Just wondering what the Brits on this site think of their newspapers The Guardian and The Daily Mail. Are they generally considered respectable, reliable, etc.? Or not?

The Guardian is a respectable newspaper, though fairly left-wing.

The Daily Mail is fit only for lining garbage bins - it contains more garbage than my garbage.

I'd rate the Guardian as respectable, but not a 'paper of record' and slightly left of centre in terms of British politics.

The Daily Mail is hard-line Conservative and pretty low grade, but there are worse papers.

In fairness, I ought to add that I take a dim view of the national press in England more generally. Some regional and local papers are quite good.

I should probably add that I was once reported to the Press Council by the Daily Mail - but it's okay, I reported them right back. And when their reporter couldn't get access to my office via the front door, he climbed up a drainpipe so that he could listen to my conversations/meetings/phone calls via the open window. Such a shame that I emptied some cold coffee over him. Oops. How was I to know he was there?

I think the shame was that it was cold coffee and not hot coffee.

I can do no better than to refer you to the following, which first did the rounds some years ago.

The Daily Mirror is read by the people who think they run the country.
The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country.*
The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country.
The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country.
The Financial Times is read by people who own the country.
The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country.
The Daily Telegraph is read by the people who think it is.
Sun readers don't care who runs the country - as long as she's got big breasts.

*I believe this one first did the rounds in the 1970s/early 1980s, when the Unions were very powerful in the UK.

The 'Guardian' is a politically correct, left wing rag.

I once dated a photographer from the Daily Mail, only briefly, he was rather cute.

I used to like the Independent. It says it doesn't affiliate itself with any particular party, I like that is is closer to the Greens than many.
Mainly, it is because the crossword is good.
When in UK I buy that or the Grauniad (so named for its numerous typos).

Nice summary, supersal. I guess I'll keep reading the Guardian, with a critical eye, and skip the Daily Mail.

Would be nice to find a newspaper/website that just reported the facts and let the reader draw her own conclusions.

I am of the opinion that this is impossible. Not because writers don't try to be objective, but because all of our tools (sentence structure, word choice, etc.) are subjective. Even encyclopedia entries show bias. It's just not possible to escape since we are human and language is an invented thing.

Yes, I agree, but I think the key problems are (1) that most newspapers like to be sensational, if only a wee bit and (2) sometimes use unreliable sources.

Some papers also exploit the fact that many readers don't read carefully. For example, readers may not distinguish between It is reported from Moscow that several skeletons have been in the garden of Beria's former house (no source given) and [named, reputable source] reports that ...

I used to be a source. Mostly named. And sometimes unnamed but clearly identifiable to anyone "in the know". And sometimes not identifiable, with certain details omitted precisely so I couldn't be. Some of my best info was provided in that last category; the journalist(s) (there weren't many) I trusted with things like that knew I'd never give them a story again if they betrayed me, and I was lucky, they never did. Where I had to be careful was with my own colleagues, who would sometimes come to me in amazement that a journalist had found out about this or that, trying to work out who it could have been. It's quite difficult to maintain silence without allowing blame to be put on someone else!

So those sources, Bloomsby, may well be the same person - they just don't want to be identified. If I wasn't named but was quoted I always insisted on the word "spokesman". "You're a feminist," they'd say, "shouldn't that at least be 'spokesperson'?" to which I would say "I don't want them to know it was me but if you say 'spokeswoman' it has to be me, and if you say 'spokesperson' that also has to be me - what man ever asked to be called a person?" But if they said 'spokesman', well that could be the vice-chancellor, the chairman of this or that, the dean of thingy, the head of... the list of men who might have provided information was very, very long, the list of women was, er, me.

Stories that begin with "It was reported from ..." and don't give flopsy as the source always make me think the words were found skywritten above the city.

More likely to have been whispered through the sewers, a lot of reporters lurk down there. (sorry guys)

Many thanks to you both for your comments. I take the point that in practice an unnamed source is sometimes the same person as a named source.

A lot depends on which Political viewpoint you favour, and what you want a newspaper for!

Personally, being right wing politically, I find the much maligned (by opponents) Daily Mail excellent, I would not give table space to Guardian and other left wing publications. Daily Express used to be reasonable, though more middle-ground than the mail. Daily Mirror, Star and Sun are merely light reading "comics".