Abstract
In this series of 15 essays, journalists and academics offer their unauthorized biography of the Guardian, Britain’s leading left-of-center newspaper, as it begins its third century of publication. Their perspectives encompass a bit of history and a bit of insider dish, though most contributors seize the opportunity to critique the paper for not being nearly as radical as they would like: for being more reformist than revolutionary, capitalism’s “conscience” but not its challenger.
They are particularly aggrieved over what they see as the Guardian’s editorial antagonism toward former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, a sore point raised as early as the second page of the introduction and revisited in a majority of the chapters that follow. Is the Guardian insufficiently militant in voicing concerns of the transgender community? Blame its failure to embrace Corbynism, which “set the scene for an anxious intensification of centrist feminism” in the opinion pages (p. 139). Did the Guardian enter into an agreement with national security mandarins following the dust-up over its publication of Edward Snowden’s revelations? What better way to ingratiate itself with the “Establishment” than to emphasize Corbyn’s alleged anti-Semitism while downplaying the Conservative Party’s “much more serious problem with Islamophobia” (p. 163)? The Guardian’s opposition to Brexit? Driven by its alliance with parliamentary Labour moderates “implacably opposed to Jeremy Corbyn and intent on mobilising Brexit as a wedge issue” (p. 256).
These and similar charges may well have merit, though the evidence, when offered, tends to be subjective and selective. But for a book whose subtitle is “200 years of the Guardian,” all this is surely putting far too much weight on coverage of a single divisive politician who served as opposition leader for fewer than 5 years before being ousted in April 2020. The focus on internecine Labour Party wars of the late 2010s seems destined to make the essays quickly outdated. Moreover, it significantly weakens the appeal of the book for anyone outside the United Kingdom (and indeed outside far-left political circles within the United Kingdom). The Guardian is a global news brand, with roughly two thirds of its 3.5 million digital readers living in other countries, yet even chapters focused on international concerns such as coverage of Latin America put a Corbyn spin on their arguments.
More broadly, readers would need to understand rather a lot about the political culture, social and economic history, and media ecology of Britain—especially but not exclusively in the late 20th and early 21st centuries—to assess the arguments put forward. Even with a bit of knowledge, the litany of injustices perceived (and, in the writers’ framing, insufficiently addressed if not actively promulgated by the Guardian) is ultimately exhausting. The volume’s appeal, I imagine, will be mostly to angry intellectual elites on the far left of the political spectrum, whatever they may be angry about.
That’s a shame because several excellent contributions deserve a wider audience. The essay from the ever-insightful Gary Younge, until recently the paper’s editor-at-large, is thought-provoking and well-supported from his own newsroom observations and experiences. Similarly, contributions from the former editor of Third World Review, a now-defunct section of the Guardian devoted to foregrounding voices from the Global South, and from academics Des Freedman and Hannah Hamad on the paper’s founding in the early 19th century and its groundbreaking experiments with “women’s pages” 150 years later, respectively, provide fascinating origin narratives. A contribution from Hamad’s Cardiff University colleague, Mike Berry, on coverage of the 2008 economic crisis and its aftermath offers an admirably clear and engaging depiction of a complex issue and the multifaceted coverage and commentary around it.
I am, I confess, a “Guardianista”: a member, subscriber and regular reader both in print and online. I suspect the contributors of this volume are at least regular readers, as well. Indeed, their sense of injustice seems to convey above all a feeling of betrayal: that “their” newspaper, the closest thing Britain has to a voice from the left with any meaningful clout, fails to deliver the radical response they feel is needed to address the real and significant societal problems they raise. It’s a fair point, but it would be stronger if any reasons were offered why the Guardian should, in fact, take a more overtly activist stance. It is, after all, a mainstream news outlet, serving millions of readers not only in the United Kingdom but also around the world with a mix of news, opinion, consumer information, lifestyle stories and the myriad other bits that satisfy its audience and enable it to stay in business, employ its journalists and continue to perform its important social role. Why would a lurch to the far left be desirable—journalistically, financially or even morally? In the end, I found the volume frequently provocative and occasionally informative, but largely unsatisfying. Most of the authors are far better at conveying outrage than at suggesting what, exactly, the Guardian should do instead or why its writers and editors should do it.