[lbo-talk] Guardian grovels

[Gar Lipow]

On 11/17/05, Mark Bennett <mab at straussandasher.com> wrote:
>
> Gar Lipow
>
> On 11/17/05, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> > Guardian (London) - November 17, 2005
> >
> > Corrections and clarifications
> > The Guardian and Noam Chomsky
> >
>
> It was a smear job and they only backed down because they not only got
> called, on it, but got  on it called publicly enough with enough fuss
> and  pressure that it was not worth the trouble  keep it up. It still
> shows a difference from U.S. media; people in hell will get ice water
> before any facet of the U.S. media backs  down from their slanders of
> Noam over the years.
>
> <snip>
> ___________________________________
>
> Well, the American law of defamation is much more forbidding to
> plaintiffs than English law.  I suspect that the threat of litigation
> may have had something to do to with The Guardian's effusive apology.
>
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>

Possibly - if they are as incompetent as this article made them
appear. (They were once famous for more typos than I make were they
not? "Gruniad" and all that?) Noam is well known for never filing
libel or slander suits (or plagarism or copyright  violation suits for
that matter). He is as close to a free speech absolutist as it is
possible to be; he does not believe libel or or slander constitute
sufficient justification.Whether the Guardian knew it or not is
another question; but part of the story was supposed to be about his
character;  a competent honest journalist would have read the public
record long enough to discover such a stand in a person whose
character they were writing about; then again, a competent honest
journalist would not have written such a story.
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