Why I have stopped reading The Register

[sesquipedality]

Back in the late '90s/early 2000's, The Register popped up as a breath of fresh air, with its irreverent reporting of IT and technology news. Today, after 15 years of using it a as a news source, I have removed it from my feed reader. I don't think it's likely to return, unless there is a major change of culture.

I'd been feeling increasingly uncomfortable with El Reg's approach to news stories for a while. I found their inexplicable fascination with amateur rocketry to be dull, but I'm not going to be interested in everything published on a news site, so that's OK. What was less than OK was that they named their rocket project LOHAN, and every headline became a stupid sneering sexual innuendo about Lindsay Lohan.

Then there was the fact that as an IT news site, they felt it incumbent upon themselves to report on a women getting out her breasts on Italian TV.

Today, finally, they posted an article about the difficulties of women having a career in IT, and illustrated it with this.




Yes, that's a picture of a woman in a very tight T-shirt, cropped so that only her breasts are visible.

Let's just let that sink home for a moment. They illustrated an article about the difficulties of being a woman in IT with an image that reduces a woman to a pair of breasts.

I no longer have any hope that El Reg is even capable of understanding what the problem is. I'm no longer a woman in IT, but I still retain an interest in the field. But I won't condone, even tangentially, this kind of chauvinist bullshit any longer. So I'm no longer reading El Reg either.

Comments

[atreic.livejournal.com]

Not arguing with the general sentiment, but I don't think that is a naked woman in body paint. I think I can see the stitching round the neckline and the weave of the fabric. I think it's very thin lycra-a-like.

[sesquipedality.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Someone else told me it was. Sadly with eyesight stuff I often have to rely on others. Have edited the article to indicate that it's a T-shirt.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

Definitely visible nipples, definitely agree that Giant Pair Of Breasts is not a great idea!

[reddragdiva]

Surprisingly, the picture has disappeared.

[sesquipedality.livejournal.com]

It's still there - it only appears on the RSS feed and the highlights box in the right hand side, not on the main body of the article. This is standard Register style so far as I can tell.

[tigerfort.livejournal.com]

I stopped reading the register a few years ago now, because I found their climate change denialism too aggravating to tolerate. But if I hadn't, I'd definitely be stopping now.

[(Anonymous)]

They're following the Daily Mail tabloid strategy; attention-getting headlines, reactionary opinions, etc. They probably like the controversy this particular article has attracted.

[sparrowsion]

I'd been gritting my teeth through the climate change denialism. What got me to the edge was their downright offensive attitude to rural broadband rollout (or lack thereof). Being called a "bumpkin" and "sheep-worrier" is not going to endear me to your "journalism". I guess this is what tips them over the edge. Bye bye, El Reg. If you ever learn that mockery is can only ever be witty if directed upwards, I might come back. But I ain't holding my breath.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

I stopped reading the Register years ago for the same reason - any journal which prefers 'an irreverent attitude' to actual truth is not fit to be read. I'm rather saddened that anyone has still been reading it.

[sparrowsion]

I was only really reading it for the gadget news-and-reviews. (In fact, I think only ever really read it for those.) Not sure where to go for that now.

[damerell.livejournal.com]

Bit of a bee in their bonnet about one or two other things, too.

I spoke to a friend of mine (who writes for them (because they pay well and on time and this is rare in tech journalism)) about this recently; of course, he regularly has conversations with people who don't read El Reg anymore and has to slightly sheepishly admit he works for them.

Basically, they print Orlowski's trolling (and $FRIEND thinks it is basically trolling) because it gets page views. (I'm not trying to excuse this behaviour; I'm no more likely to read trolling than I am good-faith idiocy). Of course this does rather push away people like us.

[tigerfort.livejournal.com]

Paying either well or on time is frankly depressingly rare in freelancing of any kind.

I'm actually inclined to view trolling on the subject of climate change as worse than good-faith idiocy. At least the idiots believe they're doing good, whereas someone who accepts that we're in the process of inducing a potential extinction event is knowingly and intentionally causing harm. "Deliberately contributing to unnecessary death and suffering on a massive scale" must be pretty close to the definition of evil, if the word means anything.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Orlowski wrote a fundamentally flawed and misleading article on the recent Orphan Works copyright reforms, which led to no end of fuss as photographers and artists were conned into believing that HMG was about to abolish copyright in their work. He previously came within a hairs-breadth of seriously libelling a friend of mine, although of course since he writes from the safe haven of the USA their was no prospect of recourse. The man is wilfully vile, and I refuse to have anything to do with El Reg so long as he writes for it.

[sesquipedality.livejournal.com]

That man is a whole different can of worms. And I apologise for libelling worms.