Friday, November 18, 2005

Guardian Withdraws Chomsky Interview
The Guardian has withdrawn the controversial interview which falsely accused Chomsky of denying the Srebrenica massacre. The full text of the two Guardian statements can be found here:
www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1644668,00.html

www.guardian.co.uk/corrections/story/0,,1644017,00.html

The apology must have "come as a nasty shock" to Guardian columnist Norman Johnson who penned a spiteful and "witheringly" juvenile piece attacking Chomsky on the basis of the Brockes interview. Significantly the Johnson piece has not been withdrawn, and no statement about it has been made by the Guardian. The apology will also dismay all those right-wing bloggers who have rushed to use the Brockes interview as evidence for attacking Chomsky, but no doubt in the interests of accuracy they will now be posting retractions?
Speaking personally, however, I'm not certain if the "withdrawal" of the interview from the Guardian's website is the best way of dealing with this issue - it smacks a little too much of Orwell's "memory hole" method of dealing with inconvenient documents - a better way of correcting the damage would be to include a second interview with Chomsky in both the print and online versions of the Guardian conducted by a journalist who will not let personal prejudice or a misplaced ambition to be the outspoken enfant terrible of British journalism run away with them.