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Comment by CaptainZapp | Hacker News Reader

I'm an avid reader of The Guardian and donate 50EUR a year.

Of course it's partisan on Brexit (as is The Economist, btw) and of course its general direction has a leftist slant (and why should it not?)

That said, I think it's one of the few remaining quality papers in the UK, which provides overall accurate reporting.

What makes me gag sometimes is some of the writers in The Opinion section. But that's fine too. If it's too crack-pottery I'm alsways free to ignore it.

Their Long Read section[1], though, is fantastic long form journalism and that alone justifies my yearly donation.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/the-long-read

EDIT : Slight clarification

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While obviously it is much better than the likes of Daily Mail,it is still far far from being really good. A lot of articles are often opinionated and present journalist's opinion in a much stronger way than the facts themselves. Also,there are many poorly researched articles,where one feels that the journalist is clearly out of his/her depth..It's very similar ro Stacey Dooley,who covers amazing subjects, however the questions asked are like something you'd expect from 6th grade school journalism contest...

> What makes me gag sometimes is some of the writers in The Opinion section.

Absolutely. Opinion pieces in a newspaper are not meant to represent the view of the paper, or even to pretend to be objective; they are by definition opinionated and form an essential part of the public debate.

A lot of people don't seem to understand the concept of opinion pieces and letters from readers.

A good newspaper balances the opinion pieces placed, and will leave out obvious falsehoods.

The big issue with opinion sections is in the era of newspapers, it was obvious you're reading the opinion section. You might get a tease on page 1 to "Read Bill Clinton's views on Bernie Sanders' presidential chances on page 4" but it was clearly in the Opinion section, separated from 'real' news.

In the era of online news, opinion sections are blended with news.

Even The Guardian falls prey to this: go to https://www.theguardian.com/. Click the Opinion tab. Click any of the opinion pieces. The primary navigation reverts to having 'News' highlighted.

Worse, in reader/mobile view modes, the label "Opinion" does not show anywhere.

Fwiw, The Times doesn't do this, even in the app.

It's not a great app, but the one thing it gets right is behaving quite like a newspaper - even down to navigation to select which of the past 6 days' (plus today's) editions you'd like!

(What it gets really wrong, and refuses to accept is a bug every time I report it, is that when the edition updates at 9am/noon/5pm/midnight if you have an article open it randomly jumps to a completely different article that now occupies the spot on which you clicked to open the initial one.)

Are we seeing the same site?

I see that Opinion is still highlights in the tabs, it says "Opinion" in orange, and that's on mobile.

The background is pale pink, but that's more subtle.

https://ibb.co/W5PzZRb

> and of course its general direction has a leftist slant (and why should it not?)

Because when you go into every news story already convinced that the left are in the right in a given situation then your reporting is compromised.

No paper is strictly objective and it's not supposed to be.

I think that's completely fine as long as the direction is clear and the reporting is accurate.

On the other side of the spectrum we would have, for example, The Wall Street Journal.

While I personally believe that some of their opinion writers are even worse than some of The Guardian's opinion writers there's no doubt that The Journal delivers some stellar world class journalism.

Or would you apply a different standard there?

I think people can at least try not to bring their bias to work, or failing that actively declare that your reporting is designed to campaign for a particular politics. The Guardian doesn’t even attempt that.

They approach reporting like an angry anonymous Twitter account.

There is no such thing as impartial journalism. You have to select and interpret events. You cannot but do so from a particular perspective. The Guardian does a far better job than most newspapers at upholding accuracy in their writing. They don't lie to or manipulate their readers.

How come for example the Times manages to include opinion pieces by views across the political spectrum and the Guardian doesn’t? The Guardian don’t even pretend to be trying.

'Trying' to do what? If you accept that a paper cannot be impartial, then what ought they be trying to do? It seems to me, from what you said, that you wish for them to be as plural as possible. Perhaps that's one virtue.

But there's nothing illegitimate about a paper having a particular political persuasion. Every paper does. What they should be judged by - holding politics equal - is the vocational standards of journalism: sobriety, rigour, accuracy, style, and a refusal to appeal to the worst in humans. I would say the Guardian does very well on all these counts. You say that it doesn't declare its politics, but it does: you only have to read their editorials. Not that it's a secret; everyone knows.

As for The Times, I can't speak with any authority. I don't read it, because it's behind a paywall. I know they're a centre-right paper who sometimes publish those on the centre-left. But my sense is that the former massively outnumber the latter, and that they rarely if ever publish social democrats and socialists.

The graph in this study fits, broadly, with my intuitions:

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2017/0...

>How come for example the Times manages to include opinion pieces by views across the political spectrum and the Guardian doesn’t?

This is partisan in of itself

Are you talking about general opinion pieces or the Times regular columnists? The Guardian does have a pretty diverse Comment section [1]. As far as the regular columnists go, it's true they don't really have a right-wing Owen Jones, but for instance, Matthew d'Ancona is conservative, and Larry Eliott is a Lexiteer.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk/commentisfree

While there is some good writing and occasionally rigorous journalism on the Guardian, I won't accept the claim they don't manipulate their readers, I won't say they lie explicitly but they certainly remove context and omit when it is convenient to a certain editorial position. The timing and number of very tenuous anti-semitism claims against the Labour leader, for one.

Now I'm curious: What paper do you read that doesn't have a bias? I'm in the US, but looking for different perspectives.

I think all journalism is biased, but there’s a difference between regretting it and trying to hold it back, and wallowing in it like the Guardian does.

For example the Times publishes pieces from the left and right viewpoints. The Guardian doesn’t even pretend to be interested in multiple views.

What? The Guardian's comment section has a huge range of opinions.

I'd suggest the Guardian has more of a neo liberal 'slant' rather than a 'left wing' one. They completely ignore that the Labour party has always been very sceptical about the EU for example and are all in on retaining the status quo around the current EU organization. There is no critical writing about it there. They also ignore the left of the Labour party. 'The Full Brexit' for example. https://www.thefullbrexit.com/about

It's funny you say that, because the same Chris Bickerton articulating the fringe view that true left wingers should get behind the leader of the Conservative Party's proposed Brexit deal at the other end of your link is also to be found expressing the same view in Guardian comment pieces...

The Guardian has many arguable faults, but not finding webspace for rather niche left wing schools of thought isn't one of them.

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