Denial and Defamation: The ITN-LM Libel Trial Revisited (I)

Quillette ^ | November 1, 2019 | Jamie Palmer

[Krosan]

Intro: From Phnom Pehn to Srebrenica

In 1977, Noam Chomsky and his co-author, the late Edward S. Herman, wrote an essay for the Nation entitled “Distortions at Fourth Hand,” in which they scorned reports that the Khmer Rouge were turning Cambodia into a charnel house. Stories of genocide, they suggested, were either exaggerated or fabricated outright by refugees, and any deaths—regrettable though they may be—were most likely the result of disease, starvation, and confusion caused by America’s devastating involvement in the foregoing civil war.

The two books that bore the brunt of Herman and Chomsky’s disdain were John Barron and Anthony Paul’s Murder of a Gentle Land and François Ponchaud’s Cambodia Year Zero. Contemporaneous accounts from and about war zones are rarely correct in every particular. But Chomsky and Herman ignored everything Ponchaud and Barron-Paul got right, and seized upon isolated errors and inconsistencies to discredit their work in its entirety. Gareth Porter and George C. Hildebrand’s book Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution, on the other hand, they praised as “a carefully documented study of the destructive American impact on Cambodia and the success of the Cambodian revolutionaries in overcoming it, giving a very favourable picture of their programs and policies, based on a wide range of sources.”

Chomsky and Herman were not stupid men. In addition to being America’s most influential linguist, Noam Chomsky remains among the West’s most venerated left-wing intellectuals, while Herman (who died in 2017) was an economist and professor of finance at the University of Pennsylvania. But so powerful was their desire to condemn the United States as the preeminent source of global suffering and woe, that they misrepresented reality and worked energetically to discredit anyone who objected.

[Krosan]

That long two part article is revisiting the story of "Living Marxism" magazine of British "Radical Communist Party" publishing a series of articles in 1997 blaming ITV network of lying, getting sued for slander and losing.

It is relevant in 2019 as one of the prominent actors on the side of Radical Communist Party just won the Nobel Prize of Literature.

[Bookshelf]

Thank you for posting this article. It is well to remember what the Marxists were (and are) up to.

[Da Coyote]

Chomsky is the Krugman of philosophers.

[marktwain]

From the article, it is clear that "Living Marxism" was not promoting Marxism of any kind. Rather it promoted skepticism of Western media. It was much closer to a Libertarian magazine rather than a Marxist one.

They thought they had a scoop on the coverage from the ITN report on the "concentration" camp. They were wrong, in that they could not prove anything about the mind-set of the producers and reporters of the ITN report.

They paid the price, but they were very far from promoting Marxism.

They were promoting skepticism of the Western media.

[Krosan]

Did you read till the end? The second part shows clearly how they weren’t just accidentally wrong, but must have been knowingly and cynically lying.

[marktwain]

I suspect they thought they could mind-read the ITN reporters.

They could not.

How much was cynical lying is uncertain. As stated in the article, they probably were convinced of their righteousness.

Where they went too far is in there deciding they understood the motivations of the ITN reporters; it also appears they became so invested in their narrative, they could not accept later evidence they were wrong.

I have read plenty of comments on freerepublic, about how the war in the former Yugoslavia was prosecuted against the Serbs, and in favor of the Muslims by President Clinton.

This story implies Clinton was on the side of the angels.

From the article, if the story had been published as opinion, instead of straight news, there probably would not have been any libel.

It is clear Chomsky did a similar thing about Cambodia.

But the two cases seem strikingly different in that they are powered by nearly opposite ideologies.

About the only thing comparable is they both got facts wrong.

Was Chomski was ever punished?

[Krosan]

This was the period where Radical Communist Party was confused, but they were clearly dishonest driven by their reflexive anti-west instincts.

By that time they already knew 800 people were murdered in that very camp during these 3 months (and many more were tortured). They already knew the testimonies of those escaping this camp with their lies.

Also the cover picture shows that clearly the Living Marxism magazine was the one lying by their cropping of picture as the Time magazine picture shows the chest and stomach of the deathly starving man, that the Living Marxism hid.

Liar here is the one who cuts the photo at shoulder level.