Sitemap - 2020 - Conquest of the Useless

Hipster analysis with Ayesha Hazarika: Politics is a game to pundits who never have to take the pain

The BBC’s Celebrity: A 21st-Century Story is really the continuing tale of tabloid exploitation

"Webb & Marr are... The Untouchables": BBC journalists must be impartial unless they're famous and right-wing

"Never mind the Brexit details, look at this Boris Baby!" The Mail goes into propagandistic overdrive to prop up its Prime Minister

In 2021, the British media, high on nostalgia for the death penalty and hopes of turning the UK into the prison island of their dreams, will be even more deranged...

Jingle bellend: The festive f*ckery of Harry Cole, The Sun’s chief propagandist and Brexit bullshitter.

A White Royal Christmas: The Daily Mail makes excuses for William and Kate over Covid... I wonder why?

Dumb, dumb, dumb it's the sound of Dan Hodges’ gun

The Toby Young Memorial Prize* for Media Egotism: Amol Rajan's self-judged, self-created award secures him the crown

Quick! Tip-off The Sun — an ageing health tourist immigrant skipped the vaccine queue. His name? R. Murdoch

Trust in the media enters Tier 4: Newspapers played a big role in the ‘cancelled’ Christmas

The Big Ones Get Paid: Lionel Barber's budget-busting final paypacket from the FT says a lot about media inequality

Sucking up to the super-rich: The Times' Iain Martin doesn't love charity, he just hates taxes

Future passive: BBC News' "balance" is so demented that it keeps falling on its face

Tom Cruise is a religious extremist and The Sun is swallowing Scientology’s spin

Racism is LBC's not-so-secret ingredient and it's no surprise that Sir Keir Starmer swallowed it

The hate of the 'hip' gunslinger: Julie Burchill's islamophobia is nothing new

A 'free' press? Three families control 68% of the British media but nobody tells journalists what to say, you see...

“How do I know what Boris is thinking? I asked my wife...” British political journalists and the politicians they report on play out a corrupt soap opera

"And now... the news on Netflix." Ofcom is dancing to the government's terrible tune and it's a bum note for the BBC

"For more hate, turn to page 8." The UK's top newspaper editors vote to retain the privilege to print prejudice

Hiding behind a headline: Telegraph journalist conveniently spins court claims against Prince Andrew's accuser

Kay Burley's Covid cock-up isn't surprising: British journalism has a 'do as I say, not as I do' problem

Cock and total balls! Mary Whitehouse still lives in British newspapers

Not even a little respect: The Times is a racist endeavour and it keeps getting away with it

“What big teeth you have, grandma!” ITV News boss claims Britain won’t get its own Fox News... and waits to be eaten.

The hereditary Hitchens, the dynastic Dimblebys and the continuous Corens: Media nepotism knows no end...

The Eton 'scandal': Columnists desperately defend the right to be a tendentious prick

Scotch Egg-ageddon: The new sideshow from the banal British media that brought you Bacon Sandwichgate

The Moon Over Bullshit: How a column about pubs explains the British media's disconnection

"I've got some terrible news about the Flintstones..." Oliver Dowden and The Daily Mail have lost their minds over The Crown

A short history of wankers: As a Times obituary celebrates a drunken, misogynist 'icon', Giles Coren keeps up the tradition...

Pure nonce sense: Much of the British media is lucky it's not on a register...

Laurence Fox set up a BBC reporter for abuse and BBC News should take action but it won't.

"You can't sit with us!" While Emma Barnett 'impartially' sneers on BBC 5Live, Allison Pearson is still Britain's worst columnist

'Journalism isn't a profession, it's a trade!" Why journalists love this excuse about our 'craft'.

Rupert Murdoch's under fire in Australia but chicken shit British politicians won't take him on

“Hey! Remember Unions?!” The media is addicted to junk history.

Why the BBC broadcast a gag about bombing Corbyn supporters at Glastonbury that would get you or I banned on Twitter

Priti Patel is a bully. She should become a journalist, she’d fit right in.

“You scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy... columnist.” The Christmas culture war comes around earlier every year.

'Darren Grimes: Political Commentator': Just because an alleycat is loud doesn't mean it's a lion

A golden dawn for bullsh*t: The BBC let The Spectator's Fraser Nelson gaslight its audience

The media's angry that The Crown isn't accurate. Since when was The Daily Mail bothered about accuracy?

The circling wagons: How the media helps its pals and hurls shite at its ‘enemies’

“And then Boris said...” Westminster reporters are just gossip merchants with pretensions.

An exotic display for the court: Making sense of the Marina Hyde fandom

“It didn’t do me any harm!” Too many chicken-shit journalists think abusive newsrooms are character building

Chicken's out! Lee Cain's gone but Boris Johnson's new Director of Communications wrote the Daily Mail's 'Enemies of the People' front page...

