Background here and here.
Ian Mayes, the Guardian’s reader’s editor, has devoted another column to the Chomsky dispute. It seems that the correction the paper published has raised new issues. Link
It is with considerable reluctance that I return to the subject of the
Guardian and Noam Chomsky and one of the most difficult complaints I
have had to deal with in my eight years as readers’ editor of the
paper. I do so because the long correction which I and those directly
involved certainly thought at the time had fairly resolved the matter,
is itself now being called into question by others.
Professor Chomsky’s original complaint concerned an interview with him
published in G2, the paper’s second section, on October 31 this year.
He wrote to me on November 3 - an email that I picked up on returning
to the office on November 7 after attending a conference (on media
self-regulation) in Madrid.
From that time until a correction was published on the leader page of
the Guardian on November 17 I devoted my time almost exclusively to
investigating Prof Chomsky’s complaint.
Everyone concerned in this complaint was consulted and kept fully
informed and involved in the process of considering it. All were shown
my draft conclusions ahead of publication and given an opportunity to
comment or to argue for any amendment.
I am now asked to consider a complaint about the content of the
correction. This is not unprecedented, and it is not always a difficult
thing to do. Corrections to corrections on simple matters of fact are
made from time to time. On this occasion some argue that the correction
concerning Noam Chomsky was flawed, should not have been made, and
should be withdrawn.
I should say immediately that none of the material sent to me has
convinced me that I should do that. But am I, in any case, the right
person to consider such a complaint? That is a question asked in the
complaint about the correction made directly to me. I think the answer
is almost certainly not. I shall come back later to a brief discussion
of the Guardian’s complaints procedures.
At the time the correction was published, the author of the interview,
Emma Brockes, her immediate editor, Ian Katz, and Noam Chomsky, the
complainant, all expressed their acceptance of the way in which the
matter had been dealt with and resolved.
The Guardian journalists have repeated their acceptance of the
correction in conversations with me in the past few days. Emma Brockes
has made some useful comments about her experience of the actual
complaints process as conducted by me, and I am giving careful
consideration to what she has said. Separately, Emma Brockes, Ian Katz,
and others, had concerns about a Response column by Diana Johnstone,
published on November 23, which referred to the Noam Chomsky apology.
Throughout the entire period of my consideration of the complaint I,
like Emma Brockes, was among the targets of an electronic lobby group,
Media Lens, lobbying broadly in protest at the treatment of Prof
Chomsky. Other targets included the editor of the Guardian.
I did not engage with or respond to this lobby, whose members poured
several hundred emails into the Guardian. I did not read more than a
tiny sample of the emails directed at me. I consider organised lobbies
in general to be in effect - whatever the rights or wrongs of their
position - oppressive to put it mildly. In the case of Media Lens,
those who respond to their Media Alerts are asked to be polite. They do
not all manage to follow that advice. I also consider that it is
unreasonable to expect me to read the contents of any email bombardment
while dealing with a complaint from the principal person involved.
Correspondence from other readers is often lost in the huge volume of
lobby email and thus lobbies tend to undermine the complaints
procedures in place at the Guardian. Many of the lobbyists clearly do
not read the paper. In the case of the lobby ostensibly supporting Prof
Chomsky, many appeared to miss the note in the corrections column on
November 12 saying that I was in touch with Prof Chomsky and would
publish my findings when the matter was resolved.
Immediately after what everyone involved took as the resolution of the
complaint, the editor of the Guardian sent an email to about 400 of the
people who had emailed the Guardian on the subject of the Chomsky
interview. He took the opportunity to reject conspir acy theories
claiming that senior journalists at the Guardian had colluded in
targeting Prof Chomsky with the object of discrediting him. I believe
he was right to do that. Nothing emerged in my interviews to support
the idea.
The correction concluded by saying that the Guardian had removed the
interview from its website. In fact, I asked the Guardian to do that,
with the intention of drawing a line under the matter. (It was not
requested by Prof Chomsky who, indeed, said his own decision would be
to leave it in place). The removal was interpreted by some as a
condemnation of the article which went beyond the matters dealt with in
my correction. That was not my intention.
The new complaint, which has prompted this column, is concerned with
what Noam Chomsky, and Diana Johnstone, who was also referred to in the
Chomsky interview and in the correction, do or do not believe with
respect to the events at Srebrenica and to the description of the
massacre itself. It comes in the form of a letter to me of about 4,500
words (an estimate) signed by three people: David Aaronovitch, Francis
Wheen and Oliver Kamm. All three write for other publications. Oliver
Kamm in addition runs a lively website. They all have opportunities to
extend or debate the issues raised in their letter.
I want to emphasise the point that my task was to investigate a
complaint in the light of the specific contents of one article in the
Guardian and to consider material put before me by the complainant and
the journalists concerned.
I return to my terms of reference, which can be found on the Guardian
website. In particular, I refer to the penultimate clause which reads:
"The readers’ editor can refer to the external ombudsman any
substantial grievances, or matters whereby the Guardian’s journalistic
integrity has been called into question."
There is a temporary difficulty here in that the position of external
ombudsman is vacant, although steps are being taken by the Scott Trust,
the owner of the Guardian, to fill it as a matter of urgency. I believe
that it is the external ombudsman who should review my conduct of the
inquiry leading to the publication of the correction to Emma Brockes’s
interview if those now dissatisfied with my resolution of the matter
wish to pursue it.
One of the questions that the Aaronovitch-Wheen-Kamm letter to me
raises, which I would ask the external ombudsman to consider, is that
of the availability of legal advice or opinion on what I was proposing
to publish in the paper.
The suggestion seems to be that this impinges upon and detracts from my
independence. I find that extraordinary: everything published is
subject to the law of the land. The real problem is that a correction
intended to resolve a complaint by dealing with specific points in one
article has raised an extraordinary storm of opposing passions.
