A little while back, I asked if the Guardian could possibly sink any lower – and observed that each time I think they’ve reached the bottom of the Puerto Rico Trench, they tunnel just a bit further down in the goo.
Today, we get this nasty little attempt to smear anyone who might be vaguely “right wing” as gun-toting extremists even as the bodies of the dead are still stiffening in the Tucson morgue. Really, can they possibly go any lower? Can it be feasible?
I expect that next week they will succeed. They always do.
Agreed, it was an appalling article.
Fortunately, they’re not all barking on CiF. Here’s an antidote of sorts.
“It’s correct to look at his views of 9/11, his reading of Mein Kampf and so on, to try to understand what kind of political ideology might have motivated him – if any. But it’s wrong to try to construct some political worldview that makes sense to those of us who spend time thinking about political worldviews. Some people don’t act out of a political ideology they heard on Fox News or MSNBC. Some people just do bad things, motivated by what we cannot understand, and self-justified by random, semi-connected thoughts on all kinds of topics.
The Tucson shooter strikes me as such a person. He doesn’t fit in any pundit’s box. Many evildoers don’t.”
IIRC the congresswoman who was shot is a gun owner ……
I thought the point about CiF is that comment is free.
When ranting about that part of the Guardian website do you ever bother to read the comments that follow the articles that so boil your piss?
Irrelevant. The issue is with the decision to publish such a dreadful article. As I pointed out before, it is the Guardian’s editorial policy that is under fire. And I am free to criticise.
Voyager:
If you think comment is really free at CiF, take a look at this :http://www.climate-resistance.org/
And by the way I’m not concerned about whether their anti-warming view is correct or not, only about the Guardian’s blatant censorship.
Their moderation policy does tend to belie the “comment is free” moniker – comment is only free if you don’t upset the moderators.
My concern here is that they have published a piece that crosses the line between contrary opinion and blatant smear. In so doing, the Guardian tacitly acknowledges that such behaviour is okay. Given that it borders on the defamatory, I disagree. Whether I have read the subsequent comments or not (I have, and a significant proportion agree with me) is neither here nor there with regards to that main point.
Longrider, I think you are still missing the entire point of the ‘Comment is Free’ area.
The authors (who I believe are invited contributors) are essentially ‘publishing’ the articles themselves and agree to leave them open to reply. Other than hosting the forum it’s not ‘the Guardian’ making editorial decisions and the moderation of comments is (I presume) largely for legal purposes. The vast majority of the pieces hosted never make it to the printed paper.
I haven’t missed anything. The Guardian Group owns the website. They therefore are the publishers and are legally responsible for the content. They also have the absolute right to refuse to publish content that is either illegal or contravenes their editorial policy. Again, as is their right. If, however, they choose to allow a piece that is nothing more than a nasty smear – such as this one – then they have to accept that they will be castigated for doing so. My criticism stands.
I believe, from reading the comments that follow the article in question, that the author is being castigated.
Your point was about the Guardian sinking lower. It is not ‘the Guardian’ that is ‘sinking lower’. The comment, they say, is free.
The only one missing something here is you. The Guardian is the publisher. By publishing a smear piece they gave tacit approval for such behaviour. By allowing it to be carried on their platform, they have sunk to a new low.
CiF will inevitably be covered by their editorial policy, to believe otherwise would be incredibly naive.
To put it as simply as possible: Their website. They are the publisher. They are responsible for content. In publishing this one, they have agreed to carry a smear piece.
My criticism stands.
Voyager:
Pure sophistry, the overwhelming majority of the CiF articles are broadly in line with the Guardian’s editorial position, they publish the occasional one that isn’t but to imply that CiF is some kind of public noticeboard with the moderators just there to remove libel is ridiculous.
On certain issues such as the Middle East and climate change the moderators are so trigger happy ( sorry are we allowed to say that now ? ) that it becomes virtually impossible to have anything resembling a reasonable debate, see Julia M’s blog today for another classic example of the CiF mindset.
Longrider HAVE you read the comments that follow that piece? Do you really think that the article is ‘approved’ by the readers?
Because it doesn’t look anything like it to me.
Oh, FFS! Have you read what I have said? Because if you had, you wouldn’t be asking that question as it has already been answered. I don’t give a flying fuck whether the readers approve or not. That is not the basis of my criticism. I am criticising the Guardian Group’s decision to publish a smear. I can’t put it any more simply than that.
Well, I don’t think it is a newspapers attempt to ‘smear anyone who might be vaguely “right wing” as gun-toting extremists’, just a piece of badly considered opinion by a contributor that has been demolished by a large number of comments following it, but there you go.
I didn’t say that it was a newspaper’s attempt to smear political opponents. I criticised them for allowing it to appear on their website i.e they published it. What they should have done as a responsible publisher was rejected it for a rewrite to remove the smear content. Failure to do that reflects badly on them.