Pride’s Purge – by Tom PrideIn an extraordinary article today – the Guardian’s so-called ‘reader editor’Stephen Pritchard admits the newspaper will delete any readers’ comments which “persistently” criticise its journalists.
Pritchard rounds off his extremely defensive piece with this extraordinary sentence:
“….while we acknowledge criticism of the articles we publish, we will not allow persistent misrepresentation of our journalists.”
In other words, for “persistent misrepresentation” read “criticism“‘
Which at least explains why for several years now I have been banned (not pre-moderated – banned) from commenting on the Guardian website and my polite enquiries as to why I have been banned have been consistently ignored:
So now I know.
Because while I don’t use degrading, sexist or racist language, I do take a pretty persistent line in criticism of journalists from all mainstream newspapers- including the Guardian:
Guardian claims Lib Dem MPs opposed the bedroom tax when they supported it
Oops! Guardian accidentally gets a headline wrong about the Lib Dems. Again.
Why is the Observer employing a Mail journalist to smear Ed Miliband?
Daily Mail story about sunrises being shown on big screens in Beijing was made up
Daily Mail fail – newspaper uses false photo in Kenya shopping centre article
Meet the Telegraph journalist on a one woman campaign to smear the NHS
etc etc etc
In fact in my experience, for people who like to dish it out regularly, mainstream media journalists have extremely thin skins.
If you dare to even question most mainstream media hacks, they are the most likely to jump up and down threatening libel at the drop of a hat.
By far the most threats of libel and attacks I have had have been not from politicians – who in my experience on the whole tend to take criticism with a pinch of salt – but from journalists:
Mail hack threatens to sue me for asking how she traced Twitter users’ personal information
A Daily Mail journalist is trolling my friends
On-line trolling is being tamed – but the Tabloid Trolls are still rampant
It seems hacks like to dish it out – but can’t take it back.
Alot of intelligent people can,t take the heat. They paid too much for their college educations.They feel it,s their right to be 85 percent wrong. Most are just perfessional word smiths with their college educated heads up their ass.
Common sense is something hard to find these days.
Not uncommon at all.
“….while we acknowledge criticism of the articles we publish, we will not allow persistent misrepresentation of our journalists.”
Something wrong with that statement…
“….while we acknowledge criticism of the articles we publish, we will not allow persistent truthful representation of our journalists.”
There… fixed it.