The Red Menace
You know, I might be an ill-informed gobshite given to speaking before I think, but I’m pretty sure I’m not often this crashingly wrong:
18 Doughty Street, the online TV station… has a distinct liberal left bias… Doughty Street leftist polemic has proven to be both popular and profitable…
Is that the same 18 Doughty Street whose directors are Red-under-the-bed Donal Blaney, Communist agitator Iain Dale and Marxist provocateur Stephan Shakespeare? You know, I think it is.
Can I have a job at the Guardian, please?
(via Councillor Bob)
Update: Ben Marshall responds:
Have any of you lot actually bothered reading watching any of it? Agreed the founders are members of the Tory party but I would find it hard to call Tatchell, Claire Fox, Johann Hari or any number of other guests and presenters right wing. I know I am paying attention, i get the feeling you’re not.
That would be Peter (’the Left are crap for not supporting my pet causes‘) Tatchell and Claire (formerly of Living Marxism) Fox. Last time I looked they weren’t exactly poster boy and girl for the ‘liberal’ ‘Left’. (Whatever that is this week.)
Posted on July 19th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
| See also • A proper gander • Still the best democracy money can buy. • Links and stuff between May 26th and May 27th |
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Can I have a job at the Guardian, please?
No, you’re too old and you don’t live in London.
And Daddy doesn’t own large parts of Buckinghamshire, dammit.
Genuine stuck-up poshos don’t own parts of anywhere, dear - we’ve normally had our meagre financial inheritance drunk away by great-grandmother Gladis, and are bitter thanks to not quite being closely enough related to the main branch to inherit the Earldom. In her case (2/3rds of the way down) Carlisle, in mine Powis…
Still, I reckon I’m probably still just about posh enough to work for the Guardian - though for writing I’m actually getting paid for I have a tendency to do some proper research and then fact-check before submission, so maybe not…
Hmmm… Oddly her aristocratic heritage was missing from her Wikipedia page. Not any more…
Considering my ownership of a small island to the west, I’m surprised I haven’t made more of myself. Erm, actuarly.
Actually there is a a serious point here, not unrelated to the current crisis in the BBC: much journalistic work which used to be done by trained and experienced professional joutrnalists (no, don’t laugh, they did and do exist) is now done, basically, by kids. Kids in newspapers offices and kids who’ve set up their own media companies consisting solely of themselves. This is partly because of simple cost-cutting, partly because of the proliferation of media and partly because of a free-market cynicism regarding the necessity (or lack thereof) to maintain standards.
None of this necessarily applies to Ben Marshall (I’ve no opinion on him either way, though he’s wrong on this) but it does go some way to explain why there’s quite so much shite about as well as why so much of the media seems to consist of what TV programmes, comedians and bands are currently interesting kids just out of college living in London and working in media.