The Great British Press: My Thoughts

One of my more morose reflections whilst traveling round the world, visiting far flung lands, was that for all my moans and gripes about the state of the press back home, newspapers in other countries were almost always a whole lot worse.

Bland news, little on foreign affairs, excessive emphasis on meaningless trivial goings on and sports, just Polly Filler on a grand scale really. Particularly the Australian Press, which on examination is owned by a tiny hegemonic elite, with Murdoch at the top of the pile, and where bias seems to go by unnoticed. ‘The Australian’ for example is a shocking paper, and one of the few non-regional titles in the country, so it’s either read that, and obtain the chance of finding out something that might be happening in the world, albeit brief and uninspired…or read about New South Wales’s upcoming epic against Queensland in their ‘State of Origin’ Rugby League battle. Pass me the manual for my ‘All-4-One’ TV remote.

Little wonder then that folks ‘down under’ remain as cultureless and ill-informed as my prejudices always held them to be.

Yet regardless of where I travel, and what I experience, whenever I return home I develop, given a few weeks, a familiar weariness with the UK press. A sort of loathing if you like, though not sufficient a loathing that I would ever consider giving up reading newspapers altogether. Me trying to stop reading the press is like Tiger Woods contemplating giving up golf. He knows the game, he’s been there, he knows he’ll go down in history as the Number One of all time…but he hangs on in there for the thrill of the chase. The need to keep a toe-hold in a familiar world.

Here is a concise run down on what I make of each of the newspapers (tabloid, broadsheet) in Britain.

The Sun: The Sun is a weird one for me. Naturally, the ‘paper’ is absolute tat and not worth remarking upon as being a vehicle of decent journalism and comment. Though the format and formula used by the editors in order to encapsulate and convey several key news stories in a succinct manner, every day, is impressive. This praise however is double-edged, as I fully realise the laughable Murdoch bias in the rag and that every professional and business care is taken to properly convey the right editorial message to the target audience.

For me, The Sun is the biggest anomaly in the UK press, casting itself as the incarnation of the Chicken and the Egg Question. Is it the readership that influences The Sun’s content, or The Sun that influences the reader’s opinions. Somewhere in the middle. The Sun sells more papers daily than any other paper. Quite worrying, and not flattering to a huge proportion of Brits, because the content is shit and the messages patronising and misleading. Oh well.

The Mirror: After Piers “Morgan” Moron’s pathetic tenureship at the lefty rag-o-la-peeps, I’m left bewildered as to whether it’s The Daily Mirror or The Mirror. I doubt even its Morganic readership know. They’re too busy filling out Ladbroke betting slips and smoking roll ups. Horrid rag, pretends it cares about the workin’ classes when it’s a load of bollocks, crap content, badly presented, littered with ads…better known for the 3am girls than journalism. Give up now and donate your flagging readership to the Morning Star. Take away the celeb-hungry bored commuters and the political fan base is almost identical.

The Daily Star: If crotch shots and camel toe pics constitutes ‘news’, I’m not sure I want to carry on living. Next.

The Daily Express: Shameful, Dirty Des owned junk. It peddles absolutely hilarious scaremongering horseshit on the front page with machine gun consistency. This rag is known for the consecutive numbers of days it shoves nasty racist anti-asylum seeker stories on the front page. Either that or some deranged, hysterical nonsense on Princess Di or House Prices. The Express for me is the worst paper in Britain. It contains even less news than the London Evening Standard, which can officially be completed in 12 seconds (I know, I tried it regularly in my days as a London commuter). The Express can be read quickly and easily, on account of the fact it is written for people who live in the Midlands. Who, bless them, aren’t exactly overly endowed in the brain department. That, and a gargantuan proportion of the rag is made up of ads.

If you’re from the West Midlands, love watching ITV (You Been Framed, Millionaire etc etc), are obsessed with celebs and Keeping-up-with-the-Jones’s status, likelihood is…you read the Express. Congratulations, you’ve become a world leader in bland, banal mediocrity and pointlessness.

The Daily “Hate” Mail: Regular readers of ours will know more than enough on what we think about this newspaper. It has sneaked into number two spot of papers with the biggest circulation. It is a veritable power house in the world of UK print journalism, paying its writers huge sums and arrogantly commanding pride of place at the dinner tables of many a leading politician, including Comrade Brownin.

