[Media-watch] Jonathan Freedland / Speaking / Stirling University / 22 October

[Darren Smith {Psych}]

This year's Hetherington Memorial Lecture at Stirling University will be
given by journalist, author and broadcaster Jonathan Freedland on 22
October. Freedland was named Columnist of the Year in the 2002 What the
Papers Say annual awards. He will give the annual public lecture, organised
by the Stirling Media Research Institute, on Wednesday 22nd at 5.30pm.
(http://www-fms.stir.ac.uk/news.html)

I believe Freedland's talk will be about "Media and Peace". If people can go
along, it could be worth getting Freedland to answer for his general
pro-Israel columns in the Guardian. For instance, here is a recent letter
sent in to the Guardian by John Pilger, in response to another typically
awful Freedland column:

--
> Having reported the Middle East war in 1973, I fail to recognise
> Jonathan Freedland's comic-book description of Israel "attacked"
> then and "about to be wiped off the map". Why, after all these
> years of watching Israel's huge, rapacious, nuclear-armed and
> US-backed military machine in action, must we read such nonsense?
> In 1973, Egypt, the only real Arab power, "attacked" its own territory,
> then occupied by Israel. Sadat wanted it back, as his limited war
> aims made clear.
>
> According to Freedland, the present Israeli regime is merely 
> "a clumsy prizefighter driven to fury by a fly buzzing around its
> ears". His description of the entire Palestinian resistance as
> buzzing flies would be shocking if it did not accurately reflect
> Israeli racism, itself a virulent form of anti-semitism.
>
> As for his "smart weapon" being the "negotiating table": no, that's
> not smart at all, as the blood-soaked Sharon regime owns the table.
> Only when a genuine international community discards the current
> grotesque double standard and demands that Israel end its brutal
> and illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories, will the
> murderous cycle stop.
> John Pilger
> London 
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,3604,1059901,00.html)