A letter to the editor
Date: 14 April 2009 16:58:58 BST
To: Alan Rusbridger
Cc: Richard Norton-Taylor, Jonathan Freedland, Georgina Henry, Toby Manhire
Subject: Called to account
Dear Mr Rusbridger,
Your leader column today says “the Iraq operation, including Britain’s part in it, was an avoidable disaster.”
Yet in 2003, the Guardian published a compilation of its journalism entitled “The War We Could Not Stop”.
Where is the evidence that you tried? Clare Short described your account of the push for war as “predominantly the authorised Downing Street version”.
Where were the daily front-page interviews with sceptics in 2002? Where were the investigations of hidden agendas, the pre-war analyses of petro-geopolitics and the enumeration of Nuremberg principles, which one of your journalists turned into a play four years after the fact?
Why do you never refer to the “supreme international crime”, or demand Blair be prosecuted for it, while explaining to your readers why he can’t be?
Why did you bury the attempt to impeach him deep inside the paper, while your comment page whimpered of MPs: “There is no outrage, just a shrug of the shoulders”?
In January 2003, the Guardian said the American press “have now become the president’s men”.
When will you publish a story examining how you did too? Should you wish to commission one, please get in touch.
Your sincerely,
Daniel Simpson
May 25, 2009 at 7:01 am
Ух ты, мне понравилось!
December 8, 2009 at 12:36 am
[...] press should never become the president’s men, and the public need to organise against him, to [...]
January 23, 2012 at 11:22 am
[...] The press should never become the president’s men, and the public need to organise against him, to force his hand like Martin Luther King, to collectively make change we can believe in. Together we’ll enact these commitments. In themselves, they won’t end violence, they won’t end lawlessness and they won’t end disorder either. But they’d warrant the faith you’ve placed in my work, and they’d leave our children a legacy of justice. And for that small measure alone, we can be thankful. [...]