The Chomsky Complaint - background

At the end of last year three of us - Oliver Kamm, Francis Wheen and myself - wrote to the reader's editor of The Guardian, to complain about a decision he'd made concerning an interview between Emma Brockes and Noam Chomsky. That letter is published here for the first time.

Despite publishing a subsequent column by Ian Mayes on the subject, as well as a news item and a contribution by the author, Diana Johnstone, the paper told us that we would have to ask the the Chairperson of the Scott Trust, Liz Forgan, to appoint an external assessor to investigate our complaint. This seemed reasonable. Nearly three months later, however, Ms Forgan has told us that the remit of this ombudsman will be limited to looking at whether Mr Mayes followed the correct process in his handling of the original complaint.

But we have never complained about the process, only the content of the adjudication, and so face the bizarre situation of having a complaint investigated that we have never made, while having the complaint we did make, effectively ignored. That's why, nearly four months after sending our original letter, it is now published here - and on Oliver Kamm's site - for the first time.

Comments

[Raoul Djukanovic]

Not sure where best to post this, given the multitude of posts, but here goes:

Brockes ought to have resolved the riddle of Chomsky's "may be wrong" ambiguity there and then. Not having done so, she kind of walked into what followed.