Bollocks!
Our honour is at stake: Brits criticise American media news programmes & weoffer a defence
Nell McAndrew, a Page 3 girl in The Daily Star
The Brits have taken it upon themselves to criticise the American tradition of news reporting. Whereas we catalogue "without fear or favour," the UK papers are much more inclined to erupt in furour, suggests a recent piece by National Public Radio.
According to the report, Britain's big daily rags are unabashedly coloured by what political ties they favour. For example, The Guardian has wedded itself to the Labour Party (although they leapt to the third party Liberal Democrats most recently). Conversely, the Daily Telegraph has strived to present the right-of-centre viewpoint.
On this side of the pond, such politically polar opposites as the San Francisco Chronicle and the Wall Street Journal claim they present unbiased reporting with no political affiliation.
"In Britain, we feel that it's better to know where people are coming from and then to make up your own mind about what you think, because the truth is nobody can be completely impartial and objective," Nick Boles, a Conservative member of Parliament from England's East Midlands tells NPR, adding, "I mean the idea [that] the New York Times doesn't have a political point of view — it's ridiculous. It does, but it twists itself into knots in an attempt to pretend that it doesn't."
Is Boles trying to incite an all-out row between the American and British media? And why is NPR voicing the arguement?
The piece continues, "Guardian Editor-in-Chief Alan Rusbridger argued that British papers give more room than their American counterparts to voices that challenge conventional wisdom."
NPR quotes the bloke,
I think it's quite a striking thing about the British press that you get this polemical battle over the basis for what news is, which I feel is to a large extent missing in the American scene. No judgments are free of ideologies, so who you choose to quote and how you structure stories are highly political judgments. I think that's the problem with trying to place too much faith in something called objectivity."
Rusbridger suggests that British coverage of the political dialogue prior to the war in Iraq was more sceptical because the range of acceptable opinions is far broader in British newspapers.
Guess what, Rus: We both sent troops to Iraq. Yet you still grant yourself the honour of offering superior media discourse.
It would behove the British media to look towards our style. As it stands, Brit rags are about as two-sided as a sheet of aluminium, and the admittedly colourful political commentary on their pages is about as worthless as a stale biscuit.
I'm not going to blagger: I savour the hypocritical aspect as I devour the New York Times and National Public Radio and their thinly-veiled liberal propaganda. I can't be blamed — I was indoctrinated in supposedly unbiased press when my mum would play "Morning Edition" as I munched hobnobs in my pyjamas.
Innit right to admit that I've concocted a formula that matches the ratio of favourite New York Times articles mentioned per minute and shagging frequency?
I'm proud that we're not a bunch of daft chavs willing to put whatever blagger comes to mind into print. There's already a long queue of "unbiased" writers waiting on the kerb outside any American newspaper office ready to mould to the notion of keeping their ideas to themselves. They can call the phoney American method as transparent as a bowl of yoghurt, but the Brits' shameless scepticism leads to more commentary than news.
I'm tempted to hop my arse on an aeroplane to Gatwick and give them a piece of my mind. Alas, a grand don't come for free, so I'll resign myself to a fag and wank in the loo before fixing a spot of camomile and returning to my next unbiased draught.
