A quick guide to British Media sources for Americans: Broadsheet Good, Tabloid Bad.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

I've just been reading a post based on an article in the Daily Mail, with all the journalistic integrity and scientific understanding that implies, and it occured to me that summarising (my views on) which British news sources are and aren't reliable, and what to look out for in terms of them.

The BBC: generally very reliable. Some right-wingers accuse it of having a left-wing bias; I haven't seen this but I don't follow it that closely. Covers an awful lot of stuff. Generally a very reliable source.

Broadsheet newspapers: From left to right: Guardian/Observer - Independant - Times - Telegraph. Mostly now produced in Berliner form, but still referred to as Broadsheets. They tend to have reasonably high standards of factual accuracy. Except for the Times (and to some extent the Indi, I guess), they don't try to pass themselves off as "fair and balance"; they have clear, overt editorial stances, which informs/colours/biases their reporting, and should be read in light of these. The Times tries to present itself as the centrist "Paper of Record"; I believe that under Murdoch's ownership it's moved right a bit, but I don't read it. In general, though, British broadsheets are reliable sources.

Tabloid Newspapers: The Sun, The Mirror, The News of the World, the Daily Mail, the Express, etc. Much better read than the broadsheets. All far-right except for the Mirror, which is nominally left-wing. You could fit the journalistic integrity of the whole bunch of them into a small egg-cup and still have room for a large egg. Their science reporting in particular is usually a joke. I would recommend never taking a British tabloid as a reliable source.

I don't know why we tend to print better journalism on larger pieces of paper, but there you have it...

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. This is extraordinarily helpful.

Thank you for taking time to post it.

:hi:

[LeftishBrit]

2. Agreed...

Though the Torygraph (which in the past was RW in its editorials but accurate in its news reporting) has gone down in news quality in the last couple of years.

Still, any broadsheet is better for news than any tabloid. And the BBC is probably better for news than any newspaper.

[Mira]

3. Thank you very much for posting this Recommended

[blondeatlast]

4. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

:applause:

Great info; I happen to have traveled a bit with my ex- and know to follow BBC and also the "good" European papers, but for those who may not be aware this is GREAT info.

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. Can you suggest other "good" european papers, pls?

I have Der Spiegal bookmarked....any good english french...spain....etc???

Pretty please with chocolate on top?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

8. I'm afraid I'm a monoglot

I *think* that the broadsheet/berliner > tabloid thing is usually true outside the UK, but I'm not sure, I'm afraid.

[blondeatlast]

13. Same here. I wasn't in Europe long enough to really find out but I knew

of the British papers already form friends. Other than that we got our news from BBC and CNN International (which is a world away better than our CNN).

[Spider Jerusalem]

16. In English...

France: Le Monde Diplomatique (monthly): http://mondediplo.com/ ; France24 (news channel with news site in English): http://www.france24.com/en/
Germany: Deutsche Welle (not a newspaper, but still a decent news site): http://www.dw-world.de/
Russia: Russia Today (English-language news channel with online news): http://rt.com/ ; Moscow Times: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/index.php

[Emit]

5. Much appreciated

I always try to find out a bit about the media source before I post. I just posted something from The Telegraph - and knowing it was a conservative leaning paper owned now by the Barclay Bros and previously by Conrad Black, I am still skeptical about the article.

[LeftishBrit]

6. BTW, here's a link to a thread posted in 2007 by Mr. Blur and some other UK-ers..

about the Daily Mail, with some references to other tabloids.

Though some images are no longer available, the thread is just as true now as then!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=2174684

[Donald Ian Rankin]

10. You think the Mail is right of the Express?

I'm pleased to say I haven't read the latter much, but I have the vague impression it's even more extreme.

[LeftishBrit]

19. I think the Express is if anything more extreme; but I think it's probably a bit less influential

Doesn't seem to have quite as wide a readership. I must confess, however, that the two are sufficiently similar that I tend to confuse them at times.

