Inside the Guardian and the Snowden Leaks

An anonymous reader writes "An interesting and thoughtful article in the New Yorker about the inner workings of the Guardian newspaper. It explains a lot about why the Snowden files ended up there and not elsewhere. Given all the snark on Slashdot about the sorry state of modern journalism, it is well worth a read to see one organization that got it right. An illustrative quote about Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian's editor: 'He has a really useful piece of equipment that most editors don't have, which is a spinal column.' I would encourage everyone to read this, and if you support the type of journalism the Guardian has been engaging in, think about buying a subscription. The article also talks about the financial side of the newspaper business, and real journalism is not going to happen unless somebody pays for it."

Comments

Reference Newspapers

[bob_super]

Dear slashdotters, The Guardian is quickly becoming one of my preferred references. Can you help me broaden my horizons by naming other good newspapers? (English/French/Spanish language only sorry)

Re:Reference Newspapers

[bob_super]

Did you tell him to watch out for Samuel L Jackson?

Re:Reference Newspapers

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, I would recommend reading diverse viewpoints. I read fox news, huffington post, bbc & al jazeera on a daily basis. I buy the atlantic and the economist. Then the daily show & the onion :)

Re:Reference Newspapers

[Anonymous Coward]

They say "real journalism" but in my experience, the "real journalists" never really seem to get most things accurate. Every time I've been aware of the events behind a particular story (in some cases, being involved in the story) the "journalists" always seem to miss important details or flat out have some details wrong (for example, a plane crash one of my classmates was involved in, it was reported that all passengers died when in fact there was a survivor.)

The so called "bloggosphere" tends to be more accurate in my opinion.

The Blogosphere woudn't know what real investigative journalism is (and unfortunately they are not the only ones since most traditional newspapers have forgotten what journalism is. Hint : it is not government PR) if they were hit by a 10 foot pole.
Thank god some good actors still exist in the US and abroad. Propublica in the US and The Guardian in the UK. In France Le Canard Enchaîné. While Le monde and Le Figaro may seem independent they survive thanks to government grants. So they'll never ever tell the whole story. In Italy ha no one. Each newspapaer is more corrupt than the next, and all all of them receive government aid.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[Russ1642]

Same here. The dozen or so times I've known details about something reported in a newspaper they've gotten pretty much everything wrong. I wouldn't trust them to spell their own name right let alone properly report on an event. What's in the newspaper is complete fiction when compared to reality.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[ArbitraryName]

The so called "blogosphere" is nothing more than an echo chamber that has no more credibility than journalism.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[PolygamousRanchKid]

http://www.economist.com/

Re:Reference Newspapers

[komodo685]

4 Points
1) Diversity is good, but... You must keep in mind that is not sufficient reason to read a source. A 'diversity' of falsehoods is worthless.
2) You can't read everything. Choose the areas that mean the most to you (international affairs, economics, national or local politics, etc) and try to find 2-3 sources that seem to do good work in those areas.
3) Be aware who is paying the bills. The consumers/adverisers in typical newspapers? Purely advertisers as in television/online reporting? Government in state funded broadcasting? I don't believe reporters will bend their views to match the person paying the bills. Instead reporters with unsympathetic views will often not get hired in the first place (probably not a lot of leftwingers in Fox or rightwingers on MSNBC). I'd strongly recommend reading Manufacturing Consent for more information.
4) Let your choices evolve. The editors today may not be the editors tomorrow. Companies get bought out, new ones arise. How much longer will the Guardian's editor remain?

My recommendations:
The guardian -- You already have your reasons. I think their dissimenating the NSA leaks and wikileaks info when no one else would is justification enough.
al jazeera -- Particularly foreign viewpoint, high quality.
Democracy Now -- Not the best quality but clearly believe what they say and is run off donations. Also provides an American (important to me as I am one) viewpoint on things.
Their are others I think are probably good and have seen other posters mention already but I'm not experienced enough with them to know.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[smooth wombat]

The so called "bloggosphere" tends to be more accurate in my opinion.

Glad it's only an opinion because there is no evidence to suggest this is true. One can use the Boston bombing as a classic example of how the blogosphere got it completely wrong. Same with Sandy Hook, to use just two examples.

The reason why blogs appear to be more accurate is because they generally cater to one specific area whereas those in the industry cover just about everything and need to put that information in a form digestible to the masses. Even though they may have a reporter dedicated to an area, that one person has to cover the gamut of the subject which isn't easy under any circumstance. When you're on a deadline, it is much more difficult.

Unless someone is on the scene, recording things as they happen then write about it in an unbiased manner (or as unbiased as they can be by not using terms such as "pigs", "gestapo" and so on), their reporting will be significantly less accurate than those who do this for a living. Further, and as previously mentioned, they need to put concepts and ideas into neat and compact sound bites for people to understand.

That said, and to use a tired quote, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Same with the blogosphere.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[Aighearach]

Honestly, I would recommend reading diverse viewpoints.

I totally agree. Most of these journalists and editors do find out the truth, before they decide how to spin and twist and embellish it to create either sensationalism, or their preferred narrative. And since they don't all have the exact same goals, an intelligent critical thinker can often tease at least some of the truth out of the differing lies.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[gander666]

Beat me to it. I have been a subscriber for more years than I can remember. Worth every penny.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[ShanghaiBill]

http://www.economist.com/

I second this. The journalists at The Economist are mostly British, although most subscribers are American. It is very entertaining to read news about America from an outsider's perspective, especially about typical American issues, like our dysfunctional health care system, guns, abortion, etc.

As for American news magazines, like Time or Newsweek, I wouldn't even use them to line my parakeet's cage, for fear that I would end up with a retarded parakeet.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.csmonitor.com/

Despite its obvious origins I often find they have well researched foreign news that is all to lacking in the US.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[Anonymous Coward]

for example, a plane crash one of my classmates was involved in, it was reported that all passengers died when in fact there was a survivor.).

Yep, that was me. But in all fairness they tried to correct the thing and sent a hitman after me.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[Frosty Piss]

The so called "bloggosphere" tends to be more accurate in my opinion.

Exactly. They seem more "accurate" to you because the ones you visit share your views.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[komodo685]

There is enough leftist hatred and antisemitism in the Guardian to kill a civilization.

Great! Then you will have no trouble citing multiple stories The Guardian has written indicating as much.

For extra points provide some commentary from other news sources, which typically leaning pro-Israel (especially in America), would no doubt have torn apart those same Guardian stories.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[DoofusOfDeath]

The English translation of the German magazine, Der Spiegel.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[komodo685]

Given his, AlphaWolf_HK, other remarks on this same page:

Except wikileaks (and Assange himself) is already known to embellish the truth, or even outright fabricate it. For example, what they claimed were cameras in that "collateral murder" video were in fact weapons. I'm not even an expert and I clearly saw both Kalashnikov and RPG being carried by those people walking - I don't know how anybody could mistake those for cameras. Assange himself admitted that his intent is to cause outcry, even if he has to lie about it.

All of which are false (those in fact were cameras, held by the two reporters named Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh working for Reuters), more info here. I think we have additional evidence that in fact bloggers are a much worse source of news than reporters. Instead tending to reinforce the beliefs and opinions of those that seek them out rather than provide accurate commentary. Slashdot, please mod AlphaWolf_HK down.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[NatasRevol]

I'd probably recommend the reverse order.

Things will get less factual as you proceed from right to left (in your list).

Re:Reference Newspapers

[jregel]

In the UK, I rate the Independent, along with the aforementioned Guardian.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[NoImNotNineVolt]

Have you not noticed the steady decline in quality at the Economist?

I used to be a huge fan of the Economist. However, I won't be renewing my subscription this time around.

The Economist's "outsider perspective" on America has become anything but.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[wiredlogic]

There are a lot of prima donnas out there operating under the guise of being journalist while acting as a surrogate mouthpiece for whatever powerful entity helps them further their career. They aren't real journalists despite their claim to the contrary. The NYT and WSJ editorial staff are good examples of these shills.

