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They have been like this for years sadly. The number of articles in the laughable 'Comment is Free' (Now 'Opinion') section has reduced dramatically in the last five years. And the number of those that are actually 'open for comment' is ludicrously low, or so it seems to me compared to five or six years ago.

This could, of course be because their crappy business model would not allow people to be paid for moderating comments. But I would incline more towards the fact that that there were more and more members of their loyal readership that disagreed strongly with the premises and the conclusions of various articles and the opinions of the columnists. Articles on immigration, Islam, terrorism and now gender ideology were either not open to comment, or closed down early or very heavily moderated. This is simply my observation as a former reader and commenter there.

I suppose that all newspapers have their agendas and directions, and each will be an echo chamber of its own values to a degree, but the G is supposed to be a left-leaning Liberal publication, and to silence the voices of intelligent and thoughtful readers expressing valid concerns on these particular subjects simply because those voices did not concur with the Gs own myopic vision and its own twisted, immature and adolescent version of liberalism, is a very poor show indeed. When its rosta of writers is led by truly great liberalist freethinkers such as Owen Jones, Nesrine Malik and Frankie fucking Boyle, whilst at the same time casting aside true liberals like Suzanne Moore, then I despair of it, and I want nothing to do with it.

The Guardian doesn't like healthy, reasonable disagreement.

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May 3, 2021Liked by mole at the counter

If Sian lets us know what she said l’ll post the same comment and post on twitter and ask the question there.

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May 3, 2021Liked by mole at the counter

They’ve closed the comments now. Absolute cowards.

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May 3, 2021Liked by mole at the counter

I see they've clarified their description of Graham now:

"This article was amended on 2 and 3 May 2021. An earlier version erroneously stated that Glenn Greenwald had received an advance from Substack. It was further amended to set out Twitter’s statement of its reason for banning Linehan from the platform."

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May 3, 2021Liked by mole at the counter

Cowards, the lot of them!

Unfortunately archiving only preserves the "Guardian Pick" comment at that time:

https://archive.is/9vh5H

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"If you act with maturity and consideration for other users, you should have no problems". That's their summary of 'community standards'.

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No it isn't just the right-wing papers. I've been saying that for years. Yes, the right-wing rags for full of shite but I've always thought they received far too much critiquing when the whole profession is in the sewer with them.

Good to see I'm finally seeing some vindication. Ditto Trump and Biden across the pond.

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