a guide to british news sources
Because you (quite rightly) hear a lot about how awful the Daily Mail is, but not enough about how awful the others are.
The Daily Express:
Cons:
- Can very possibly lay claim to being even more racist than the Daily Mail
- Currently financing UKIP, which needs no further commentary really
- Also hates immigrants, the EU, and school shooting survivors
- Obsessed with a) Princess Diana and b) touting ‘miracle cures’ for stuff, all of which is nonsense
- Is less popular than the Daily Mail, but I suspect that just helps their particular brand of awfulness go under the radar more
Pros:
- None whatsoever
The Times:
Cons:
- owned by Rupert Murdoch
- Seems to have gotten steadily more and more right-wing over the years
- AA Gill writes for it and he’s a tool
- Ditto with Jeremy Clarkson (for the Sunday edition), who is the Worst
Pros
- Invented the Times New Roman typeface, so we have them to thank for that I guess
The Guardian
Cons:
- Once published (alright, it was in its sister paper The Observer, but still under the Guardian name) a piece by Julie Burchill so shockingly transphobic it’s remembered with disgust even now
- Is pretty white-feminism-y, really
Pros:
- Still probably better than most of the others, although you may have guessed that’s not saying much
The Sun
Cons:
- another one that could make a convincing case for being even worse than the Daily Mail in many aspects
- ACTIVELY ENDANGERED PEOPLE’S LIVES back in the 80s with their headlines about AIDS
- Is still loathed in Liverpool to this day due to its coverage of the Hillsborough disaster
- Happily and casually racist, homophobic, ableist and transphobic
- Just…read its Wikipedia page. How the hell is this clusterfuck still a newspaper
Pros:
- absolutely zero
The Daily Mirror
Cons:
- I think it’s sort of responsible for Piers Morgan’s fame, sorry about that
- wrote a really gross article about Charlie Sheen’s HIV diagnosis
Pros:
- presumably hates racist comedian Frankie Boyle almost as much as I do
The Independent
Cons:
- was a pretty good newspaper as far as I know, is now no longer published
- neither are most of its sister publications I think
Pros:
- Its website is still around
The Daily Star
Cons:
- I refuse to call this a ‘newspaper’
- It literally just makes shit up and puts it on the covers
- It’s a sexist, racist, Islamophobic, gross mess
- Just…look at its headlines, and despair that people actually buy this
Pros:
- Nope
The Daily Mail
Cons:
- Where even to start
- Constantly outs or tries to out transgender people, this has led to someone’s actual death
- They kept Richard ‘Human Scum’ Littlejohn on their staff even after that: he’s also called the deaths of five women sex workers ‘no great loss’ and mocked the family of Mark Duggan
- And countless other things
- After the death of 90s pop star Stephen Gately, published an article insisting his homosexuality killed him
- Responsible for possibly the most disturbing, homophobic headline ever put to print
- Happily supported fascism in the 1930s and opposed Jewish refugees fleeing Germany coming to Britain
- EVEN THAT is just scratching the surface
Pros:
- If you were some sort of detective and the outcome of your case relied on knowing exactly what Kylie Jenner was wearing on the evening of 11th December 2015, then you’re in luck, because the Mail obsessively details young female celebrities and their choices of outfit
- Other than that, absolutely nothing.