These are the same people that put up a fight claiming that bloggers can't be journalists. Essentially, because independent bloggers aren't part of the bought and paid for scheme the "professionals" have set up, there is a risk that real news may be reported on in an intelligent and insightful way. It is analogous to how lawyers involved in politics have created governmental policies and laws that serve only to benefit their own kind.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[Anonymous Coward]

Worse would be a "journalist" using a blog or social media as his/her source feeding a even bigger echo chamber.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[HornWumpus]

The issue we're discussing is the edits and editorials that wikileaks added to the video.

They are not an unbiased source. If they edited it, it can't be trusted.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[Anonymous Coward]

I clearly saw both Kalashnikov and RPG

No, you didn't. As for Ak-47's, those were explicitly allowed by the occupational forces - was Bush not merciful - for personal defense.

Which means that if a SWAT team saw a licensed permit holder walking down a street in America, and opened fire with automatic weapons, you'd support that, right? And then also fired upon anyone who tried to rescue the wounded, right? Right?

Re:Reference Newspapers

[HornWumpus]

Same as newspapers and web sites then.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[Deluvianvortex]

No, its because independent bloggers have no editors or anyone to check their sources. In the world of blogs, waiting on fact checks is suicide. Its post post post and hope that something you wrote was right. Who gives a shit if you spread misinformation, its a fucking blog.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[eulernet]

In France: Mediapart http://www.mediapart.fr/ and Le Canard Enchaîné http://lecanardenchaine.fr/
Mediapart has an english version: http://www.mediapart.fr/en/english

Mediapart outs corrupt politicians, while Le Canard Enchaîné has a lot of information from government's insiders.
Mediapart is serious, and wants to go on a crusade against corruption.
Le Canard is humorous, full of excellent puns, and somewhat disillusioned about politics (they are systematically sued, but rarely lose their lawsuits).
Both are feared by politicians and lobbyists.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[utkonos]

This paper does still count for your request, since it has an English language online version - Novaya Gazeta from Russia. This is one of the trustworthy news sources from Russia. Most news outlets in Russia are state owned, but this one is a rare occurrence of the paper's staff controlling 51%. This, however, is not the reason why I find the paper trustworthy. It is a bit of a grim statistic, but Novaya Gazeta has more journalists killed than any other news outlet in Russia. The majority of whom were either murdered by the state, or at least the state turned a blind eye to their death.

This next one is Russian-language only, and a radio station in Moscow. But it is a fairly good, unbiased news source. It's called Echo Moskvy or Echo of Moscow.

Unfortunately, one of the best English language news sources in Moscow, The eXile, closed its doors a few years ago. There are two possible reasons: one, that the paper was harassed into closing by the government. Or that the editor, Mark Ames, was tired and used some light harassment from the government as an excuse to close shop. Either way, it used to be a good source of insanely funny gonzo journalism with a constant streak of hard-hitting honest journalism.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[eulernet]

And I forgot Le Courrier International, which is less France centric:
http://www.courrierinternational.com/

Re:Reference Newspapers

[whistlingtony]

I'll third this. I like the Economist. I don't always AGREE with them, but they clearly do their homework, they are decently good at seperating their opinion from the facts, and reading them makes me more informed. It probably does help that they are Brits. I enjoy their take on the US news. Tony

Re:Reference Newspapers

[whistlingtony]

Or maybe you're just disagreeing with them? They have pretty evenly been conservative leaning in their opinions for a long time. Lately, they HAVE been bandying around the opinion that the state of the US is pretty stupid, and they've been naming blame.

Perhaps you don't like who they're blaming? Lately, it's been the conservatives.

Out of curiousity, what decline in quality are you noticing? Can you give some more information? They seem just as informative and fact presenting as they've always been to me.

Tony

Re:Reference Newspapers

[BradMajors]

Newspapers are never reliable when reporting on significant domestic issues. If you want to learn about country "X" you need to read newspapers written in country "Y".

Re: Reference Newspapers

[davesag]

Certainly the New Yorker has shown it doesn't know the difference between "insure" and "ensure". That error appears three times in their article. Standards sure have slippedâ¦

Re:Reference Newspapers

[Anonymous Coward]

The Economist

Nope. I used to read them daily but I discovered over time they are extremely biased - just good at misdirection and hiding the bias. Much of what they print is based on ideology, not science. Not even the dismal science (economics).

Re:Reference Newspapers

[cavreader]

They also "produced" the film "Collateral Damage" by editing out anything that did not support their non-objective analysis. The full version of the video was released later but by then the unquestioning masses had already firmed up their opinion on the whole matter and were not particularly interested in seeing anything that might not agree with their particular line of thought. The release of the edited video by Wikileaks was the first glaring sign that despite all the bullshit about just setting anonymously submitted information free to the masses it was no more than another political action group looking to use the data to drive a political agenda.

Lies of omission, lack of context, and sentence structure is how you construct biased propaganda and the creators can honestly claim there were no outright factual discrepancies in the published article. This type of news reporting is done by all sides on any issue. The truth is being lost and the Internet has turned into the ultimate tool for spreading misinformation in record time. As for the Guardian all you need to do is visit their reader comment talkbacks and you will see how their non-objective articles has turned 90% of it's readers into non-questioning drones patting each other on the back for having the same great insight to worldly issues. I believe the technical term is echo chamber.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[tomtomtom]

I'd add either the (UK, not Australian) Telegraph or (preferably) the Financial Times to that list (much better than the WSJ). Particularly for financial/business stories I almost never read the mainstream press, they are simply awful at reporting these things (usually misunderstanding, missing key details, or over-sensationalising stories as well as over-simplifying - the BBC is particularly bad at this). Bloomberg generally does a decent job most of the time on them and is worth following for that as it's free to read on the web (unlike the FT).

It's also WELL worth picking up a copy of the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books, or Foreign Affairs on occasion (as well as The Economist, although that's a bit lighter-weight) - they are not really "real time" but they will give you much more to think about when you are reading the day-to-day news (just be aware that they each have their own institutional biases too).

Re:Reference Newspapers

[manu0601]

French newspaper Le Monde Diplomatique (also known as the "diplo"). International editions are available, including english edition.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[DarkSabreLord]

Without citing sources, your comment seems to be on the same ground you accuse them of standing on - no investigation, dishonest phrasing without justification, and tarnishing their reputation via speculation instead of hard documents.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[s.petry]

Fox is more factual than the BBC? I'm not claiming that the BBC is "good" mind you, but Fox has as much credibility to me as "The Star". This is the company that fought up through the US Supreme Court that "News is Entertainment" and that they had no journalistic responsibility to show people factual information on the "News." Sadly they won...

Re:Reference Newspapers

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to read The Economist regularly, and also had a print subscription for a year too.

As an Indian, let me tell you this: The Economist doesn't have "outsider's perspective". Although that is how it is marketed (and is received in most of the Europe). It is a British publication. And, as any avid non-European reader can tell you, it is vapid anti-China. You should take that seriously because it is coming out of an Indian's mouth.

I guess it looks more balanced than most American publishers because the British politics is simply more liberal than American politics. The Economist has historically been pro-"free market" and has historically supported wars in middle-east for that end, the latest being the war in Syria. It has always been pro-DRM, anti-Wikileaks, anti-nationalistic for every country but anti-EU when it comes to Britain.