Oliver Dowden, the Culture Secretary is a barely useful idiot and he is trying to destroy the BBC

Cash for conspiracies: talkRADIO has learned from the Infowars playbook

It's 25 years since 'Common People' and the broadsheet newspapers are *still* playing at being poor

Columnists are delighted that politics will be boring again? Trump was just a game to them.

I'm glad Owen Jones is starting his own thing. A lot of us have been at this for a while now...

Bannon’s in the basement mixing up bad medicine, I’m on the pavement angry about CNN...

Charles Moore batters the BBC and Allison Pearson pushes conspiracy theories: The Telegraph's Planet Normal podcast is anything but...

Too close to call... but the media result is clear: It’s a hold for the rubes.

The Sun doesn’t care about justice, it cares about gossip and winning

Fascists don’t always turn up wearing uniforms and sieg heiling — why doesn’t the BBC understand that?

Another lockdown? But that’s ‘unpossible’, say the supine British newspapers

‘Exclusive’ The Times’ continued lickspittle repetition of government gossip during a pandemic is a disgrace

I’m delighted that the BBC demands staff don’t “virtue signal” — they can now cancel Comic Relief

No, Woolworths isn’t returning and neither is a healthy UK press

No, Times columnists, I don’t have a chip on my shoulder, it’s a whole shop — fryer, jars of pickled eggs, and all the rest...

The crucifixion of Frank Bough, or Why tabloid hacks never ever take cocaine or cheat...

IPSO? F*ck no! The UK's biggest press regulator is so toothless it needs its food mashed up

“Call these people scum but not those people...” The Mail on Sunday’s Dan Hodges puts the ‘idiot’ into ‘useful idiot’

Admiring The Daily Mail for its ruthlessness is like praising Satan for saving money on his energy bills

A Times columnist, the decline in deference, and why he can go f*ck himself

You will also go on the list: Why the British press is obsessed with World War II

Here are my biases: I hate liars, charlatans and w*nkers.

By gaslight glow, Tom Newton Dunn and Laura Kuenssberg convince themselves they’re the goodies...

“Erm, where are the sub-editors?” The particular tediousness of hacks complaining about journalism in TV dramas

"Hurrah for the Black Sharts..." Why I'm taking Laurence Fox's resistible rise seriously

The British media is a drug and every day is a bad trip

George Osborne: New BBC Chairman? Sure! Now appoint Dick Dastardly to run the traffic cops

Columnist? Government computer says, ‘Retrain as a foreman in the dog whistle factory...’

Brown source: Why British political journalists are so full of sh*t about government briefings

Ladies and gentlemen, he’s floating in disgrace: The secret of Toby Young’s decades long grift

Careers advice for school bullies: Get a newspaper column and do talk radio

At the chart of all the corruption: The Conservative Party/Spiked coalition explained

"I wanted to die, so buy my book!" The media needs to stop using mental health as marketing

Who breaks a shithead upon a wheel? In extremely reluctant defence of Darren Grimes

Of course the Prime Minister’s new TV spokesperson despises the poor... it was in the job description

“The Russians done it!” Journalists obsessed over Cambridge Analytica because the real reasons for Brexit terrified them

One long subtweet: My nemesis in journalism not named but certainly shamed

It’s not a ‘glitch’: Journalism’s euphemism addiction will never end

Mosley with a stylist: The resistible rise of Laurence Fox

What the British media has in common with Bernie Madoff

F*ck civility: Politeness is a cosh and in the media, it's a prison

How to fail in the media and how I’ve failed...

Heavy manners and transparent threats: How lawyers try to stifle journalism

The Rorschach of Boris Johnson: How the British media paints a bizarro-version of the Prime Minister

What is journalism? A thing with feathers, gills and a c*ck that f*cks reality...

Bring me the head of Roberto Peston: Client journalism is destroying what’s left of democracy

Simon Heffer is Beaker or Why most right-wing columnists had youths as left-wing firebrands

Students trapped in pay-for-plague rental prisons, Charles Moore seizing the BBC and Paul Dacre taking over Ofcom — welcome to Prison Ship Britain.

Gogglebox is better at Westminster analysis than every political journalist in Britain.

Journalism is poorer without Sir Harry Evans and Parliament is poorer without Dennis Skinner

Misery Mummy: Allison Pearson shows how columnists assume we are all as dysfunctional and desperate as them

“Well I’m just a simple honest multi-millionaire...” What one deceptive BBC interview tells you about privilege and the press

"I'm sending for Germaine Greer..." The death of the public media feud reveals how broken things are

"So, apparently, Boris Johnson has a super-injunction." Media conspiracies aren't usually about big lies. It's about small omissions

Journalists on safari: The North is a foreign country, they do things differently there

Kay Burley’s plea for Matt Hancock shows one thing — the UK media is far too cosy

The resurrection of Johann Hari proves that 'cancellation' is bullsh*t

The right-wing outrage machine: From Grimes to Guido to getting in the papers to BBC News...

