Though Cowards Flinch

I think everyone’s a bit bored by now with that stuff about the Total Politics Blog Awards and the Nick Griffin interview.  So very last week.

But I do feel bound to add another couple of quick posts for completeness sake. 

As soon as I can get it off my misbehaving email system, I’ll publish the quick ‘interview’ I did with Dennis Macshane about his decision to resign from the TP editorial board over the interview. 

The TP publisher, Iain Dale, actually comes out of it quite well, so I hope that at least our publishing the whole thing will go some way to counter one or two of the stranger accusations that the stuff last week was all about petty, personal antipathy towards Iain Dale, even though the initial posts never actually mentioned him (I did do one post in direct response to his comments here, but think that was fair enough in that context).

But first, just as the counter to the other accusations(actually from Iain Dale himself as well as others) that I would never criticise the Guardian for their interview with Nick Griffin at the weekend, below is the letter to the Guardian that I wrote on Sunday when I’d actually seen the piece, having been out all Saturday. 

It wasn’t published of course, though it’s just possible it may make the letters page of Guardian Weekend in a few days. Comment is Free also refused a variation on it.  Anyway, I won’t be bothering them again:

Dear Sir/Madam

Publication of ‘The Battle for Barking’, Guardian Weekend, 13 March 2010

I am writing to express my concern at the decision by the Guardian’s editorial team to commission and publish the article by John Harris (The Battle for Barking, Guardian Weekend, 13 March 2010), featuring extended coverage of, quotations from and pictures of Nick Griffin, the racist leader of the BNP.

 I do not advocate the curtailment of the BNPs right to speak to anyone. I do however advocate a publication using sound editorial judgment on what views it should and should not promulgate. The right of Nick Griffin to free speech does not include a duty on The Guardian to repeat, give credence to or otherwise publicize what he says, and thereby become complicit in the ongoing media ‘normalisation’ of the BNP as a mainstream political party. 

 That is what editorial choice, and the principles of engaged journalism behind those choices, are all about.

 Imagine the reader furore if a rightwing newspaper published an extended interview with a militant Marxist, giving her/him the space to set out in detail her belief that the current state is fundamentally untenable, and then to go on at length about how the right has a conspiracy to silence her/him, including through the possibility of arrest in a third country. 

 Yet the Guardian expects it’s readers to read this kind of stuff straight from Griffin’s mouth, perhaps under the misguided impression that ‘free speech’ and ‘balanced journalism’ are at stake.

 Given the poor editorial judgment displayed on this matter, I cannot see myself buying the Guardian again in the foreseeable future, or at least until the paper’s editorial policy in respect of its coverage of the BNP is improved.  Other readers may feel similarly inclined, although I understand that many will believe the broader benefits of Guardian readership outweigh the harm it has done here through the further ‘mainstreaming’ of Grffin and his racist objectives.

 Yours faithfully