I got hooked to it for the same marketing reason that you are giving, and got other people hooked too. But the bias is so strong and obvious to non-Europeans like me that I had to stop my subscription. I still read it, though sparingly, but increasingly find it less intellectual and more predictable. My friends are still reading it regularly but they also acknowledge the vapid anti-China and pro-British slant.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[turning in circles]

I read the Wall Street Journal, or at least the headlines. It is interesting to see what issues the people who only care about money care about today.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[dbIII]

Thank you for your "Death to all enemies of Lenin" style post. I know now exactly how little value to put in your words.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[bfandreas]

I've been looking for something similar in English, German and French. Sorry, there's only DER SPIEGEL and teh Gauniard. A word to the wise, though. The Kindle edition of Hte Guadrian seems not be be poorly edited but not edited at all. but not edited at all it reads exactly like this post. And as a UK newspaper expect a lot of reports on badger culling, the latest NHS bungling and some soccer/football.
DER SPIEGEL being DER SPIEGEL does not have a Kindle edition. They rely on apps for iOs and Android and very yesteryear payment methods. By the way there is a distinct difference between the print and the online edition of this particular rag. There is some reuse but not a lot. They seem to have a separate editorial staff and the two halves of the publication give the impression that they don't really talk.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[TheMiddleRoad]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian#Accusations_of_anti-Semitism_and_bias_in_coverage_of_Israel
http://cifwatch.com/2013/04/30/guardianap-story-on-tunisias-jews-omits-history-of-antisemitic-persecution/
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/91164/antisemitic-guardian-gaza-cartoon-shows-jews-puppeteers
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2011/08/reuters-bbc-and-guardian-celebrates.html#.UleSExBFNoo
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/05/06/1207175/-Guardian-Battles-Financial-Woes-Antisemitism-Allegations
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/624/the_guardian_acknowledges_a_degree_of_anti_semitism
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100196562/the-guardian-speaks-up-for-paedophiles-flirts-with-anti-semitism-and-jumps-on-every-crazy-leftist-bandwagon-in-sight-what-happened-to-quality-control/
http://engageonline.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/michael-white-guardian-assistant-editor-cries-israel-in-response-to-concern-over-lord-ahmeds-antisemitism/
http://cifwatch.com/2013/05/22/top-10-warning-signs-you-may-be-a-guardian-left-anti-semite/

Eagerly awaiting your reply. I'm especially excited about how many points get you on the last one.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[mynamestolen]

1. Mediapart - French website with both French news and world news http://www.mediapart.fr/en/english Edwy Plenel heads it and is a great bloke. Mediapart has now attracted paying subscribers and is making a profit. Mediapart broke the story of President Francois Hollande's budget minister evading taxes when he was supposed to be cracking down on tax cheats. After vehemently denying the allegations, in the face of overwhelming evidence, Jerome Cahuzac was forced to resign. Mediapart also did the Bettencourt Scandal which embroiled Sarkozy. 2. Crikey.com.au The first successful online pay newsite in Australia.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[mutube]

fox news

Adding noise to your sample doesn't improve its accuracy.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[mutube]

The Independent is another good UK paper. It seems positioned slightly less left/more liberal/more free market compared to the Guardian (my take). They also make a point of having intelligent dissenting opinions in the paper - so you get to see well reasoned arguments from different sides instead of a battle of talking-heads-who-shout-loudest.

Makes a good reading companion to the Guardian.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[coolmadsi]

Dear slashdotters, The Guardian is quickly becoming one of my preferred references. Can you help me broaden my horizons by naming other good newspapers? (English/French/Spanish language only sorry)

Not sure if it counts as a newspaper (it comes out fortnightly), but in the UK there is the Private Eye. A lot of the content is satire, but they also report on topics not covered by other papers.

As an example, when the Leveson report was being released, they covered the bits that the other papers were not reporting on (namely the bits that made them look bad), and also recently have reported on some of the big the tax evasion techniques being used by big companies (again, some of the other newspapers either use these techniques or are owned by someone who do, so miss out on this reporting)

Re:Reference Newspapers

[advid.net]

My three daily readings are :

new.google.com - not a reference site per se but sometimes news can be reported from less mainstream media. Chose a national edition (/?ned=xx in url) for other languages, spanish speaking world has quite a different coverage.

Al Jazeera , as many pointed out here. Many subjects are covered with much less biased point of view than in western media. Pretty good and quality journalism. Some in-depth coverage samples: BP disaster and one year later.

Slashdot ... again not a reference site per, but I don't have time to read much more than those three sites.

In French: Mediapart and Rue89 for some alternative views.

I'll have a look at the crowd advice here, nice thread.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[pjt33]

If you're going to mention the Canard Enchainé in France you might also want to mention Private Eye in the UK.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[jools33]

The independent has some very good journalists and good stories, although slightly more tabloid oriented they are quite happy to take on the establishment. Especially a certain Robert Fisk (if you're interested in middle east news at all) his columns are unmatched.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[Yomers]

As a Russian I can not agree with you on Novaya Gazeta and Echo Moskvi. AFAIK those are very boring - whatever happens it's always one conclusion - Russian government is shit and country is going down. For example Snowden? Same - http://www.echo.msk.ru/blog/dobrokhotov/1127964-echo/ . Really, anything that happens anywhere - conclusion is always the same, it's just boring. Unbiased news source? LOL

Re:Reference Newspapers

[Tore S B]

A blog with the heading "Monitoring and combating antisemitism, and the assault on Israel's legitimacy, at the Guardian (...)" is definitely going to be a useful source in this discussion.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[Sqr(twg)]

The cameras were cameras, but the weapons carried by other members of the group were wepons. The lessons to learn from this are:

If someone asks if you want to join the military (in a country which might invade other countries) just say "fuck you!" Otherwise you might soon find yourself in a situation where you either fire on what might be innocent civilians, or risk exposing your friends and colleages to an enemy assault.

If you ever find yourself organizing an armed resistance movement (because your country was invaded) make sure you wear uniforms, armbands, or some other kind of identifying marks whenever you operate. It may make you more of a target, but it may also save the lives of civilians around you.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[NatasRevol]

Come on, dude.

What I said was Fox was the least factual.

Please go re-read my comment three times.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[C0C0C0]

I'd love for for someone to suggest a good conservative newsource. One where the writers support the conservative cause but won't intentionally skew the news when their side is ion error.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[Aighearach]

It was not my intent to represent my comment as reference material that would cite sources; it was actually my own commentary, my own opinion, and putting references into it would be silly.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[s.petry]

I believe that your "reverse" comment prior to the ordering was what became confused. Apologies for confusing the statement, in my head I reversed then looked at the order instead of taking them as two separate and similar statements.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[NatasRevol]

I think that's the first apology I've ever received on slashdot!

Re:Reference Newspapers

[s.petry]

If I am wrong, I will usually apologize. Maybe not to an AC, but nearly always to a named account.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[lissnup]

Seconded, and I would add the long-running British 'Private Eye' for politics heavily laced with satire. Rolling Stone also seems to have its moment of clarity, although I can never decide whether they're genuine.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[iMactheKnife]

A New Jersey newspaper once claimed I was ten thousand years old and from another planet. Really. I'm not even half that age.

Re:Reference Newspapers

[TheMiddleRoad]

Possibly!

Re:Reference Newspapers

[TheMiddleRoad]

Can you feel the love?

1st amendment

[schneidafunk]

Very interesting read. The thing that shocks me the most is that there is still such extensive censorship going on around the world, including in the U.K.

" On Davies’s advice, Rusbridger took the unprecedented step of bringing in the New York Times as a partner. A British newspaper might be blocked from publishing, but an American outlet would have First Amendment protection."

Re:Don't be naive.

[whizbang77045]

You bet. Just because somebody puts something in print doesn't mean it is correct, or that they are on are side. What amazes me is that the Guardian hasn't gotten nailed for violation of the British Official Secrets act.

Erm, ok...

[girlintraining]

Given all the snark on Slashdot about the sorry state of modern journalism, it is well worth a read to see one organization that got it right.

And that's where you biffed it. The Guardian is as heavily biased as Fox News is. But you tend not to see biases towards things you agree with as clearly as things you disagree with, so I forgive your temporary bout of insanity in making that statement. Maybe they got this one instance right, maybe not. An entire slashdot thread has been created just so we can scream at, er, I mean, debate, the veracity of that statement. But... the Guardian is biased. Sorry man.

Re:Erm, ok...

[PhilHibbs]

So? You can be biased and still do good journalism. In fact, I'd say it's impossible not to be biased. Everyone is biased, it's human nature. Organizations can go some way to mitigating that bias but you'll never remove it entirely.

Re:Erm, ok...

[dyingtolive]

I read that line, and all I could think was, "Awww, you DID notice!"

...and then I realized it was an anon poster, not timothy himself.

Re:Erm, ok...

[seyyah]

And that's where you biffed it. The Guardian is as heavily biased as Fox News is. But you tend not to see biases towards things you agree with as clearly as things you disagree with, so I forgive your temporary bout of insanity in making that statement. Maybe they got this one instance right, maybe not. An entire slashdot thread has been created just so we can scream at, er, I mean, debate, the veracity of that statement. But... the Guardian is biased. Sorry man.