BBC wage rows are a right-wing distraction. Stop falling for it.

F*ck it off: 'Civility' will not change politics or the media

The sins of the father, the emails of the daughter and the future of Woman's Hour...

You can't fool me, Janice: The British press' biggest bullies love to pretend they're the victims

Complimenting The Daily Mail on its sales is like admiring the SS for their commitment to sharp tailoring

Three things to fix the British media: The draft, a term limit for columnists, and a scheme to bring new older writers into the trade

Why I became a journalist aka I really wanted to be in Press Gang

The BBC *is* delusional to throw Katya Adler and Emily Maitlis under the bus in service of appeasing arseholes

But seriously... 13 things I'd do if I had the tits to be Boris Johnson's new press spokesperson

Hot source: How journalists should handle sources and how some actually do...

I was a twenty-something f*ckwit: Continuing confessions of a former comment drone

'Behold the honourable northern Hobbit!' How the British press treats reporting on the working class like an ugly safari

The UK does not have a free press but people working for it can never admit that

Bad Apple: Tim Davie is the BBC’s John Sculley. It will need a Steve Jobs when he’s done.

A fascist in a hurry: The continuing horror of Douglas Murray

Sus...sus...so stupido: The fall of Philip Collins (formerly of The Times) shows the perils of being a fig leaf

Di On A Rope: The press and princess propaganda

Agent Matt Chorley in... The Catastrophic Corbyn Conundrum

What will the British Fox News look like? Nigel Farage smirking in your face forever

Weekend digest: Bad things from The Sunday Times + 5 good articles to make it better

That’s how we keep the gate: Why independent writers don't need journalism's establishment anymore...

Andrew Sullivan: The 'polite' fascist is a fascist nonetheless.

Fast fingers and a bigmouth: The journalistic confessions of a man who can't do anything else

The books behind Boris Johnson and the UK's media bullsh*t obsession with symbols

The undead James O'Brien or Why shame is not a profitable quality in the UK media

Land of dopes and culture warring: Is Dan Wootton the world's biggest Land of Hope & Glory fan?

Sabermetrics for the media: How I’d recruit a team of columnists and reporters that would out-perform every national newspaper.

Oat in the cold: How The Sunday Times published political anti-fan fiction about Jeremy Corbyn

Botox and bullsh*t: Two columnists and one kind of contempt for you — the reader

🎵 You're just a jealous guy.... oh yeah... 🎵 : The number 1 crack that columnists and their fans love to throw at critics

"That's* what a president looks like..." Political journalists love drone strikes if the person ordering them is polite

"What about personal responsibility?" BBC News, the devil's advocate, and a question beyond contempt

Eating the Dead Cat: Effective media analysis ignores the distractions and focuses on the power

Orwell and not good: By George! Most of the British media has only read two Orwell novels...

Single shite Mail: Keir Starmer’s ❤️ affair with the Daily Mail

In the air, he's sh*te: The Times and the defenestration of Philip Collins

'A lie ain't a side of the story, it's just a lie...' The Wire taught us what happens when the media lays down to die

To the class of 2020... don’t buy The Sun, scream

Oxbridge w*nkers have ruined the media like they ruin everything else

Apple has been Big Brother for a long time. Epic has the smarts to fight back in the courts *and* the court of public opinion

Jake Paul and India Knight: Two faces of modern media's ugly decadence

Too soon: Sumner Redstone was a complete bastard

Cluck cluck squawk! The future of media should be independents but it'll actually be chickenization

Twilight of the gods: Former-NME editor Conor McNicholas on a bygone rock era

Sink the BBC boat: Breakfast chasing migrants was fascist TV

If Niall Ferguson’s TikTok column was a person, it would be certifiable

Eugenics if you want to: Columnists think they can question anyone's right to live

Dead wronged: When the media ignores the rules on reporting about suicide

The BBC fell into a Tory trap and the newspapers are happy to see it squirm

BONUS issue: The Athletic works, so why not replicate it for celebrity, fandom and entertainment coverage?

If BBC News reported on Rupert Murdoch’s companies like they report on it

Time out for Tony Elliott: Why new magazines are still possible but old bastards ruin it.

The Prince and the Paedo: Royal correspondent is the most pathetic job in British media

"I can do this all day." Why I won't be threatened by presenters from TalkRadio aka School Bully FM

How to get head in the advertising industry: An insider spills McDonald's secrets and more

Boom time for the grievance artists: The media’s liars are drowning in loot

Me? I'm Mr Clean: Why James Murdoch can never really wash his hands of News Corp

Everybody be cool, this is a snobbery: Why Graydon Carter was and is the most dangerous man in media

The Fraser Nelson strategy: How to help the far right while sounding 'just' right...

