Chomsky and the Guardian
The Guardian ombudsman reports on the David Aaronovitch complaint over the Readers' Editor correction to an interview by Emma Brockes* with Noam Chomsky and finds that except for taking the interview of the website, the Reader's Editor behaved correctly. My own views are very similar to those expressed in this post, as it is where I took them from, and so I think the judgement (I've only read the summary because the link doesn't seem to work) is fair. I think the anger that Aaro has is because the apology appears to have exonerated Chomsky of all criticism, which is perhaps true, but I fear that is the nature of things - make a big mistake and the fact you were right on all the little points is really neither here nor there.The Guardian ombudsman says, "is ironic that they are entertaining a complaint about their process when so few newspapers have any independent process at all" which is snarky and unnecessary, but rather hits the mark, I think, given Aaronovitch is a Times' journalist. Trying to get that newspaper to correct even major errors is almost impossible.
* Whoops, forgot to add the asterisk. It was going to be "Who I knew slightly at university (but haven't seen since). Then she seemed an excellent journalist and subsequently has proven to be so, so I have no idea what happened here."
Update: I have now read the full judgement and my view remains the same: it is the correct one. How the errors crept remains a puzzle - it seems a milder version of the time when Aaro wrongly labelled the Treasurer of Christian CND an anti-semite, merely because he had the same name as someone who was one. Presumably its just time pressure and a lack of checks, though I think there is an element of wanting something so badly - what Nick Cohen called 'wishful thinking' in last week's column.
posted by Matthew @ 5/25/2006 08:47:00 AM
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