like this state of affairs at all; or more accurately, the uber-rich newspaper proprietors don’t like having competition funded by the licence payer, and so this is reflected in their papers editorial line. For example, Rupert Murdoch owns many newspapers and TV stations too, so his organs take every opportunity to not only attack the BBC but cross-pitch his other business interests, e.g. The Times and The Sun will often promote Sky TV.
For the record, I wouldn’t want anyone reading this thread thinking that the Daily Mail and the Daily Express are the respectable end of the tabloid spectrum. At least red-top readers don’t take their papers seriously - most Sun readers know it’s a comic and read it for entertainment, but Mail and Express readers often genuinely labour under the illusion that what they are reading is impartial news. The Mail and Express are both utter scumfucks, having latched on to a formula of appealing to human weaknesses and prejudices to sell copy, a little dose of fear and hate in the morning. The Express has been going into a bit of a decline for a while now, and is having to recycle Princess Diana stories, but the Mail is sadly still going strong. Still, it gives satirists something to have a prod at, like todays Daily Mash with UK TO CUT IMMIGRANT NUMBERS BY TEACHING THEM TO READ THE DAILY MAIL, and the perennial classic from punk poet (and Honey Monster mummy) John Cooper-Clark, You’ll Never See a Nipple in the Daily Express.
Agreed. The Sun is often quite funny, and the Mirror is actually fairly sound in its politics. (I don’t buy either of them, but read them in cafes sometimes). The Mail and Express and simply vile - with a dose of utter insanity on the Express’s part too. For a year every single front page had either Diana or Maddie (‘missing tot Madeleine McCann’) on the front page, or both. Every single issue, no hyperbole.
And this summation of the Daily Express’s front pages tells you what it was like before Maddie disappeared. Diana, Royal wags, tax (but mainly those that hit rich people), and the weather.
Daily Mail headline generator. This is an exaggeration, but not by much. Tells you a lot about what they’re like.
I guess it could have been worse: the OP thought we only had the Sun - he could have thought we only had the Express!
That doesn’t necessarily demonstrate that the BBC is impartial, though. It could just show that BBC is biased towards a centrist, establishment position. Most of the time that is OK, but sometimes the more radical view, in the widest sense of “radical”, is justified, and at those times the BBC can seem like a pro-establishment organisation.
Umm… no. Try listening to political interviews on the Today program. Note how often those on the right get interrupted compared with those on the left. Look at Question Time and see how many of the ‘independents’ are actually left-wing. Look at who actually runs BBC1 and BBC2: two Labour placemen.
Biased BBC is a good place to start. They can go OTT but the BBC isn’t accountable to the public and we shuld be grateful that someone’s keeping an eye on them.
Answer to Joanie ref the Guardian.
The Guardian is a soft left, very liberal (with a small L) paper mostly for comfortably off proffessional persons, quite often graduates.
It is all about womens rights, helping the third world, organic farming, alternative arts, anti fur, veggies etc. but not about the prolateriets rights to control the means of production or bringing about world communism.
Its not a bad read, but IME people who actually have to physically work hard for a living don’t make up their majority market.