Tag Archives: katharine viner

Michael Meadowcroft

The Guardian losing Liberal readers

By Michael Meadowcroft | Thu 1st October 2020 - 10:14 am


Many Liberals have abandoned The Guardian in recent years mainly because of its increasing Labour bias. Part of this is the party’s own fault by not being sufficiently intellectually rigorous but that is, of course, self-fulfilling – a lack of media coverage leads to a more enfeebled Liberal politics.

My aim in pressuring the current editor, Katharine Viner, is to make the paper more pluralistic, not least because it would a shame to abandon the only national paper that does not have a proprietor, and one which I have read just about every day since 19 October 1960 – the day after the News Chronicle died.

The paper gives us a weekly dose of socialism from Owen Jones, regular pro-Labour columns from Polly Toynbee and even the saintly and ever recyclable George Monbiot cites his support for Labour. But there are no contributions from recognisable Liberals. In the face of this why should Liberals buy the paper? I certainly do not object to these columns, indeed, I am committed to pluralism, but I want to see a more balanced coverage from a newspaper that boasts about its place on the progressive wing of politics.

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