The Guardian Unlimited newspaper in the UK recently published a vicious attack on Noam Chomsky, in the form of an interview by one of their reporters, Emma Brockes. I heard about it indirectly, via an article by Alexander Cockburn on counterpunch.org, and I subsequently found a list of Guardian email addresses for responses thanks to a very useful alert by MediaLens. Here's the letter I sent to the perpetrator of the interview, Cc'd to both the Guardian's editor and readers' editor:
Ms. Brockes,
I've just had the unpleasant experience of wading through your fabrications regarding Noam Chomsky. As you surely know (by now, and I don't doubt you knew when you wrote this vile smear piece), Chomsky has never put the word "massacre" in quotes regarding Srebrenica; in fact, counterexamples abound. This is just the centerpiece lie in a stream of twisted invective and conscious manipulation of context on your part.
It's clear you have no use for the truth. That's sad in itself; but what's sadder is to see the Guardian, a paper whose coverage I've grown to respect and admire, stoop to this level, and not only print your lies but help to cement them via legal chicanery and the editing (or outright suppression) of letters sent by the victims of your drive-by interview. Given Norman Johnson's subsequent hatchet job on Chomsky, this appears to be part of some bizarre crusade. I'm always surprised that Chomsky offends the neoliberal left so much more than he does the right, but this sequence of pathetic attacks in the Guardian is more than proof enough.
A reputation is built slowly, one article at a time, but it can be destroyed in a moment--and that's what you've just done to your own, for anyone familiar with the facts. Luckily for you, honesty and scruples seem more often than not to be an impediment to a successful journalistic career, as Judith Miller has illustrated for us all. I have no doubt you'll go far.
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