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@ Nulla Sulla: the problem with the American press isn't that it is biased, it's the pretense that they aren't. It's not just the Guardian that has a specific political tone, there are conservative papers as well - the Telegraph or the Tory-graph as I like to call it is one instance of that. Selectively mocking the Guardian misses that point - and I'd argue that in fact it misses the value of openly biased newspapers.
The myth of "objective news" is that data without context is useful. For instance: an objective report about the strength of the dollar is that the dollar is worth less than it has been for some time. That doesn't answer the "so what?" question at all. And the answer to "so what" depends on whether you think it's more important to address trade flows or investment flows, or to leave them both alone, or what.
Leaving that discussion in the realm of a couple of paragraphs about "some people think X, some people think Y" doesn't do it. I'd rather be able to look at substantive coverage from a proper newspaper that has open biases and work out which version I find convincing.
This is not a mindless love letter to the British press - it certainly has its problems and since it's a genuinely competitive market on a national scale, one of them is the hyping of stories to shift copies even when there's not really that much of a story to be told. Openly siding with British criminal suspects to "stick it to Johnny Foreigner" - i.e. the McCann girl story - is certainly not edifying. But overall it certainly has some benefits.