You don't have to be a post-modernist to agree that all media (hell, everyon) is biased. However, I don't think it is fair to compare the bias of the Guardian with the bias of Fox News. There are degrees.

Re:Erm, ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

No one is trying to claim that The Guardian isn't biased. Of course it is. All media outlets are biased, and any readers who believe in unbiased media are biased themselves, aligned with their supposed unbiased media.

All of this is obvious.

The point is, it is a publication which isn't completely controlled by government and corporate entities, which is a rarity nowadays. They have their own self-serving agenda alright, but still stand out as quite different than pretty much every other major news outlet.

Re:Erm, ok...

[Stan92057]

Everyone has an opinion but reporters are to report the news . They should be like the wildlife cinematographers of old. No interference just pure animal life anything less is fake. I don't want to pay for opinions that what i read Slashdot for and watch MSNBC or CNN. Far too much opinionated. This is all IMO but i have seen the news change for the worse over the years.

Re:Erm, ok...

[girlintraining]

ObDisclaimer: I happen to like the Guardian.

So? You can be biased and still do good journalism.

That is the third-most stupid thing I have read on slashdot this week; And this week has been particularly harsh on my brain meats. While the literal definition of journalism, "the activity or profession of writing for newspapers or magazines or of broadcasting news on radio or television," does not include mention of the ethics of journalism, I expect people to have a grasp on it. As you do not, I shall now dispense a brief explanation of why it's so important.

Democracy can only function well with an educated populace. You simply can't vote the most capable candidate into office unless you know the issues, and that means knowing facts. Not interpretation of them. Not skewed versions of them. Not partial lists of them. You need to know everything about it, or you're not making an informed decision, you're making a decision based on propaganda and lies. When your audience is millions of Americans, your voice carries a lot of power. With great power comes great responsibility. And anyone who passes off their own biases as fact is not a supporter of Democracy and I do not want them on my team.

In fact, I'd say it's impossible not to be biased. Everyone is biased, it's human nature. Organizations can go some way to mitigating that bias but you'll never remove it entirely.

Your argument is that because we can't be perfect at something, we shouldn't even try. This is such a classic mistake we've given it a formal name: The Nirvana Fallacy. And yes martha, there is a wikipedia on it.

Organizations can go some way to mitigating that bias but you'll never remove it entirely.

The institution of science does a pretty good job of limiting the effects of bias. Oh yes, you can point out the problems. Oh yes, they're very real. But compared to say... Fox News, they're doing a pretty good job. There's a reason scientists have been alternately revered and burned a the stake throughout history -- it's because of their stubborn devotion to the truth regardless of religious or political preference. And that stubborn devotion has catapulted forward all of humanity from banging rocks together to make fire and foraging for food, and sleeping in caves, to all the modern conveniences you have before you.

So I see your nilhism and perfectionism and raise you... rationality. Your move, Internet.

Re:Erm, ok...

[Aighearach]

I don't think it is fair to compare the bias of the Guardian with the bias of Fox News. There are degrees.

I gotta say, they're just as biased as Fox News, just differently biased since they are from a different country with a different political landscape. If you're looking for less-biased news from the UK, the gold standard example is the BBC. And once you've seen good reporting, then it should be pretty obvious that The Guardian is heavily biased.

The problem with the BBC is that their abhorrence for bias can lead to excessive caution.
 

Re:Erm, ok...

[girlintraining]

People seem vehemently determined to believe that the entire country is not run by a select few.

I would very much like to meet such a person, who probably also rides a unicorn into work every day. The only people who believe that are our children, who aren't yet experienced enough to know that civics class is based largely on fiction.

Re:Erm, ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Guardian is as heavily biased as Fox News is.

No. Fox News is far more unbalanced. The Guardian is middle left from a european point of view and Fox News would be far right. And there is one other point. You can be biased and write smart stuff. One of them does, the other...?

Re:Erm, ok...

[mellon]

You could go so far as to say that if a news outlet claims to be free from bias, they probably aren't doing journalism. Because they probably mean that they present "balanced" stories, meaning not neutral, reality-based stories, but rather stories that always present two and only two sides to an issue, even if the only proponent for one side is an obvious idiot or crook, and even when there are four sides with equally valid points to make.

Re:Erm, ok...

[mellon]

The BBC is great, but they are just as biased as any news outfit. Their bias tends to be toward a sort of civilized middle-of-the-road establishment view, but it's a mistake to think that that is not a bias.

Re:Erm, ok...

[ppanon]

I think he meant that reporters' biases will guide what they think is worth investigating, and therefore some may be less likely to cover certain areas of public or political life. As long as other reporters with different biases choose to cover those areas then that's actually good. Keeping all other things equal (training, talent, skill), those with passion for their work will tend to do a better job of it. However once their subject is chosen, those reporters' investigations may still be carried out and reported in a thorough and unbiased way despite their biases, if their professionalism is sufficiently high.

Re:Erm, ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to be a post-modernist to agree that all media (hell, everyon) is biased. However, I don't think it is fair to compare the bias of the Guardian with the bias of Fox News. There are degrees.

I happen to disagree. About the only way they could be more biased is if they had a love van in the back lot and were handing out fliers on Marxism. But let's be objective about this; Do you consider them to be more, less, or about as biased, as the New York Times?

If you answered the same or more, I have some bad news for you.

You simply cannot see your own biases. It's what I said originally. They're called cognitive blind spots for a reason. And this is one of yours. I'm sorry, but they're biased. They're about as biased as Fox News. You just think Fox News seems more biased because your own bias puts you left of center, which makes Fox News seem comparatively farther away than the NYT or the Guardian.

And you can't see yours:) From a US perspectively you may be right, but from a European one the Guardian is left-of-center to some extent while Fox is so far to the right it falls outside our mainstream left/right scale.

Re:Erm, ok...

[Aighearach]

Your claim seems to be that everybody is equally biased, and that is a failed argument on any subject, not just bias. If you can't distinguish between different sources, then how can you even measure them to say they're the same? You'd need to be claiming that you can see differences in the field, before it would make sense to claim that two particular examples are equally biased.

Re:Erm, ok...

[Deluvianvortex]

peer review

Re:Erm, ok...

[whistlingtony]

I want 3:37 of my life back.....

Re:Erm, ok...

[fritsd]

girlintraining, you sound like a scientist to me.

So see it this way then: you conflate bias and variance, which is a big no-no in experimentation:

• The Guardian: noticeable left-wing bias, low variance signal
• De Volkskrant: slight left-wing bias, moderate variance signal
• BBC: slight right-wing bias, moderate variance signal
• NRC Handelsblad: noticeable right-wing bias, low variance signal
• Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: strong right-wing bias, low variance signal
• Elsevier Magazine: strong right-wing bias, high variance signal

I don't dare to comment on others because I haven't read them often enough. The idea is that you can subtract or add YOUR perception of known bias to calibrate a signal to approximate what you think the real value is, but with high variance the signal is just too noisy to bother.

I have never seen more than soundbytes of Fox News, but is it true that a reporter had to claim that he was legally insane, in order to continue to spew lies without being called on it? I.E. "everybody knows its only entertainment, we don't claim to produce real news". That's just ... odd.. why don't they call it Fox Entertainment then. Truth in advertising.

Re:Erm, ok...

[dkleinsc]

Everyone has an opinion but reporters are to report the news.

"Reporters reporting the news" is hardly immune to bias:
1. What is considered "the news" anyways? I think we can agree that "Planes Flown Into World Trade Center" is news, and "Area Man Posts Cat Video" is not, but how about "50 People Protest" versus "Double Homicide On Fleet St" versus "10 Brokers Convicted of Mortgage Fraud"?

2. Who do you talk to in order to understand the news story in question? For example, in discussions on Syria's chemical weapons, does your report mostly contain information from (a) the White House, (b) US Congressional opposition leadership, (c) the Kremlin, (d) the UN, (e) Bashar al-Assad's government, (f) Syrian rebels, (g) the Israeli government, etc, etc.

3. Who's information do you believe, if there is disagreement about something? Which sources do you challenge aggressively and which sources do you treat as fairly impartial observers? For example, on an economics story, do you accept a government report as truth if there's a competing report by another group, especially if that group has a political ax to grind?

