I went along last night to the launch in Manchester of Klein's new book Doppleganger. There was an audience of between 300 and 400 people in the Royal Northern College of Music theatre. The interviewer was Guardian columnist Zoe Williams. The event turned into a Guardian love-fest with Klein on several occasions gushing about the high quality of journalism and contrasting it with the worst of US media such as Fox and the fringes of the loony right. I suppose to someone like Klein with her North American perspective the Guardian must seem like a beacon of restraint and praiseworthy "leftish" values. But it struck me listening to her how even a highly intelligent person who's written some interesting books (Shock Doctrine for one) can have such a warped and one-sided view of what is actually going on.

The audience was in the main middle-aged to older, with a sprinkling of younger people (presumably from M/c University right next door).and I imagine Guardian readers to a man (and woman). At the end one questioner asked plaintively how could they persuade younger people to read the Guardian rather than binge on electronic news media. And there was one potentially embarrassing moment when a woman with a foreign accent spoke passionately about press freedom and how to protect and defend journalists from persecution, citing Wikileaks and "the person who has been behind bars for four years" -- without actually mentioning the name Julian Assange. Thankfully for them it was near the end of the session, so Klein and Williams weren't called upon to offer an opinion. The question brought forth a spattering of applause ... but only that.

It was a deeply depressing evening overall. I'm sure that if you'd mentioned Jimmy Dore or DoubleDown News or Peter Oborne or Going Underground (back for a new season on Rumble) or the Grayzone or Glenn Greenwald or Matt Taibbi you'd have received blank looks. Yet most in that audience, I felt sure, were utterly convinced they were on the right side, fighting the good fight.