Meghan Markle and media misogynoir: How the UK media perpetuates colonial narratives

Don't look at the man behind the curtain: Why think-tanks don't want you to think very much...

Who breaks a buttered fry on a wheel? Annunziata Rees-Mogg and the politics of bullsh*t

Wiley guy? Nope, he's an antisemite...

BONUS: The silly mystery of Eaves Wilder

The weird history of the cow site: Why Unherd shouldn't be seen as 'respectable'.

Long time coming: Camilla Long vs. Twitter

Boring bastards won't beat Dominic Cummings

Caitlin Moran: The making of a myth

Imagine: Trump loses but won’t leave...

The Moral Maze should be dismantled and its minotaurs put out to pasture

British media and press nepotism: The hereditary principle for hacks is a disease

Conspiracy theories that the UK media accepts

GNU to Q: When a great magazine dies

The Dimbleby dynasty: This is what feudalism looks like

Blocked by Spiked: My challenge to cowardly pub bore Brendan O’Neill

The Truman Show has been a lockdown hit because modern media means we are all living it

I hate The Beatles: The problem with smart arses and 'cool guys'/'cool girls' in the media

Weak for the weeklies: Columnists and their fans

Do you know Larry Flynt? Laurence Fox is not a free speech martyr

Bonus issue: Media bloodbaths and why we hacks shouldn't beg for sympathy

The Rise of the Murdochs is a crime drama: Anatomy of an evil empire.

Ex-NYT opinion writer Bari Weiss is a martyr to her own bullsh*t

In Denial: Genocide denial, why Spiked shouldn't exist and why Jacobin cannot stand

Analysing the forehead: What does Brendan O'Neill actually say he believes...

“Do as I say, don’t look at what I do...’ Britain’s columnist kleptocracy

If we reported on the United States like we do other unstable countries

Jada brings herself to the table. Will brings the support. And the press brings the judgement.

The podfather and pandemic politics: A conversation with futurist Ben Hammersley (Part 1)

They shoot Ewoks, don't they? David Aaronovitch calls for regime change on Endor

KanYeah or KanNay? Will Kanye West ever be President? (with Joe Twyman of Deltapoll)

The problem with Stig

Who is new Today Programme editor Owenna Griffiths and will BBC Radio 4 let her fix the show?

That Harper's letter on free speech annotated

The Burning Bridges letters: Dylan Jones makes my teeth ache

The Chancellor and the mugs (in the Lobby)

“Gene Kelly dancing, projected in light, is as purely great as cinema can be.” The Useless interviews #2: Telegraph film critic Robbie Collin

Guido Fawkes is like a media protection racket...

Polite and patronising: The weapons of the British shock jock. Just ask James O'Brien

Why Tony Blair's forever war on Media Studies is still important

Focus on the banter, don't mention the unpleasantness: Reviewing the Amber Rudd & Flora Gill show on Times Radio

Bad Bad Bad Bad Barbara Ellen: The Bad Take Machine S**** The Bed Over Ghislaine Maxwell

The rising of a dark star: Why Boris Johnson’s new TV spokesperson will be a dangerous character

Who is Darren Grimes? Not even he knows

Has Vice got people killed? And can BBC News call Nigel Farage 'far-right'? A TV insider on the dangerous and ridiculous world of British documentary making

Sex sells! Or why British journalists are prudes in print and pervs in pubs

Bonus issue: Death of the disco dancers -- How music magazines were killed by b*******

The BBC is too polite by design and Piers Morgan is right to pick a fight

“Is Britain a democratic country? That’s what this is all about.” The Useless Interviews #1: Matt Zarb-Cousin, political strategist and social campaigner

They walk among us: the abusers and harassers in the media and journalism

Times Radio day one

Sign O The Times Radio: Breakfast show review

Masters of deception: What happens when journalists plagiarise and lie

Shane Dawson, blackface, and why YouTube reporters are whack

How to write a column about the ‘woke’ ‘intolerant left’

On the matter of pseudonymity and anonymity: A brief update with Slate Star Codex's Scott Alexander

What does the witness say...?

Keir & Loathing: The sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey and The Independent's idiocy

The Bad Attitude Era: Why the UK political media is like professional wrestling

The cosiness conspiracy: How the British media makes awful people into national treasures 

Love on the doxx: SlateStarCodex and the right to be anonymous

The troll pipeline: How ‘mainstream’ UK media figures use anonymous right-wing sources

I have a child! Of course, I should be Education Secretary

The biggest privilege that columnists have? The right to get away with being stupid

What is Brendan O'Neill?

The first rule of media fight club: Keep saying 'no one tells me what to say' as if that's really true

The Insiders: Sky News

The shit? You eat it: Why you -- the reader -- should take some blame for bad journalism

Why I hate Quentin Letts

How being a columnist works

The media is f*cked