By Lee Brown, Venezuela Solidarity Campaign
One of the world’s most prominent intellectuals, Noam Chomsky, has accused the Guardian/Observer newspaper of “extreme dishonesty” in its write-up of an interview he gave on Venezuela.
On Sunday 3 July, The Observer ran an article titled “Noam Chomsky denounces old friend Hugo Chávez for ‘assault’ on democracy”. This was written by Rory Carroll, The Guardian’s Latin American correspondent based in Caracas. Carroll also writes for The Observer and has faced criticism from some quarters for what they believe is an unbalanced picture of life in Venezuela under the elected government of Hugo Chavez.
Subsequently, in an email to queries from blogger Joe Emersberger regarding the accuracy of the Observer article, Chomsky said “The Guardian/Observer version…is quite deceptive”. He added “I should know by now that I should insist on a transcript with the Guardian, unless it’s a writer I know and trust”. The final remark is clearly aimed at Rory Carroll.
Elsewhere, Chomsky, who is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote of The Observer article “Let’s begin with the headline: complete deception” adding “That continues throughout. You can tell by simply comparing the actual quotes with their comments. As I mentioned, and expected, the [New York] Times report of a similar interview is much more honest, again revealing the extreme dishonesty of The Guardian.”
As a result of these claims The Guardian has published the full transcript of the interview. At the time of writing (4 July 16:45), unusually for The Guardian, comments can not be left on the transcript.