Curious and curiouser

Sometimes you come across something in the world that stops you in your tracks and makes you wonder. I experienced an example this morning when perusing the website of The Guardian newspaper.

In principle we’re all in favour of the freedom – and indeed the diversity – of the press. It must be healthy that every form of political viewpoint is given a chance to be broadcast to the masses.

In Britain, of course, the intellectual elite continually bemoan the fact that – through rampant capitalism taken to the extreme – the battalions of the centre-right and worse (step forward the Daily Mail and the Murdoch media empire) appear to dominate our media outlets, pumping out thinly-disguised propaganda 24 hours per day.

Those in command of the commercial group that owns The Guardian and The Observer stand – for many in the centre and to the left of it – as an oasis of sanity in putting out views and opinions that go some way to redress the balance. As I type these words I have to confess I cannot recall the details, but I believe that somewhere alone the line the owners of The Guardian and The Observer were revealed to have benefited from offshore trusts – or shall we say careful tax planning? – i.e. just the sort of practice that they and others delight in exposing when employed by others who inhabit a different point on the spectrum of political opinion.

Ah well, you might think, it’s purely a case of what’s sauce for the goose also being sauce for the gander – and what’s wrong with that?

Then I spotted this ‘call to arms’ in a piece on the website of The Guardian by Katharine Viner, Editor-in-Chief, Guardian News And Media – a somewhat strange appeal for a commercial media organisation (especially one that isn’t in immediate financial crisis, if what I read is true) to make of its readers, I would have thought – see here – THE GUARDIAN