4. Even if you've perfectly balanced issues 1, 2, and 3, what comes first in your report and what becomes the headline? For example, on 9/12/2001, many headlines in the US read "America Attacked", which was true but conveys a somewhat different story than "18 Terrorists Attack World Trade Center and Pentagon".

Re:Erm, ok...

[dkleinsc]

You simply can't vote the most capable candidate into office unless you know the issues, and that means knowing facts. Not interpretation of them. Not skewed versions of them. Not partial lists of them. You need to know everything about it, or you're not making an informed decision, you're making a decision based on propaganda and lies.

It is completely impossible for any one person to know everything about every major issue. Whatever you know about something outside of your extremely narrow specialty will necessarily be incomplete and relying on expert opinion of some sort.

For example, if you ask many people on Slashdot the proper way to calculate algorithmic efficiency of a Quicksort, you'll get some definitive answers. If you ask those same people who provided definitive answers about how to properly determine cost-of-living increases to Social Security checks, you'll get some barely educated guesses, because they aren't operating in their area of expertise and not only don't know the answer but don't know (thanks to the Dunning-Kruger Effect) which of the available expert sources to believe and which are cranks. You'll run into the same problem if you ask an expert chemist about astrophysics or vice versa - the person you ask will have intelligent guesses but nowhere near a definitive answer. Even a well-intentioned and wise politician would run into this problem if, say, his background was financial law but the decision is about environmental regulation, or vice versa.

You can and should know some basic information about a lot of things, but that is a far cry from having expert-level detailed knowledge immune from propaganda.

Re:Erm, ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

Asking for "unbiased journalism" is like asking for "judges who just apply the law without interpreting it". It's not only a practical impossibility, it's a fundamental misunderstanding of what the job entails.

Journalists are biased, period. From Thucydides onwards, journalists have always done what they do because they believe passionately in... something. Tom Paine, Ben Franklin, Mark Twain, Hearst, Pulitzer, Ed Murrow, Woodward and Bernstein - none of these people became famous by sitting on the fence and refusing to take sides.

I would go further and say that the myth of "objective" journalism is the biggest single blight on the profession today, and directly responsible for at least 70% of what's currently wrong with American journalism. But that's a longer argument than I want to go into here.

Re:Erm, ok...

[manu0601]

You can be biased and still do good journalism.

If you are aware of your bias and tell your reader, you are an excellent journalist.

If you are aware of your bias and do not tell about them, you are a propagandist

If you are unaware of your bias, you are a terrible journalist

If you do not have bias, you are not a human person

Re:Erm, ok...

[Stan92057]

When their bias interferes with the truth then its a problem. There are always 2 sides to a story Its his/her job to dig for it.

Re:Erm, ok...

[girlintraining]

So see it this way then: you conflate bias and variance, which is a big no-no in experimentation:

Er, no. My comment was about a person's perceptions. This has nothing to do with reality; People's perceptions are highly skewed based on expectation and personal biases. One of the first things they try and teach you in any art class is overcoming this; You have to throw away your ideas about what something should look like, or you'll never get past stick figures. Instead, you draw as though you are seeing this thing for the first time. We intentionally take everyday objects in class and hang them upside down, or throw it in with a pile of junk, and the sole reason for doing this is to break this need for the rational mind to enforce its expectations on even the simplest of perceptions.

A person cannot, without training and significant self-awareness, overcome these biases, these expectations, these preconceptions. And while you might think art and science are on opposite ends of a spectrum, they are very much alike -- science is about accurate observation. Curiously, so is art.

I've looked at the data regarding popular sources of news and the biases they have at the institutional level; The author of Freakonomics did a TV interview about it. While admittedly it was not a robust and extensive study, it was certainly a lot more effort than anyone here has put into it -- and he found that Fox News and the New York Times were about as equally biased relative to average (zero point).

Now I've been modbombed into oblivion for daring to go against the rabid hipster crowd here on Slashdot that wants to make Snowden a hero and suggesting that The Guardian is a biased source of news... but I will continue to say so no matter how many times someone goes through my comment history and blows all their mod points on me.

People despise having a mirror held up to them -- everyone. Every. Single. Person. On this website considers themselves above average, intelligent, thoughtful, and blah blah blah. And when they come across evidence that goes against this, they get very vindictive. To me, nothing confirms the veracity of my statements like this reaction does. Even you managed a strawman here, and you seem at least somewhat more thoughtful than the other guys imagine themselves to be.

Personal biases are incredibly hard to see, and even more difficult to overcome. They are cognitive shortcuts that very often serve us well in everyday life -- but these shortcuts are overused and eventually move into the subconscious, where until they are dragged kicking and screaming back to conscious thought, they will sit, quietly distorting every perception that person has. There are monks living up the sides of mountains that spend their entire lives trying to transcend this glitch in the human mind. There's a reason racism, sexism, religion, etc., are all so prevalent -- this is not easy. If it were, I wouldn't ever need to post anything on Slashdot ever again; We'd all be reasonable and unbiased people... and there'd only ever be a couple of comments in each story. -_-

But we aren't reasonable, and we're biased as hell. All of us. Me, you, the person reading this. It's human nature to have them, just as it's human nature to hate people who point it out.

Re:Erm, ok...

[PhilHibbs]

That is the third-most stupid thing I have read on slashdot this week... As you do not (understand the ethics of journalism), I shall now dispense a brief explanation...

Great way to engage with someone. Jump to concusions and throw insults. Good luck.

Re:Erm, ok...

[pjt33]

I think we can agree that "Planes Flown Into World Trade Center" is news, and "Area Man Posts Cat Video" is not

Sadly, Yahoo! (or the wire services they syndicate) seem to disagree on the latter. The bulk of the "Oddly Enough" section is at the level of "area man posts cat video", when it used to be interesting but unusual actual events.

Re:Erm, ok...

[dkleinsc]

There are always 2 sides to a story

No there aren't: Sometimes there are 5 sides. Sometimes there really is only 1 side. Sometimes, what's being examined is so obscure that nobody has taken sides yet. Interesting stories typically have a lot of different completely truthful angles to take, and reducing everything to 2 sides is probably misleading.

This is especially true of political stories: If you've talked to 1 liberal and 1 conservative, you are not actually done accurately reporting the story, because you should be then determining who lied to you about what, go back and say "We think you're full of it with regards to ____, what do you have to say about that?", then figure out if how they lied again, etc.

Re:Erm, ok...

[Xest]

The BBC can be a bit hit and miss. It really depends who is writing the article.

Robert Peston can be a bit of a plonker and revert to his Tory-boy Telegraph journalistic roots sometimes and make a tit of himself, or just make a tit of himself in general, i.e. see this article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24427274

Originally it was titled something like "Treasury could clean up from help to buy", he obviously was trying to create an overly dramatic headline with an agenda implying the help to buy scheme was pure genius by the treasury, but eventually after successive edits he relented upon realising he'd got his math wrong which obliterated the entire premise of the original article.

Also Mark Mardell the US correspondent lets his biases shine through, and Rory Cellan-Jones has almost fanboy levels of bias to certain technology companies.

But others like Nick Robinson always seem pretty decent and level headed.

I agree The Guardian is biased but it's certainly not at Fox levels, I'd tend to rate media that broadcasts in the UK using the following examples:

Most extreme (where Fox News would go):
The Daily Mail
The Daily Mirror
Russia Today
The Sun

Sometimes extreme:
The Telegraph
The Times
Sky News

Reasonably objective:
The Independent
The Guardian
Channel 4 News
The BBC

Most objective:
Al Jazeera

The independent I would have put in the most objective category but since it's became influenced by the Russian oligarch that took it over it's gotten worse. The most extreme listings just aren't worth the time of day, they're so full of lies and propaganda that you just can't extract anything of value from them. The sometimes extreme category sometimes have valuable articles, but usually it's a bunch of biased tosh, and all the others are worth paying attention to. Even the most objective category has it's biases sometimes though, but I'd argue they're still markedly less numerous than those in the reasonably object category.

Re:Erm, ok...

[mellon]

I didn't claim that they are equally biased—I claimed that they shared the same quality of being biased. There is no way to compare bias in the sense that you mean, because it isn't a number, or even a vector. The idea that that is the right way to address the problem of poor journalism is a red herring.

