Culture

Rafael Behr is yet another well-connected writer for the Guardian. He has a regular writing gig there, having previously been online editor, and also writes a personal typepad blog.

His employer, The Guardian, is having a spot of bother right now related to the nepotism around Max Gogarty’s travel blog (see below). and Rafael decided to insert himself, whether prompted or unprompted I don’t know, into the furore by attacking commenters to the orginal blogpost as a baying mob, as bad as or worse than during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

Yes, really, and yes, he’s a professional, paid writer.

But he also admits to trolling Guardian commenters with his personal post defending Gogarty: but he now says didn’t really mean it, that it was just a convenient topic to hang a saleable article on – how cynical is that – then he goes on to apologise for offending anyone . And shuts down comments.

Whiny ass titty baby.

This is the comment I would have posted at his blog had Rafo, as he apparently likes to be known, not been such a whiny-ass titty baby as to be too scared to take feedback.

Dear Rafael: what you seem to be saying is that you deliberately jumped into an inflamed situation to pour fuel on the flames – not because you were at all engaged with the discussion, but because you wanted to make a point and cleverly earn a fee while doing it.

I’ve read every one of the nearing a thousand CIF comments and they’re not at all as you describe; I’ve seen a lot of hilariously witty bitchery but very little actual abuse, certainly nothing to compare with what any other young Harry or Josh might hear from their mates in the pub.

Your CIF post was a deliberate misrepresentation of what was being said (something you aknowledge in this post) and made matters worse.

Now I’ve only been blogging and commenting five years or so; I’m not a real writer, unlike you or young Max, but where I come from that’s called trolling and it’s very bad manners, doubly so from someone who professes to love him some blogging.

What was actually being discussed boils down to:

• The shoddy and nepotistic hiring practices of a self-described ethical and fair newspaper and its staff’s overcosy relationship with PR agents.
• The overall decline of the quality of the papers’ opinion pieces and blogs and CIF writing generally, which is seemingly now narrowcast to a well-off coterie of metropolitans who happen to know someone who knows someone.
• The utter hypocrisy of providing an online comment facility and then squealing like an outraged maiden aunt when people actually comment.
• The stupidity of compounding all the above errors by attacking readers in the paper and on television.

What I think you and the current editorial staff and writers at the Guardian/Observer (they’re pretty much the same in the public eye; the Observer is the Sunday edition of The Guardian) fail to get is the visceral connection some readers have with the paper, or the sense of betrayal we feel at the blatant exposure of its inner workings.

We love The Guardian – or rather we did. It was our parents’ and grandparents’ newspaper; it stood for truth and social justice and all that is now quaint and outmoded. At least that’s what we were told then, although mature reflection and a little reading shows that was never entirely true. Still, it was a a noble aim even if it fell woefully short of its target at times.

But now? Now the Scott Trust and it’s editorial staff aren’t even trying. Truth, liberty and social justice may be still occasionally be paid lip service to in its columns, but they’re certainly not in it’s practice.

Both papers have degenerated in my lifetime into little more than self-referential lifestyle mags, padded with puff pieces penned by PR agents or trite text extolling the joys of the latest lifestyle fad or fashionable paranoia or designer bag, lifted straight from a press release and all of it gilded with lucury brand ads and a few pensees from the friends and family of London’s politicoliterati. (I exaggerate for effect, but not by much.)

But hey, it’s a globalised, media-savvy world and everyone understands how journalism actually works, nod nod, wink wink. We all get it, don’t we?

Well actually, no we don’t and we’re sick of it.

It appears to me to be this blithe acceptance of New Labour’s relaxed attitude to wealth, privilege and the status quo that has rankled so many; that and both papers’ continued promotion of well-off, well-connected nobodies who aspire to tell us feckless, idle proles what to think, as though being born bourgeois is the new divine right of kings.

This in a week which has not only seen several political nepotism scandals but also the publication of Nick Davies’ expose of the inherent corruption of British journalism.

Readers were already angry at the media: dear, sweet, young, disingenuous Max’ execrable blogpost was merely the spark to some bone-dry tinder.

Because the Guardian and Observer have been the only online newspapers in which some of us jaded cynics have retained a modicum of trust (despite Aaronovitch’s war-cheerleading, Polly Toynbee’s nosepeg and Jackie Ashley’s increasingly painful moral contortions in support of Labour) we’ve even stayed loyal when Labour ministers have been given column inches to publish ghostwritten lies and egregious spin.

But try complaining about the poor quality and shoddy commissioning of a trivial travel article – for this we stupidly loyal readers are accused of being a baying mob of jealous wannabes. Silly us for thinking a comment facility meant that some honest feedback was wanted or needed : as with New Labour government, comment and consulation is for show only. The Guardian/Observer, being as it is effectively an adjunct to and labour exchange for the government, has become in the last decade as thoroughly corrupted as every other British institution.

Max’ original blog is almost irrelevant now, except as a the spark that ignited a small blaze of public comment: though I suppose it has also had the useful side-effect of labelling skinny jeans as irredeemably naff, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.

A couple of years ago The Washington Post had its own issues with commenters pointing out its hypocrisy and the readers editor, Deborah Howell, handled it about as badly as it could possibly be handled, thus damaging the paper’s remaining reputation still further.

The Guardian seems to have learned nothing from that: perhaps it could use Howell at the next awayday as a case study of what not to do? Similarly they could also use your CIF post as a warning –

• Don’t treat your CIF readers like idiots, because they’re mostly not.
• Don’t troll in one forum and then admit it on your own personal blog – it just makes you look like a hypocrite.

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