I often read the Guardian, the ex-Manchester Guardian, the venerable trust-funded independent paper. It valiantly and explicitly attempts to clearly separate facts from opinion, and has a wide range of points of views, but is definitely to be categorized as left-leaning.
Recently, in the wake of the UK election, it has suffered from a kind of existential angst. Many of its columnists, Oxbridge graduates and smartypants, could not bring themselves to support Corbyn. His strong showing at the polls exposed a disconnect between the "smart left" and the populist left.
The Guardian must (rightly so to speak) show support for Corbyn, while swallowing its pride at the nasty things it said about him before, things like "un-electable", "weak", etc.
Some sectors of the UK obviously still suffer from class considerations. It appalled me to read about the jibes against the "non-toff" Corbyn, both in the Commons, by people like Cameron (the tie etc), Blair, sniping from the manure-infested sidelines, and May. I think the Guardian columnists could have done more to express outrage at this. I also believe that there is a smell of class bias in their attitude and sneering, a small whiff.
I still read the Guardian, but I do not trust it as much as I once did. To be fair, some columnists stood by Corbyn, courageous iconoclasts like Monbiot.
More and more, I invoke Hunter Thomson's warning about journalism, how it is a kind of storytelling, and how it has to stop pretending to be objective. The positivist mind-set of the Anglo-Saxon world needs to be reviewed, and merged with the Continent's existential views, not the salon existentialism that they sneer at, but the stance that sees human affairs as intrinsically engaged with their observers. Journalism is a form of history, and the teller matters there.
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