The Mail is much more quoted on DU than the Express, however.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

24. Something like three times the circulation in the UK, certainly.

It's also idiomatic in the way the Express isn't - steryotypes about Mail readers are much more widely recognisable than ones about Express readers, I suspect.

[mr blur]

21. The Express is probably more right- wing,

but much less hysterical, and much less...stupid

[muriel_volestrangler]

22. Really? I'd say it's the other way round

The Mail, and its owner and editor, have a definite right wing agenda, and are fairly organised about it. But the Express is owned by Richard Desmond, who actually donated to New Labour (remember Paxman embarrassing Blair by reading out the titles of the porn mags Desmond published?), and just has obsessions, some of which are neutral (eg Princess Diana), and some are right wing (eg hating immigrants, or Travellers).

[snot]

9. Great post. I'd just like to add re- the BBC

that several years ago, after the invasion of Iraq but while Blair was still P.M., the foundational principles governing the BBC were amended to provide that Trustees to the Board that has ultimate oversight over the BBC were to be appointed by the Prime Minister. Another change was to encourage the BBC to outsource more journalistic work to private corporations.

There were other changes as well, the general tenor of which rang an alarm bell for me that the gov't and corps. were gaining more control over the organization.

I agree that for now, the BBC seems to be MUCH more objective than most U.S. broadcasters; but that's not saying much. And it's difficult to be sure of the effects, since there are now so few truly liberal sources that I fear we know little about what's NOT being reported, or how to measure bias.

I do think we need to be much more alert to these things.

[Spider Jerusalem]

11. The Daily Mail seems to be one of the most frequently-cited right-wing news sources from the UK here

for whatever reason. I'm not sure there is a US equivalent; it's kind of like what you'd get if Fox News published a newspaper that was edited jointly by Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs. The Daily Mail is pretty shockingly racist, and seems to specialise in whipping up fear about immigrants, asylum seekers, Muslims, "benefit scroungers", knife-criming yobs in hoodies...there's not much to choose really between the Mail and the Express, either, except that the Express often seems to be even more blatantly racist (and you can count on the Express to have at least one Diana-related front-page headline a week, even now).

[Donald Ian Rankin]

12. From what I've heard there's a big difference between the Mail and Fox News

The Daily Mail is an unashamedly and overtly right-wing publication; I believe Fox News tries to pretend it's fair and balanced.

[blondeatlast]

14. I thought that the Mail's rep was common knowledge but clearly it isn't.

I'm pretty snarky when I see it cited for that reason, but apparently people really don't know about it.

[jonnyblitz]

20. it's scary. folks have brought this up about the Daily Mail

more than once over the years here but DUers CONTINUE to use it as a source. I guess we need this list PINNED to the top of the forums(fora, whatever).

[muriel_volestrangler]

23. A mod asked us about this in the UK forum last month

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=191x32644

I suggested that the Mail, and Fox News, be explicitly listed in the LBN pinned note about sources as examples of "blatantly biased sources".

[Donald Ian Rankin]

25. Nothing wrong with a blatantly biased source.

I have far less problem with blatantly biased sources than I do with covertly biased ones. I'd despise the Mail even more if it claimed to be "fair and balanced".

The reason I think the Daily Mail isn't a good source is because it's inaccurate, not because it's biased.

Papers like e.g. the Telegraph or the Guardian, which clearly and overtly push their agendas just as much (just not as dishonestly) as the Mail do are fine, I think.

[EFerrari]

15. This is helpful, thank you. n/t

[Nye Bevan]

17. The Mirror often nails it.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

18. You think? I'm not an expert on the Mirror, but my impression is that it's not terribly reliable.

It may be a nominally left-wing tabloid, but it's still a tabloid. I might agree with its stances more often than those of, say, the Telegraph, but I wouldn't necessarily trust its factual claims as much.

[HipChick]

26. Up there with The Sun and The News of The World