The Guardian and Chomsky
Here's a mainstream media scandal local wingers don't seem to want to report. UK paper The Guardian wrote a large profile of US academic/philosopher Noam Chomsky on October 31. It was pretty scathing.A load of Chomsky hating bloggers climbed on board. Despite their usual loathing of The Guardian, it seems they loathed Chomsky more. Sir Humphrey's, a purely random example, which is relaunching itself as "The Department of Unspin", was pretty keen on the story.
Now The Guardian, whose circulation contrary to some reports (see comments) appears to be rising strongly since its relaunch in the European Berliner format, has apologised and withdrawn the story.
Full story here.
posted by Rob O'Neill at 4:31 PM
12 Comments:
Good Lord Rob!
I don't know what to say.
First, here we have the Guardian , of all newspapers, smearing a hero of the left.
It would be like the Spectator or the Daily Telegraph in Britain
dishing the dirt on Baroness Thatcher.
And then we hear the quotes were fabricated.
It's Jayson Blair and John manukia all over again.
Can we ever believe what we read in the Guardian?
PS Good to see the new Berliner format is helping the paper boost sales.
I believe turning tabloid worked wonders for other qualities.
We wouldn't want to think it was the guardian's politics causing the sales increase, would we? :)
Ahh well, I think the devil is in the detail on this one. Apparently the Gaurniad is New Labour. Chomsky, obviously, isn't.
I've just had a quick shufti at the new look Guardian and the Indy and the Guardian has it, IMHO. indy looks more like a magazine than a paper.
I don't see what any right-wingers have to apologise for. The problem seems to be that the Guardian cannot be relied upon for a simple quote. Whatever their differences over opinion and spin in lefty newspapers, most righties I know wouldn't assume that mainstream newspapers would stoop to manufacturing material, and you would probably agree it's difficult to critique a commentator without quoting what he has to say. Given that the likes of Chomsky only ever seem to be quoted by publications like the Guardian, it hard to see how we can get round this, at least as bloggers.
Maybe the Sydney Morning Herald should think twice about reproducing some of their pieces?
The number of serious media scandals over the past few years would make me agree with you, FM. It is hard and papers have to be wary when using each other's work.
Readers and viewers have to apply a sceptical eye to the media they consume.
Mind you, I'm not suggesting anyone (apart from the Gaurdian which has done so) apologise. A simple correction of the record would suffice.
yeaaah, maybe. You're assuming that the three corrections provided by the Guardian were specifically referenced by the boys over at SH. I'm not so sure that they were, and if that's what you're suggesting, you should say that. Secondly, in my opinion at least, some of those corrections still make Chomsky looked like an idiot. Thirdly, there was a lot more to the interview than those three quotes, and again, Chomsky looks like a chump for much of it in my opinion. As I said, if you have specific criticisms, something which in turn can be criticised, I think you should make them known. And not in comments. Drafting your criticisms in something other than passive voice might help as well.
Referenced? Not sure what you mean by that.
Whether Chomsky is an idiot or not is beside the point. The point is the article was seriously flawed and misrepresented him. The Guardian has now taken it down off its site and no doubt is looking into how it found itself in this situation.
Meanwhile other sites have picked it up, gleefully in some cases because it conforms to their ideological viewpoints. Many of these site normally parse every word they read in The Guardian, but for some reason this time they didn't.
It was possible to do so with this article as well as with any other. Here's an example of someone who did just that the day after it was published.
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2005/10/chomsky-haters-handbook.html
My conclusion is that, what with ideology and partisanship, there is only a fleeting desire to find truth among many bloggers. Yet we all pay lip service to that aim.
My other whinge is that bloggers often don't go back and correct the record when something like this happens, despite expecting that of others:
http://sirhumphreys.blogspot.com/2005/08/it-always-pays-to-fact-check.html
You say the article is "seriously flawed", but frankly that is debatable. The Guardian is somewhat adverse to criticism, as you are probably aware, and that in itself might be sufficient for them to pull the piece. They've sold the papers; it doesn't cost them to pull out now.
Your whinge is that the record needs to be corrected. How so exactly? This is my question to you and one which you do not seem to care enough to make. After all, we are talking about two miss-quotes and an "unfair juxtaposition" out of an entire interview. My cursory review of the SH post indicates to me that one out of four of the blockquote citations is in error, according to the Guardian. So perhaps the headline to the correction might read: 75% of SH post still shows Chomsky is a chump -- other 25% fabricated by Guardian. It's compelling stuff Rob and I could see why those guys might be embarrassed - not. But by all means, they should make a correction.
[It doesn't cost them to pull it now]
I'd be happy with that. It'd make correction history!
Hey I was going to blog that, but someone seems to have totalled my ability to do so at the moment.
Yes, our traffic has gone up a lot since you guys went down.
Anyway FM, I must say newspapers don't usually totally take down a story when they can be corrected. Clearly the Guardian doesn't feel this story can be corrected.
Your advocacy of the Guardian's editorial integrity is far too generous
And once again I have to ask myself why you are defending the Guardian's editorial integrity in this case. If it was a hatchet job on Karl Rove with the same type and number of errors would you be so generous?
Everyone's got to get their material from somewhere. As I said earlier, if you stopped citing The Guardian or The Independent as sources, you've never read anything about Chomsky, least of all quotes from him. The article in question is an interview. Despite the absolutely incredible fuck ups cited in their correction, the rest of the piece is essentially an uncontested transcript of the interview. I see nothing irregular about using Chomsky's own words against him. I don't have to make any consideration of the Guardian's editorial integrity when I do so. But then I'm sure you're aware of this. All the same, if you'd like to give up using the Wall Street Journal and The Australian as a source of articles, I won't stand in your way.
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