Despite the recipes, culture war forays, and lesbian dance theoretical discourse, you will note that the Grauniad regularly breaks top stories, such as the Snowden revelations. Their international news is unrivaled in the consistency and quality of coverage. Where even an American staple like NPR regularly mixes cute dog stories with headline news, you can count on daily updates to major world storylines in the Guardian. Witness their coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, for example, to see: “day 265” or whatever it is by now, with clear threading and updates to those threads.

Al Jazeera is OK, but tends to be inconsistent in coverage and carry a relentless Gulf perspective, which is great for the region, but not anywhere close to the level of serious journalism the G brings to the table. Even the Washington Post, with its paywalled exclusive appeal to mainstream centrist Democrat-leaning upper-middle class folks fails to achieve the consistency and egalitarianism of the Guardian. It’s simply the pinnacle of modern journalism, in my opinion, and as such, belongs to its own category.

Serious journalism indeed