The Guardian is The Daily Mail for people who think they’re better than Daily Mail readers.
A good example is the closely comparable approach to reporting on the Bilderberg Conference, adopted by both of these organs. The Bilderberg Conference is a get together for politicians, business leaders and journalists, which has become an obsessive focus of David Icke acolytes, 9/11 Conspiracy Theorists and “opponents of the New World Order”. This year, both the Guardian and the Daily Mail have given the subject extensive and, to be frank, pretty conspiracist reporting.
Here’s a sample from the Daily Mail, which focuses on the analysis of the far Right US shock jock, Alex Jones, and one of his biggest UK fans, the loopy former Labour shadow cabinet member, Michael Meacher:
Alex Jones, the U.S. television personality and Bilderberg researcher, said: ‘It is very, very sinister.
‘Not everybody who goes to Bilderberg, from my research, is a scoundrel or a villain.
‘But there are definitely villains who are there who are basically trying to organise government and business.’
Judd Charlton, a ventriloquist from Camden in north London, said: ‘We are basically here to bring down the parasites who are drug dealers and bank collapses who seem to want to destroy this world.’
Meacher entered the realm of conspiracy theorism some time ago.
The Guardian, similarly, has been running article after article by Charlie Skelton, a comedian and vicar’s son who once made an “ethical porn film” with Victoria Coren (both in a directing, not an acting role) for a moderately interesting book. Skelton was at the centre of a huge fuss within The Guardian, when he was last commissioned to write his loopy articles. I understand that, in the wake of the publication of his last piece, which suggested some sort of conspiracy about Syria, there was a summit within The Guardian where actual reporters with a knowledge of the region called on Alan Rusbridger to get a grip on the nuttiness being commissioned by Becky Gardiner and her main ally, Seaumus Milne. Rusbridger promised that he would do so: Gardinder and Milne reportedly smirked through the meeting.
Well, here we are. A convergence between the far Left and the far Right, again. Who’d have thunk it?
