Former Guardian editor and media standards bloviator Alan Rusbridger has been spending his time appearing in broadcast studios and writing articles on his special investigation into GB News. He claims that the channel is “driving a coach and horses through the laws that were put in place to define broadcasting in the UK” and that Ofcom has “more or less given up the ghost”…
Rusbridger seems to have forgotten his own record on media accountability. In 2020 he was appointed to the Irish’s government “Future of Media” commission, which was tasked with upholding journalistic standards. One year later Rusbridger was was forced to resign from it over a piece that Guardian columnist Roy Greenslade had written in 2014 – while Rusbridger was editor…
Greenslade wrote a piece stating that the BBC had been “too willing to accept” a statement from Máiría Cahill, a former Labour Senator, that she was raped by an alleged member of the IRA when she was 16. Rusbridger reportedly said he knew at the time that Greenslade was a supporter of Sinn Fein. In 2021, the issue resurfaced when Greenslade admitted to being “in complete agreement about the right of the Irish people to engage in armed struggle.” Even the Guardian’s “readers editor” said Greenslade “ought to have been open about his position,” and Rusbridger’s successor Katherine Viner said it “was not handled appropriately.“ Something something glass houses…
Speaking on Times Radio, former Home Secretary David Blunkett spoke about overdiagnosis of mental problems:
“Let’s distinguish those who are really severely mentally ill, diagnosed with things that require prolonged medical and diagnostic treatment. My wife and I talk about this a lot, because she’s a retired GP, about the fact that you can be sad without being ill. You can be momentarily depressed because your boyfriend or girlfriend’s just thrown you and you’re not mentally ill. You can even have mild issues, which can be dealt with with the right kind of support, but it doesn’t make you mentally ill. So we’ve got a real task, I think, to get the psychology, if you like, of this over. But there are things where you definitely need medical intervention, and there are other things where you need good friends, you need good connectivity, and you need a job.”