UK Riots: The Guardian Pot Calls the Kettle Black
August 11, 2011 13:11 by Simon Plosker
Someone alerted me to this little gem he heard on Israel’s Galei Tzahal (Army Radio) on its breakfast show this morning.
Discussing the riots in the UK, The Guardian’s Martin Wainwright was interviewed. He said the following (some of which was drowned out by the Israeli presenter’s Hebrew explanation but which I have taken the liberty of translating from the Galei Tzahal website):
Pictures of any sort of disorder can give a completely false impression and I’m in Birmingham and I can assure you that, you know, if you wanted to come and have a nice meal in the center of Birmingham, you’d have a great evening and the pictures that have gone around the world will be a very damaging influence because through those pictures it appears that this is a warzone.
Now substitute Birmingham for Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. Need I say more?
And coming directly from the mouth of a Guardian reporter? Absolutely priceless.
(The interview can be heard here by clicking on the August 11 show. The relevant section starts 32 mins in.)
Martin Wainwright
10:25 pm
Aug 12, 2011
Hello there!
I’m just copying to you a comment I left after coming across your post on the CiF Watch site
Here it is (the PS is redundant as I seemed to get the hang of posting the comment)
All best
Martin W
Hello and I hope you are all well. It’s Martin Wainwright here, the Northern Editor of the Guardian who had a very enjoyable chat with Galei Tzahal as mentioned in this post.
I am sorry that the passage picked out should be taken as ‘priceless’ or some sort of evidence of Guardian hypocrisy. The Guardian is not some machine with robots who all think alike. I am 61 and have covered a great deal of violence in my time and I have consistently made the point that media coverage of it almost always gives an exaggerated impression.
I also make this part of talks I give to schools, WIs etc, using the example of Breughel’s The Fall of Icarus and W H Auden’s poem about it which express this point much more eloquently than I ever could.
I have no doubt that the phenomenon applies in Israel. I have yet to visit the country but very much hope to; it is a place which means a great deal to me, both from my upbringing and from my following events there during my adult life.
I hope that your readers will deal more reasonably with the subject than seems to be the case from this brief experience, the first I have had with your website. I am more than happy to ‘chat’ to any of you direct – contact me via martin.wainwright@guardian.co.uk. Or come and meet me in Leeds, a city whose debt to Jewish people is enormous and has often been mentioned in my journalism and books.
With every warm wish
Martin Wainwright
PS I would post this as a comment if I knew how to, but my sons who used to advise me on such things have flown the nest and my wife is as old and technologically-challenged as I am.
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Martin Wainwright
10:38 pm
Aug 12, 2011
PPS from MW – can you live up to your ‘honest reporting’ tag and tell your readers that in the GT interview I also specifically said that Israel would be used to this sort of thing – the way that media coverage gives an exaggerated impression, not deliberately but because dramatic events are always highlighted at the expense of the everyday context?
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