Practices like starting from your bias and looking for facts to confirm it, and then writing the story around those facts, are common, and produce garbage. Practices like going and getting someone's take on the story without doing your own careful research, and then finding someone who disagrees with the first person you went to and presenting the story in the context of the disagreement between these two parties, implying that balance is to be found somewhere between their positions, also produce garbage. This is because this reporting is not being done by the reporter, but simply packaged up based on what a few sources have said about their own positions and each others' positions. So it's fairly useless for actually coming to any understanding about the topic.

What I do want is a news source that does actual reporting: asking experts, sure, but then fact-checking what they say. Not pitting the experts against each other, but testing their arguments, doing their best to figure out what's really going on, and then reporting on that, with as much information about how they arrived at their conclusion as possible. Then, even if they are biased, I can correct for that. If the input is garbage, the bias doesn't matter, because when you correct for it, you're still left with garbage.

Re:Don't be naive.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Guardian is a hard-left medium that has proven itself to be anti-American over the decades.

Your point being?

Oh right, you think america should be given respect for free instead of earning it through deed like everyone else has to.

Re:Don't be naive.

[biodata]

The open question is what is a private citizen employed by a private company employed by an agency of a foreign power doing with access to British secrets. If Britain shares its secrets with foreign citizens then it seems only appropriate for the Guardian to share them with British citizens.

Modern journalism

[mseeger]

What do you expect from journalism?

As long as a story about Lindsay Lohans latest rehab draws ten times as much readers as some background article about the NSA spying capabilities while being less risky at the same time, the development is clear.

Do you really expect someone to risk the ire of that organisation that can dig (or make) up your dirtiest secrets in order to get less readers? You have to be an idealist or crazy (or preferably both) to do so.

Re:Modern journalism

[cold fjord]

We all know that NSA surveillance .... wait, did you say there was a story about Lindsay Lohan? In rehab? I can't find the link, do you have one? ;)

Re:Modern journalism

[mseeger]

12600 Links according to Google News ;-)

Re:Modern journalism

[RubberChainsaw]

What we need to get the attention of the average person are stories about Lindsay Lohan being spied on by the NSA.

Re:Modern journalism

[mseeger]

I had once the idea to spin a story that the NSA had nude pictures of a celeb and anyone could get them with a FOIA request ;-). But that would be too evil.

Re:Modern journalism

[xded]

True.

But the point here is not what an average person thinking about himself would do. The point is what a non-ordinary person caring about society can do.

Whether you want our times to be told by the former or the latter, it remains your choice.

What the definition of 'journalist' should be, this is the matter of discussion.

Re:Modern journalism

[Deluvianvortex]

25500 for 'nsa spy' I think that's enough to prove the OP wrong

Re:Don't be naive.

[ak3ldama]

According to modern (US) interpretations of "secrets" anything that has happened or been shared outside of your house is no longer a secret.

Blogosphere vs. Old Media

[ErichTheRed]

One of the side effects of the rise of the blogging hordes is the death of traditional journalism. Even if old media is biased one way or another, the decent newspapers of record have some respect for journalistic integrity. Reporting on a government corruption scandal is very different from reporting on the latest iPhone over at Engadget or the endless stream of celebrity garbage "news." Seeking out the real story from actual, verifiable sources rather than a blogger posting their own opinion as fact is the difference. While I'm sure some bloggers are journalists in the traditional sense, not all are, and blogs are even more sensitive to producing content that makes people click than newspapers are.

Some people may cite this as anti-progress, but look at media prior to the Internet, in fact, before cable TV. There were only 3 network news sources, and a few newspapers of record producing content. Now there's tons of media outlets, thousands of random bloggers, and an increasing trend of the medial outlets crowdsourcing content from their readers (CNN iReport, etc. etc.) Having so many choices means that opinions are more diverse, but conversely it also means that it narrows people's viewpoints. Conservatives are Fox News fans, but they're also fans of even more conservative bloggers. It makes liberals more liberal and conservatives more conservative, and that leads to situations like we're in today with Congress and the Tea Party faction. You would never have something like this in the 50s/60s simply because the population didn't have enough customized hot-button content to whip them into whatever polarized frenzy they're into.

Traditional journalism does need to return to media, but as the submitter states, you have to pay for it, and integrity doesn't pay the bills like the latest unverified rumor from a friend of a friend of Lindsey Lohan...

Re:Blogosphere vs. Old Media

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a guy named Matt Drudge, I'm sure most of you have heard of him. The ONLY reason he is famous now is because ABC was given the Lewinsky scandal 3 times over a 9 month period and decided to bury it every time. Drudge used the new internet thingy and made a name for himself posting it. Had ABC done journalism Drudge and thousands of other internet news outlets, and probably Fox News as well, wouldn't exist. Fox News only exists because Roger Ailes, working for MSNBC, wasn't allowed to run the news department his own way and couldn't run the news he wanted to.

A LOT of those other news "outlets" wouldn't exist if the big media did their job, but they chose not to. Those big 3 networks buried countless stories while they were in charge and there was no real way to get around it. Now they HATE that when they bury a story to help their buddies in DC that Fox News will run it instead, or it will end up on Drudge or The Blaze. Their ONLY hope is to discredit those sources, but they have proven themselves out too often, check the ratings, that when people say Faux News the rest of us know they are just idiots who think censorship should exist because they can't win an honest debate.

CNN in the last presidential election lost all credibility when their moderator interrupted Romney to lie and protect Obama and they cheered her for it. They have had to make massive cuts since then and continue to hemorrhage viewers. They will probably never get another presidential debate again because of their stunts, but at least they have their biased integrity.

Re:Blogosphere vs. Old Media

[ErichTheRed]

obDisclaimer: I have a left wing bias to say the least. But that's not important for this post since it applies to both sides equally.

You do have to admit that Drudge, the Huffington Post and all the others serve as echo chambers for extreme viewpoints. The conservative side gets bombarded with anti-liberal stories day in and day out, and doesn't have to listen to any other opinion if they don't want to. Same thing happens on the liberal side. You wouldn't have heard Walter Cronkite on CBS news during the Vietnam War talking about "godless baby killers" or something like that, but I could definitely see a more targeted media organization, or let's face it, some dude with a blog, saying something like this. There's no consequences for the blogger dude, and the media outlets will be rewarded for offering this as entertaining fare to their audience.

Personally, I have some very conservative relatives who, while very smart, don't get exposed to differing viewpoints on issues. And when you hear something catchy that you agree with, then repeat it to your friends, then have those same friends amplify your beliefs, you do end up with a very polarized population. Both liberal and conservative talk show hosts know this and use it to their advantage. Suddenly all those people on both sides go out and elect officials that share their polarized opinions of the world, and a sensible debate over healthcare policy turns into a protracted fight that neither side will give ground on. So, talking with people like this for me feels like I'm Rob Reiner ("Meathead") from All in the Family. Yeah, Meathead was a pinko-liberal commie but his character was reasonable compared with Archie...

I don't know, maybe people were more reasonable back in the day when we were fighting a cold war with an adversary who could wipe us out if they were having a bad day.

Re:Blogosphere vs. Old Media

[HornWumpus]

Watch 'All in the Family' again, with 20/20 hindsight.

Meathead was an arrogant blithering moron who understood nothing (aka philosophy major). Archie was stuck in the 50s but was a decent human when push came to shove. e.g. He let Meathead live in his house for free.

Re:Blogosphere vs. Old Media

[dbIII]

One of the side effects of the rise of the blogging hordes is the death of traditional journalism

Budget cuts pretty well killed that off before this site even existed let alone most blogs.

Re:Blogosphere vs. Old Media

[bfandreas]

The Bloggers have the edge on speed. But they only get the obvious or stuff they are personally involved.
Investigative journalism takes a lot of analysis of data from a lot of sources and that takes time.

The bloggers also write short 500 word texts. In contrast a proper newspaper will have much longer texts with a lot more detail. I remember reading an article in a weekly publication about the Boston bombers just the week after it happened. They had quotes from the mother, friends, people who knew them. They had information on their lives in the US. They painted a much more complete picture of the brothers than anything I had read in the Web or presumably seen on TV. That article had more than 10k words but then again Die Zeit is a very slow and very thourough publication.


