Worst Take of the Week: Buy 'The Sun'!

Story: British journalists have been encouraging people to support print journalism under the Twitter hashtag #buyapaper this week.
Reasonable Take: Actually, I wish Britain would stop with this "war" sentimentalism bollocks. It definitely isn't my duty to buy and read a shit newspaper.
Brain rot: "When your country is in its darkest hour, make sure you strike a blow to the enemy, the Roni, and buy The Sun!" – The Sun.

What do you call a gathering of journalists from The Sun? A scurry of vermin? A stench of hacks? A convention of virgins? Whatever the correct term, it congregated this week in an attempt to capitalise on the "Covid-19 community spirit" and urged the British public to "do our bit" by purchasing their "newspaper".

As the The Sun's unfortunately familiar roster of faces clustered and complained about how Britain's trusted truth tellers (the newspapers, just for clarity) could soon be teetering on verge of oblivion thanks to the pandemic, they implored us all to put our flat whites to one side and instead purchase a copy of The Sun.

I mean, perhaps it is possible that waking up and immediately filling your tired mind and body with boundless classism and racism via a Tory fanzine fond of headlines like "EU joins forces with ISIS to ban fish and chips, join our pledge to make it stop" might set you up for the day better than a warm, caffeinated drink, but call me dubious!

After The Sun reported a £68 million loss last year amid falling print sales and ongoing phone hacking payouts, coronavirus has prompted this latest siren cry. What followed was the gift of more shining examples of how our allegedly unencumbered, freethinking journalists at British papers definitely do not regurgitate verbatim what they are told by their non-dom paymasters.

It would have to be some sort of miracle if the desperate pleas that followed were not the direct result of a Zoom corporate meltdown meeting where the chief shill screamed through the headset that "Sales are totally fucked, you tossers! Get online and make up some Blitz-type bollocks about the paper being a lifeline during the pandemic. Oh, and don't forget to mention how it's cheaper than a cup of coffee or something – I don't know, use your fucking imaginations!"

However, they did not use their imaginations.

The Sun's political editor Tom Newton Dunn – who once wrote an "exclusive" on Jeremy Corbyn, using a far-right website called "Aryan Unity" as source material – encouraged us all to "please support our industry and #buyapaper" because "all of us working on newspapers at the moment are doing our level best to provide trusted information" during the pandemic.

Columnist and alleged outer of gay celebrities Dan Wootton hit a similar note: "Britain's brilliant newspapers provide a lifeline of trusted information for millions during this crisis. A paper costs less than a cup of coffee. Do your bit and keep journalism alive for future generations. #buyapaper".

Fellow correspondent Ryan Sabey also followed suit with a similarly copy-and-paste post, stating: "Journalists, production staff, printers and distributors work 24/7 to deliver the country’s brilliant newspapers - providing a lifeline of trusted information for millions during this crisis. A paper costs less than a cup of coffee. Do your bit. #buyapaper".

The Sun on Sunday political editor David Wooding, to be fair to him, was slightly more creative when it came to acting on the "tweet this fucking now" memo, posting: "The frothy coffee shops might be closed but our newspapers are still available – providing trusted information, not myths, for millions during the crisis. For less than a cup of cappuccino. Do your bit. #buyapaper", before strategically and unashamedly posting a picture of a Liverpool football club mug next to a copy of The Sun.

Nobody should gloat about people fretting over losing their employment, even if those people are handmaidens of so many repulsive happenings in Britain today, but that's why I'd like to extend a guiding hand and point them in the direction of their own paper's rhetoric for reassurance. They needn't worry if they have to go on the dole – having read The Sun, I've learned that if you announce you "hate England, the pound coin and the English game of football" at the Jobcentre, they fast track your application, so keen are they to support benefit-scrounging traitors.

The very notion that the newspaper supposedly offers us a "lifeline" of "trusted information" during the pandemic, when they flagrantly suggested we should "sack the docs" in the midst of the junior doctor pay strike just a few years ago, perfectly exemplifies how utterly knackered and devoid of morals whatsoever our most popular news sources are in the UK.

Yesterday alone there were 938 deaths due to COVID-19, and as many unanswered questions about the leadership of this country during this pandemic, but our press is unwilling to ask for any accountably because they've attached a totally unjustified cult of personality to our Hair Bear leader, to the point where near a thousand daily deaths are regarded as insignificant because BoJo himself has sat up in his hospital bed.

The sad truth is the UK's most popular publications have been "informing" the public by keeping us in the dark and feeding us reams of shit for years, but now want to appear to be the organisers of a nationwide weekly clap along for NHS staff, when they've spent much of their existence undermining our health service. Honestly, just fuck off.

The only functioning purpose of certain sections of the British press before this crisis seemed to be pitting the public against an ever-rotating list of boogeymen, often invoking a non-existent enemy from within the working classes who fall below a certain line on the socio-economic ladder as the perpetrators of the woes of misrule by our government.

You know what? I think I'll keep choosing the coffee.

@MULLET_FAN_NEO