Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Guardian: No Smear Tactics or Misrepresentations Allowed

Georgina Henry is the editor in chief of Comment is Free (CiF), the part of the Guardian website where articles are posted 24/7 and the readers have their say. No analysis of the state of today's Left nor of the evolvement of contemporary antisemitism can afford to overlook this extremely important trove of data.

Earier this week Ms. Henry announced new rules of behavior, and then wrote a column about them. I especially liked this part:

I hope you'll agree that the talk policy is clearer and more direct. It boils down to what we've always tried to say: help make Cif a welcoming, intelligent place for discussion; take some responsibility for the quality of this community; don't be abusive; don't be offensive; don't be unpleasant; keep on topic.

One new bit is to clarify our approach to comments about us, ie the Guardian and its writers/bloggers – basically, criticism is fine (we're used to it by now), persistent misrepresentation and smear tactics are not.

I do believe the lady is sincere. Not rational, mind you, but sincere.

3 comments:

Philo-Semite said...

One new bit is to clarify our approach to comments about us, ie the Guardian and its writers/bloggers – basically, criticism is fine (we're used to it by now), persistent misrepresentation and smear tactics are not.Translation:

Any criticism of Guardian management or editorship or moderation - paticularly of its anti-Semitic bias - will be censored.

Any criticism of the inherently totalitarian and oppressive nature of political Islam will be censored.

Mis-representation and smear tactics are perfectly acceptable when the targets are Jews or Zionists or their supporters.

Morey Altman said...

Speaking of the Guardian, which you do from time-to-time, did you catch this story?

Irish student hoaxes world's media with fake quote
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/05/11/international/i090708D96.DTL&tsp=1

I wasn't too surprised by this finding: "The Guardian of Britain, became the first to admit its obituarist lifted material straight from Wikipedia."

At least they admitted it, but then, no Jews were involved.

Babs said...

It never ceases to amaze me that Georgina Henry can perpetrate such guff and yet be blind to the fact that bias, misrepresentation and smear tactics are the stock in trade of most of her authors who condemn Israel.

One author in particular has been shown more than once to be economical with the actualite in order to make his points, but the posts of anyone who argued with his research (or rather that it was evident that he had done little or no research and what little he had done was in itself biased) were rapidly deleted.

For Henry to be so blind, to have the brass neck to argue as if she is the Duchess in this particular abattoir, smacks of lunacy rather than mere irrationality.