Journalism is like food. There is fast food junk for people who can't be arsed and there's the real stuff. Most bloggers provide less than a printed menue from McD.

Re:Not even disguising Slashvertisements any more?

[mellon]

I think that's a bit unfair. I appreciate very much what the Guardian is doing with Snowdon's revelations, and would love to support them. It's too bad that their best user interface is the free web version, and all the editions you'd pay for are less usable. It's a classic case of "why won't you take my money?" I have the same problem with Wired—I'd gladly pay to get access to the web site without ads, but that's not on offer, and I do not want a subscription to their paper version or their horrible iPad edition.

However, in the case of electronic editions, one can subscribe to it just for the sake of doing it, and not actually read that version. This works okay for the Guardian web site, which has a pretty good ad-to-content ratio.

The Financial Times

[gamanimatron]

www.ft.com

Their focus is mostly financial, but I really enjoy their world news reporting. Whenever I pick up a "normal" paper here, even (especially?) one of the "big" ones, it seems that they're trying to sell me an extreme viewpoint - and maybe some male enhancement products to go with it - rather than actually impart any information. The FT is much more reporting like I remember it used to be. Maybe because they actually charge enough for their paper to cover their costs.

Re:The Financial Times

[Anonymous Coward]

The FT Weekend is excellent summary/analysis of the week BTW. I dont get to read the news everyday, and love their weekend edition.

Posting AC to avoid losing moderation.

Re:less "getting it right", more "Mulligan."

[Anonymous Coward]

Classic example of the snark described in the summary. So much so, in fact, that one must assume you are being ironic for comedic effect. I didn't laugh.

What if Snowden had gone to the New York TImes?

[Required Snark]

If Snowden had gone to the NYT they would have folded to government pressure. At a minimum they would have "vetted" the releases with the Feds, and as a result all of the important revelations would not be published. It is more likely the Times would have handed over the raw files and then published a bunch of bland articles that whitewashed the entire situation.

The NTY has been riding the work of Woodward and Bernstein since Watergate. That was a long time ago, and now they are in the pocket of intrenched special interests, just like the rest of US journalism.

It's a sad day when no major new organization in the US can be counted on to stand up to external pressure, whether it be economic or political. It ironic that a newspaper in the UK is doing the heavy lifting in this case, since there is no constitutional protection of the press in England, and there is in the US.

Re:What if Snowden had gone to the New York TImes?

[Anonymous Coward]

W&B worked for the Washington Post, not the NYT.

Re:What if Snowden had gone to the New York TImes?

[Anti-Social Network]

You may be correct referring to NYT buckling if it stood alone. However, if you RTFA (why yes, I AM new here, why do you ask?), you'll see that the Guardian actively partnered with the Times in processing and releasing the leak documents. Part of the reason is specifically as you stated: that as an American company, NYT has First Amendment protections that the Guardian does not.

There was also a contingency to release articles in ProPublica if Guardian were suppressed in some fashion. So, since the articles were going to publish anyway, it's easier for the Times to shrug off any pressure from the Feds, and they clearly have an economic incentive to be a party to the newsworthy data .

Re:less "getting it right", more "Mulligan."

[interkin3tic]

I think everyone would prefer it if journalists would have an accurate crystal ball to determine who they should listen to and who they shouldn't, but such a thing doesn't exist, reporters are human, and mistakes are going to happen. I'm sure reporters get all types of crazy sounding conspiracy theory nuts. This one turned out to be right in retrospect, but how did he know that in advance?

Not just journalists. I'd prefer if I, a scientist, knew which bits of preliminary data and which hypotheses to chase after. Some of the few that I've actually gone somewhere with sat on the back burner for an embarrassing amount of time before I came back to them and realized what I had been wasting my time with was far less important or likely to go anywhere.

Re:Don't be naive.

[HornWumpus]

There were two sides in the cold war. Anti-American doesn't imply impartial; just the opposite. They had a side and still haven't accepted that their philosophy didn't just lose but was WRONG.

The NYT would be reporting it if Bush were Pres

[srichard25]

If a Republican were in the White House, the NYT would have reported on this instantly and heavily. When Bush was in office, the NYT leaked confidential info that put our troops in danger. And look at the constant stream of stories they did on Abu Gharib and interrogation techniques. Why weren't they scared of the feds then?

The main reason the American media are holding back on this story is because Obama is currently in the White House.

Re:The NYT would be reporting it if Bush were Pres

[Anonymous Coward]

Like that time with the Iraq war and the cheerleading?

Re:The NYT would be reporting it if Bush were Pres

[dbIII]

they did on Abu Gharib and interrogation techniques

At that point there were still high ranking members of the military that were sickened by what the spooks were up to and willing to talk about it off the record.

false diversity

[globaljustin]

good comment, definitely we should all make a point to seek out different points of view in news...

however, having worked in news (Fox affilitate in Iowa a century ago) I can tell you this is not going to get you 'diversity'

I would recommend reading diverse viewpoints. I read fox news, huffington post, bbc....

It's the Fox News thing...

See it's a false dichotomy and drastic oversimplification to say 'MSNBC is for liberals, Fox is for conservatives, therefor to have balance I must watch both'

The premise is wrong, based on an oversimplification...

Fox is not a news organization. It **resembles** a news organization, and sometimes what they do could be termed 'reporting' but it is not a news organization. When you watch Fox, you are seeing not 'news' but propaganda for a certain position presented as news. It is not fit to be compared to other news organizations.

It is a publicity company that leverages the need for 'news' to carve out a market for itself. Sure they wiill claim in their ads and promotions that Fox News is 'Fair and Balanced'...that doesn't make it true. To falsify my point, take the Washington Post...it has a conservative bent (and their opinion page is open to the highest bidder) but they proudly and rightly claim that they are not like Fox, and other journalists defend them.

Diversity in your news is going to take more work. True value-added, objective reporting is difficult even when you are part of a **real** news organization.

You need to start thinking mainstream/non-mainstream...that's where you will find stories that others do not report.

Also, the BBC should be watched with caution regarding U.S. news...I've yet to see them demonstrate a true understanding of how our 2-party, 3-branch system works...maybe b/c they are still a monarchy?

Re:false diversity

[dbIII]

Also, the BBC should be watched with caution regarding U.S. news...I've yet to see them demonstrate a true understanding of how our 2-party, 3-branch system works

Alastair Cook used to explain it very well to non-US audiences via the BBC but he is sadly no longer with us. The gruesome footnote to him spending decades explaining the weirdness of American to the outside world is that his grave was robbed by people looking for artificial joints to sell into your utterly fucked up health system.

Re:false diversity

[Yomers]

BBC and Fox often present the same message different ways. For example on foreign wars - BBC shows some children in caves, children are suffering - cold, hungry, afraid of bombings by pro-government forces and want to return to normal life. After successful campaign children miraculously disappear - like in Libya, where anarchy currently is so widespread that PM was recently kidnapped. But evil dictator is dead, so children must be ok now, sure :) Fox message is just like "He is an enemy of US, we will destroy him!" - more straightforward, less sickening.

I remember how those "think of the children" news are made - I was around 15 y.o. in Moscow, it was around 1992, presumably Japanese news channel (there was russian producer who told us that) filmed as as "Russian punks". They told us to come to building in our block that was scheduled for demolition, generously gave us each 2 packs of marlboro and some vodka, somebody brought a guitar. So we were to sing russian punk songs while drinking vodka from a bottle and smoking cigarettes, all this with broken windows and overall mess of a building scheduled for demolition as a background. I do not know if it was shown or not, if shown we could be orphans of war near dwelling, half destroyed by government aviation in Chechnya, or where it was needed at the moment.

Re:false diversity

[loom_weaver]

Reminds me of National Geographic. They came out once to my neck of the woods where I grew up: idyllic farm setting in the mountains.

I guess the natural beauty wasn't good enough. They wanted one of the locals to bring a bathtub outside to the field and pose in it. We were like eh?

false diversity

[globaljustin]

good comment, definitely we should all make a point to seek out different points of view in news...

however, having worked in news (Fox affilitate in Iowa a century ago) I can tell you this is not going to get you 'diversity'

I would recommend reading diverse viewpoints. I read fox news, huffington post, bbc....

