Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Comparisons are odious.

…more blunt than the Guardian.

The Guardian left that bit out. It’s rather important.

The Guardian left that bit out too.

It’s impossible to view this editorial decision making as anything but ideological. Newspapers aren’t usually in the business of “being kind,” but in this case they’re soft pedaling the story (perhaps for their own sake as much as for anyone else’s). It’s like the unspoken agreement between the press and JFK in regards to his infidelity and womanizing. But this isn’t about turning a blind eye to a politician’s extramarital affairs, it’s a story about the health and safety of children. It’s not just word choice or even a “slant” or “spin,” it’s withholding information. What price “the right side of history?” What do they get out of all of this? What exactly have they bought at the cost of this reputational damage? More and more, it looks like less and less. Their end of the deal is starting to look a lot like a mess of pottage.

Does the Guardian think it can cross its fingers and hope the story goes away quickly and quietly? You chose a side, and that side failed by almost every conceivable professional, moral, and ethical standard. You helped paint critics of that side as heartless bigots. You drove away reporters who didn’t follow what had become the paper’s party line. Even now, you’re still trying to protect that side, your side, and to conceal from your readers the fact that your reporting on this issue, far from journalistic neutral impartiality, was fatally tainted by bias. And it still is.

Now that the Tavistock is being shut down, is it all just so much water under the bridge? Spilt milk? Those are ruined lives and injured people. How many — Hundreds? Thousands? Oh, right. Follow up and outcome studies were a bit lax. Sorry about that, but there’s no time to spare when you’ve got suicides to prevent and teets to yeet. All the children, and adults, who’ve been needlessly medicalized and mutilated still have to live with the consequences of the failure of responsible adults to exercise their duty of care, for the rest of their lives. That part doesn’t go away. It just doesn’t get reported on. (Not by you, anyway.) There’s a difference.