The Mail is an enigma. In an age of seemingly tolerant and progressive sentiment, the Mail stands out as an unreconstructed dinosaur on the mystical hazy oasis of post war fascism. A long standing supporter of Oswald Mosley, the British Union of Fascists leader, the Mail went on to oppose blacks coming here in the 50s and 60s, and to pretty much oppose just about anything. It seethes every day and it will continue to seethe every day until the end of time, or paper, hate. Pure hate, thinly veiled amongst a growing tsunami of celeb and gossip ‘news’. I could write for an age about this pernicious nasty rag, but I’ll cut it short. Work tomorrow and someone’s got to pay all them bleedin’ taxes to fund mad PC schemes!!!111!!11!!1 etc.

Where the Express is the worst paper, the Mail is the most nasty and pernicious. An example of what happens to the Right when they get a hard-on for too long. There’s just no stopping the ‘outrage’.

The Telegraph: Massive hit in the Home Counties. Biggest selling Broadsheet. I personally find it excrutiatingly dull and lifeless. I don’t care that it’s right wing. That really has no bearing on my opinion. It posits quality enough journalism ,except its scope and style is so dull. I always come away feeling like I’ve sucked ether out of a hose pipe when I’ve read a copy of the Torygraph.

The Times: I like The Times. It’s the only paper that doesn’t piss me off. And it’s Murdoch line is occasionally pumped through, though it’s easy to spot, so doesn’t take the will of a genius to filter it out. Just take its stance on the Beeb with a pinch of salt, and suddenly you have, at last, a candidate for a paper that provides ‘news’, which isn’t patronisingly spun or biased excessively, and where you’re left feeling like you’ve been credited with making your own mind up. I just wish they didn’t switch to this tabloid format. Takes the pleasure out of reading a broadsheet that.

The (not so) Independent: Hate it. Hate it with a passion. A few years ago, before Iraq 2 in 2003, I loved the Indy as it seemed funky, interesting, gave a cross section of views and was generally a good mooch on the train. I can even say I bought it purely just to read Mark Steel (who I think is brilliant and just plain funny). Then, after a while, and in the run up to the war, the paper just got obsessed and shifted massively to the weird liberal-left. Every day saw that utter plum Robert Fisk pump our faces with patronising, left wing, anti-Israeli anti-UK/US propaganda, and the front page editorial spreads really pissed me off. So I stopped reading it and by all accounts, it’s got worse. Independent my arse. Fuck off you commie shit heads.

The Guardian: More miss than hit. Naturally, liberal left with occasionally strayings into hard-left, Marxist territory (Toynbee). Can often be horrifically smug and self-satisfied. Guardian readers are generally so up their own arses, it’s hard to speak to them without the use of some colonic camera and mic. Which is dangerous, because as soon as they start speaking the shit just flows out like a lava storm. Don’t get into a row with a Grauniad reader. Not because you’ll lose, but because the experience will leave you so bewildered and depressed at the world, for having spawned such cocks, you’ll likely never do a human a good deed every again. Such will be the catastrophic view on human nature that will inevitably be acquired.

The G has taken on the mantle of the bizarre anti-Left Left, which is the type of Left we have to contend with now. Before, they stuck up for the working classes and wanted to do away with nuclear weapons and African famine. Now they pay homage to lunatics, religious zealots and anyone with a gun or a bomb that hates white English people. A bit like seeing your little 2nd division side get knocked out of the FA cup, so you switch all your passions and allegiances to Arsenal. Some things in life are inexcusable and unforgivable.

So yes, I hate the G. But every now and then, someone will write something vaguely interesting. So it gets beaten by the Indy on this score.

And that is it really. It’s all a load of bollocks, but our bollocks is better than a lot of other bollocks. So it’s all relative I guess.

I suppose the weird thing about all this is that if you want to get real, quality, hard cutting, proper fucking news, you need to buy a fortnightly satirical magazine with a small, yet well in-formed readership. For me, if I want to find shit out, I read Private Eye. A superb purveyor of real journalism.

Night folks.