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| November | 10 |
| 2006 |
If you've ever wondered why it is that the Independent is happy to publish a writer such as Robert Fisk, who distorts the truth so regularly, I can now provide an explanation. The Independent, as I now know from my own experience, is happy to distort quotes out of all context.
I've been away all this week. Mind you, even when I'm here I rarely see the Indie, and certainly not its diary column. So until I was rung on Tuesday by the Jewish Chronicle to be asked about it, I had no idea that on Monday this item appeared in the Indie's Pandora column (the link has to be paid for - don't waste your money):
Pollard pulling tipsWhen it comes to "pulling", Blunkett biographer Stephen Pollard seems to have learnt how not to do it from his subject's exotic liaisons.
One of Pandora's lonely hearts - a female member of JDate, the "leading Jewish singles network" - mentions she has been e-mailed by a Stephen Pollard.
She says: "He didn't have a picture on his profile," adding: "We didn't meet in the end. It was mutual." (She refuses to tell me the name of the MP who has similarly contacted her.)
Confirms Pollard: "It was me, yes. I was on it a while ago. I am Jewish - it goes with the territory! I haven't been on it for ages. I hopefully don't have to any more."
So it was a successful search? "No, not from JDate."
O, spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou!
Seems like a sweet enough story, you might think - albeit a story that's not a story. Since when is 'single man once didn't go on a date with someone he had never met' a story?
It happens to be true that I have been on JDate, the Jewish dating site. Indeed, as readers of this blog might know, I have written a play with a friend which will be performed next year about internet dating. Almost every single Jew in Britain seems to be on JDate.
As for the rest of the 'story'?
Here's what happened.
Last week I got a text from someone called Pandora from the Independent who wanted to know if I was the same Stephen Pollard who had written David Blunkett's biography.
I get lots of calls from random journalists asking me about Blunkett and I try whenever possible to be helpful to them, so I replied to 'Pandora' saying it was indeed me.
Was I the same Stephen Pollard who had been on JDate? A friend of Pandora's had once received an email from a Stephen Pollard and she (Pandora) wondered if I was the same Stephen Pollard.
I replied to say it was indeed me but that I hadn't been on the site for ages.
I then got another text about being on JDate and so I sent a curt response and had no further communication with 'Pandora'.
And that was all I knew until on Tuesday the Jewish Chronicle rang me, having seen the diary story above. They wanted, they said, to print it.
I wouldn't bother any of you with this deeply unimportant story but for the fact that it shows the journalistic standards of the newspaper which regards Robert Fisk as a reliable writer about the Middle East - and that this non-story about my non-date has now appeared in two national newspapers, since it's also in today's JC. With one important difference. The JC story adds this:
But an indignant Pollard tells us that the quote was made up. He has been on JDate, he does not mind admitting, but why, he asks, is that news?
The JC's version is accurate, because that newspaper comforms to basic standards of accuracy by speaking to people from whom it runs quotes; and it doesn't distort the context of text messages.
MessageSpace
So did you pull?
If the "Jewish" editor of the Independent had been on JDate, perhaps he wouldn't have felt the need to marry out and also be responsible for one of the most anti-Israeli newspapers in the Western world. Perhaps a Jewish wife would have acted as a restraining influence on a man who was responsible for the publication of the most anti-Semitic cartoon in British newspaper history.
I object strongly to such men being compared to kapos. Kapos were in virtually all cases acting under the most terrible pressure. He does what he does only because he is a louse.
Finstere leyd zol nor di mama oyf im zen.
Who is Pandora? I think the world needs to know the identity of this lying little bitch.
"I object strongly to such men being compared to kapos. Kapos were in virtually all cases acting under the most terrible pressure"
Not to trivialise this but the editor of the Indy is also under terrific pressure albeit of a totally different and less terrifying nature but pressure all the same with losses for the Indy of "over £108 million" over 8 years [1]
I can see why he might be tempted to get a few more papers sold by publishing Fisk and printing palpably inaccurate stories about SP. As to being anti-Israel and anti-Jewish, well self-hating Jews are not a new phenomenon [2] . Anyway the Jews aren't unique - we have self-hating Brits at senior levels in almost every institution in the UK (cf BBC, FCO, Metropolitan Police, GLA etc etc)
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2006/07/10/cnindy10.xml&menuId=242&sSheet=/money/2006/07/10/ixcity.html
[2] http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/steven_rose/profile.html
It's not so much self-hating Jews, rather it's a paranoid, the whole world's against us, type of attitude. IMHO British people like failure/s and by and large are negative. This applies to all sections of the population.
Without seeing Stephen's original text messages, it's a bit hard to see the extent of the distortion. In any case, I can't see that any of it shows Stephen in a remotely poor light.
Still, distortion and fabrication is what newspaper diaries have always done. In Scoop, Evelyn Waugh says something to the effetc that a perfect newspaper diary should include, among other things, a significant error, an entirely false story and an apology. Something like that anyway, I haven't got the book to hand (with such slipshod standards, maybe I should bave been a newspaper diarist).