Smearing Chomsky - Guardian in the gutter

November 5th, 2005 at 16:01 Björn Hallberg

Medialens shines a light on Emma Brockes and her interview with Noam Chomsky published in the Guardian.

On October 31, the Guardian published an interview with Noam Chomsky by Emma Brockes, ‘The greatest intellectual?’ (The Guardian, October 31, 2005; link)

The article was ostensibly in response to the fact that Chomsky had been voted the world’s top public intellectual by Prospect magazine the previous week. Chomsky describes his treatment by the paper as “one of the most dishonest and cowardly performances I recall ever having seen in the media”. (Email copied to Media Lens, November 2, 2005)

The headline introduction to the article was:

“Q: Do you regret supporting those who say the Srebrenica massacre was exaggerated?

“A: My only regret is that I didn’t do it strongly enough.”

Remarkably, and very foolishly, this answer attributed to Chomsky was actually in response to a different question posed during the interview.

So this is supposedly the “liberal” side of things. And Emma Brockes is supposedly Guardian’s crack interviewer. Now imagine what your local blame-america-last right wing rag or moonbat apologists for empire blog scribbled down.

Regarding the Prospect Magazine article it can be found here (For and against Chomsky). Poll results can be found here. Nice to see that Richard Dawkins earned such a renowned position as well.

I’d like to also point to an unpublished letter by Diana Johnstone to the Guardian regarding the Chomsky interview and his misinterpreted defense. It ALSO provides a primer to her criticism of the Yugoslavian conflict. Some seem to think that Yugoslavia is old news, that it was merely ethnic gripes surfacing, that the media image we got was fair and balanced and that it was a just cause for NATO but neither could be further from the truth. The ITN perpetrated fraud at Trnopolje is a telling example that is even today used as evidence of war crimes.

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