Mockney. read what I am saying. I don't give a shit at the content of a medias coverage. They are ALL biased towards their beliefs one way or the other. What you read is mostly about your own political views. its the same as voting. I mean how many people will vote for what is best for the country. not many. Most votes will come from their political upbringings. not many people will ever change their political views and vote for a party that will benefit the country.
I still don't see what the Guardian is the worst at though bob? Which is what you said. I agree that a lot of people vote in their self interest, but if that was overwhelmingly the case then voting patterns would never change. People vote on a number of issues, what will benefit them being only one, even if a biggie. I'm sure the BNP's manifesto would benefit a large number of white British people, but they're not voted for for a mich wider range of issues. Namely their entire ideology.
Moreover the press, and news reporting in general play a huge role in highlighting what policies from which parties will be detrimental or beneficial to whom, since most people don't read government legislation, party manifestos or the ilk direct from the source. Due to this, papers with the highest circulation have the greatest influence on the public voting.
The tabloids are by far the worst at cherry picking what it's readership will be disposed to, and ignoring everything else. Whereas the broadsheets report the news primarily, and their own ideological bent in a far less intrusive way.
Not to mention that people with a greater knowledge and interest of the World at large are less likely to vote exclusively for their own benefit than people who read nothing but domestic or parochial news.
Again, to this end, I cannot possibly see how the Guardian can be the worst at anything. If your political bent is to the right, then you're obviously going to see any left wing bent as more bias than yours (and vice versa) and since the Guardian is the most famous example of a left leaning newspaper, it becomes short hand for that belief. But then that completely ignores that it's virtually the only prominent left leaning paper sold to a respectable level in Britain (in a sea of right leaning, or reactionary ones) it's incredibly low circulation in comparison to the right leaning brand leaders (and thus it's potentially damaging sphere of influence) and it's merit as a much better news source (regardless of bias) compared to them.
At least those who read it might accidentally get a greater sense of perspective of their problems in the grand scheme of world affairs, as opposed to people fed nothing but a drip drip of immigration scare stories and pictures of women with celulite.
Fwiw, I've probably spent the bulk of my paper reading life reading The Times. I'm not amazingly sure why though.
I wasn't excusing them. I guess I was playing semantics a little by saying that the tabloids were more ignorant than biased. You said it above, The Guardian/Telegraph are biased, but at least they attempt to report the news; whereas tabloids are 'primarily [full of] human interest stories intended to rile it's demographics.' That's no different to what was in the post above yours.
There is a very good reason why tabloids sell more than the broadsheets: they generally give people what they want. Sure, the Mail and the Express are racist, homophobic scaremongering machines, but a substantial section of the British population is sympathetic to those views, both left and right; hence the high sales figures.
Ok. But I don't subscribe to the idea that they're just giving people what they want. There's certainly a degree of it (especially in the gossip bits) but there's also a large chicken and egg situation where they're giving the people what they're telling the people they want. No one wants everything they eat to give them cancer, or to fear for their jobs, but after years of priming them with scare stories, they help to create a prejudice, which they then feed.
There's a responsibility IMO for people with the ear of the populace to use it responsibly. With great power etc etc.