It's the Fox News thing...

See it's a false dichotomy and drastic oversimplification to say 'MSNBC is for liberals, Fox is for conservatives, therefor to have balance I must watch both'

The premise is wrong, based on an oversimplification...

Fox is not a news organization. It **resembles** a news organization, and sometimes what they do could be termed 'reporting' but it is not a news organization. When you watch Fox, you are seeing not 'news' but propaganda for a certain position presented as news. It is not fit to be compared to other news organizations.

It is a publicity company that leverages the need for 'news' to carve out a market for itself. Sure they wiill claim in their ads and promotions that Fox News is 'Fair and Balanced'...that doesn't make it true.

To falsify my point, take the Washington Post...it has a conservative bent (and their opinion page is open to the highest bidder) but they proudly and rightly claim that they are not like Fox, and other journalists defend them.

Diversity in your news is going to take more work. True value-added, objective reporting is difficult even when you are part of a **real** news organization.

You need to start thinking mainstream/non-mainstream...that's where you will find stories that others do not report. Look at the NFL concussion story as an example:

ESPN pulled a documentary that exposed the NFL's negligence in dealing with concussions. The documentary presented damning evidence...and ESPN decided not to air it...instead the documentary ran on PBS's 'Frontline'

Here's an article explaining the whole mess w/ link to the Frontline report: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/10/sports/football/by-shunning-concussion-documentary-espn-gives-it-a-lift.html

Watching another sports network won't get you "diversity" in that situation...you have to seek it out through a non-sport independent non-profit or you'd miss it!

Also, the BBC should be watched with caution regarding U.S. news...I've yet to see them demonstrate a true understanding of how our 2-party, 3-branch system works...maybe b/c they are still a monarchy?

posted in wrong place

[globaljustin]

/.'ers please forgive my error, I posted the above comment in the wrong thread...will look more closely before I post next time ;)

Re:posted in wrong place

[Aighearach]

Forgiven.

So is anyone else worried

[turning in circles]

About what GCHQ and MI5 and the NSA are going to end up doing to the Guardian editor and journalists? This is not the end of their troubles.

Re:So is anyone else worried

[bfandreas]

Ah. The Daily Fail never stops to deliver as expected.

In contrast today's issue of the Guardian has a 5k words piece with quotes from editors of other(and reputable) publications explaining how responsible journalism works. They used very short words but I don't expect that they will get the message across to the Daily Fail or the people who wrap their cod&chips in it.

Re:So is anyone else worried

[turning in circles]

Good point, but I don't think the Guardian got the gist across to David Cameron (see Slashdot reference of today). Perhaps the Guardian should have used even shorter words.

Re:So is anyone else worried

[bfandreas]

Good point, but I don't think the Guardian got the gist across to David Cameron (see Slashdot reference of today). Perhaps the Guardian should have used even shorter words.

David Cameron understands. He even understands the complicated bits. He does not act out of ignorance. Nor does Theresa May. I think those two are genuinely evil.

News sources around the world....

[bayankaran]

With all its faults, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times are American publications I take seriously.

Many have pointed out Economist, Al Jazeera and The Atlantic. Here are few others worth mentioning...

The New Yorker

The Times of India

The Indian Express

The Hindu

Outlook India and Tehelka (Indian weekly news magazines.)

Der Spiegel (they have an excellent English edition.)

South China Morning Post

Caijing Daily (they also have an English version.)

South American publications with English editions - from Mexico, Brazil and Argentina are missing from the above list. The Japanese publications with good English editions are rare, and the ones like The Japan Times are not that interesting.

Re:News sources around the world....

[bfandreas]

...which is propably a copy&paste list of the publications who defined their view on journalism in today's edition of the Guardian. I've read that too on my daily commute. There's a lot of repition in it but it still is a highly interesting read.

Just be warned that the print edition of DER SPIEGEL differs quite a lot from the online version. They have different editorial staff and the truly valuable articles of the print edition never make it into the online version(but you can buy them as PDF). The Guardian in contrast simply publishes todays online version as tomorrows Kindle edition with no editorial oversight whatsoever. But you can't compare those two. One is a weekly publication and the other has daily issues. Then of course there still is the Observer.

Re:Don't be naive.

[Anonymous Coward]

Noam Chomsky had an interesting comment on this : both sides used the capitalist/communist rhetoric for cynical aims... the west because the capitalists were afraid of losing much of their wealth in a communist revolution, and the Russian leadership because they wanted to paper over the fact they were a dictatorship by trumpeting a morally superior ideology (and communism was once thought of as superior in both east and west). How did western society win the ideological argument? By moderating capitalism by spreading economic benefits ie. inventing the welfare state. Now? That's being dismantled because it's no longer needed. Those making the decisions have half a century of intense propaganda from both east and west backing them up, so the decisions aren't questioned which is why the west is sliding backwards except in the socialist democracies which still have the late cold war standard of living.

Re:less "getting it right", more "Mulligan."

[bfandreas]

Snowden had to use a couple of layers of obfuscation which didn't add to his credibility. I would suggest that an investigative reported gets a lot of calls from the tinfoil hat brigade and what Snowden announced sounded so ludicrous that I also would have assumed just that.

Sometimes you do need such a bullshit filter. This is how communication works.

BBCFOX

[globaljustin]

BBC and Fox often present the same message different ways.

I see this too, in even historic coverage back to the "War in the Crimea" the news was used to stoke sentiment exactly as you describe.

Charge of the Light Brigade indeed

Fox News talking heads are now openly praising Putin:

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/09/10/putin-is-one-who-really-deserves-that-nobel-peace-prize/

full analysis: http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/09/06/a-right-wing-media-star-is-born-vladimir-putin/195756

The U.S. is recovering from the Bush years, it has to in a way...the question is how much progress can democracy make against colonial-era revenue chains?

Re:Don't be naive.

[Jahta]

The Guardian is a hard-left medium that has proven itself to be anti-American over the decades.

Ah, the ever popular "everybody who disagrees with me is wrong and/or evil" gambit. Currently much in vogue with the NSA/MI5 and US/UK government spokesmen.

Re:Don't be naive.

[radio4fan]

The Guardian is a hard-left medium that has proven itself to be anti-American over the decades.

The Guardian supported the Iraq war, which doesn't seem very hard-left or anti-American.

Perhaps the world is not black and white.

Know who else had a spine?

[gelfling]

Stalin. All Hail the Great Guardian.

Re:Don't be naive.

[HornWumpus]

Leftism always leads to dictatorship. Concentration of power is the key flaw in leftest thinking. Chomsky doesn't get this.

As to your counter examples. Most are capitalist welfare states. The rest still have time to descend to dictatorship.

Regarding your claim of 'dismantling the welfare state': Budgets and political reality say bullshit. The accurate critique of the welfare state is: 'Democracy can survive until the masses realize they can vote themselves money from the public purse'. (para)

Finally: Globally, the middle class has never been stronger. Was 'Think Globally' only empty rhetoric?

Re:Don't be naive.

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

The Guardian is a hard-left medium that has proven itself to be anti-American over the decades. Your point being? Oh right, you think america should be given respect for free instead of earning it through deed like everyone else has to.
Seeing as the Graun is responsible for Operation Clark County, nobody should ever accuse them of good journalism, even a blind squirrel can find a nut.

Re:Yea, Except

[HornWumpus]

Blogs occasionally will admit the were wrong. Newspapers just double down.

The fact remains there are newspapers tuned to every political viewpoint. The ones tuned to yours are the ones you think are unbiased.

Naturally, Disagree == modbomb the poster.

[sethstorm]

Moderation -2
    50% Troll
    50% Flamebait

Looks like the pro-Snowden collective can't handle the truth. They can be broken, the only barrier is willpower.

Not read it in years now...

[Ambient Sheep]

Until Rusbridger apologises for the contempt with which he treated his readership over the Max Gogarty affair, I will never buy another edition.

Eagerly awaiting your reply...

[TheMiddleRoad]

You asked for proof. I gave you some. And you have what to say?

Still waiting

[TheMiddleRoad]

for your response.

Re:What Alan Rusbridger really has

[RockDoctor]

What Alan Rusbridger really has [...] is a complete hatred of America.

And the problem with that is ? What?