The Guardian
The Guardian is a leftist newspaper, referred to as a "Communist paper" by Lord Beaverbrook[1], published in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1821 as the Manchester Guardian. Its Sunday edition is The Observer.
Readers
Its readership are largely middle-class ivory tower liberals and Marxists from metropolitan areas. A MORI Poll taken between April-June 2000 showed that 80% of "Guardian" readers were Labour Party voters.[2] Supporters of the newspaper as well as people who follow its ideology are popularly known as Guardianistas.
Journalistic bias
The Guardian's editor from 1932 until his death in 1944 was W.P.Crozier. He relates how he went to an appointment with Lord Beaverbrook at Shell-Mex House in the Strand, London, on November 21, 1941. He said: "I found Beaverbrook with Walter Citrine, General Secretary of the TUC. He presented me to him (Citrine) as "The Editor of the Communist paper, The Manchester Guardian".[3] Malcolm Muggeridge was a journalist for them in the Soviet Union. Yet despite Muggeridge's left-wing leanings they declined to publish what he had to say about Stalin's reign of terror, one of the reasons why Muggeridge decided to write it up as a book, Winter In Moscow.
Favourable articles can today regularly be found in The Guardian on the Soviet Union, unrestricted immigration and vegetarianism. It is argued that the general thrust of the paper is an allegiance to Marxism. Many of The Guardian's journalists are well-known Marxists, including Francis Wheen who wrote possibly the most adulatory biography of Karl Marx ever published.
The paper sometimes criticises Zionism: Chris McGreal was on the ground in Gaza during the Israeli attacks of December 2008; and it consistently attacks conservatives of any description, be they the Party, or organisations such as the Monday Club, the latter and its more prominent members being targets for smears for decades.[4] One of The Guardian's standard tactics, commonly used by The Left, is to publicise the workplaces of those they hate in the hope that their victims might lose their livelihoods. A classic example of this, in December 1991, was an interview by their Irish journalist Peter Lennon with several of the Monday Club's senior officers, on the subject of immigration, at the time of a visit to London of Jean Marie Le Pen. The places of employment of the officers concerned, which had nothing to do with the Club or the subject of their interviews, were deliberately published.[5] For both individuals suspension and possibly dismissal was narrowly avoided[6], but in one case a large midday demonstration of left-wingers, trades unionists, members of the Socialist Workers Party and Anti-Nazi League took place in front of his office 7 days later.[7] The Guardian is quite naturally the newspaper of choice for the left-wing BBC[8]. One of its former leading news broadcasters stated "At the core of the BBC, in its very DNA,is a way of thinking that is firmly of The Left………In the later stages of my career, I lost count of the number of times I asked a producer for a brief on a story, only to be handed a copy of The Guardian and told "it’s all in there"".[9]·
References
- ↑ Crozier, W.P., edited by A.J.P.Taylor, Off The Record, London, 1973, p.259.ISBN: 0-09-116250-5
- ↑ International Socialism, Spring 2003, ISBN:1-898876-97-5
- ↑ Crozier (Taylor), 1973, p.259.
- ↑ The Observer, "Far Right takes over Monday Club" by David Rose, February 24, 1991. This article was so biased & false that a solicitor's letter was sent to the paper's Editor resulting in a Right-of-Reply letter being published the following Sunday from the Club.
- ↑ The Guardian, "Trailing the cloak of racism", Peter Lennon, December 6, 1991, p.21.
- ↑ Hammersmith Chronicle, "Race row health boss keeps job", December 19, 1991
- ↑ Nursing Times, "Racism row sparked by manager's comments" by Janet Snell, December 16, 1991.
- ↑ The BBC's political objective is constantly questioned. The Daily Telegraph on August 3, 2005, carried a letter from the KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky referring to it as "The Red Service".
- ↑ Sissons, Peter, One Door Closes, 2011, and cited in the Daily Mail 22nd January 2011.
