The Trouble With … The Guardian (Postscript)

One week after the following:

‘[The Guardian] spends more time feuding with its two old enemies the Daily Express and Daily Mail – two former broadsheets which gave up the broadsheet ghost over half a century ago (unable to compete against the The Times and the Telegraph for journalism) and which The Guardian – in turn – will be obliged eventually to join.

Which may be sooner than they think.’

Anyone like this week’s Lotto numbers as well?

It means handing over the printing of the Grudiard to Trinity Mirror (the mouldering remains of Robert Maxwell’s greasy empire). No word from these guardians of the poor exploited proletariat on redundancies – that would really have been testing their ethical mettle too far.

Needless to say, the Daily Mail have wasted no time in rubbing salt into the Guardianistas’ wounded pretentions in their editorial today:

‘The Mail congratulates the Guardian on finally seeing the light and becoming a tabloid. True, it’s taken a long time and – through awesome business ineptitude – losses of hundreds of millions of pounds.

We sincerely hope that by joining the tabloid club, the paper might now begin to make financial sense, rather than depend on massive subsidy.

Just one bit of helpful advice. Commercially-viable tabloids – even mid-market ones like the Mail – rely on putting stories on their pages that actually interest people.’

Miaow!

The ‘massive subsidy’ The Mail is referring to is the so-called Scott Trust.

Set up originally in 1936 so the Guardian’s owner of the time could avoid paying death duties, it is now a limited company based in the tax-haven of the Cayman Islands to ‘accept’ donations to the Guardian Media Group (Guardian and Observer) from mainly rich benefactors in return for ensuring ‘favourable’ coverage – which amounts often to little more than a guarantee any negative stories about them which could prove damaging to their interests get ‘spiked’.

This allows the Guardian to enjoy all the business advantages from being sponsored by corporate capitalist pigs while maintaining the twin pretences of impartiality and not ‘selling out’ by running adverts from ‘unethical’ sources.

For example, The Guardian are no friends of Israel, yet they sacked Nafeez Ahmed for a piece exposing Israel’s continued interference in the Gaza Strip (part of the so-called ‘State of the Palestine National Authority’) due to its alarm at the discovery of natural gas reserves worth $3 billion off Gaza’s shores which if fully exploited would leave Israel with a very dangerous enemy on its boarders with plentiful revenues for all manner of mischief. The word was a certain international bank funding the Scott Trust whose clients are involved in the exploitation of said resources didn’t want the matter to come to wider public knowledge in case it interfered with ‘business’ (i.e. making money).

‘Don’t do as we do, do as we say’ – it’s the Guardian way.