ON 19 AUGUST, Ted Honderich, retired UCL professor of philosophy, gave a lecture at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Prof. Honderich was and is the author of After the Terror, a book about that most original of subjects, the way forward in The Post 9/11 World. This book had already caused controversy when it was published in 2002, due to its acceptance of certain forms of terrorism under certain conditions as being conducive to creating a better world. To sum up its most controversial point, the Palestinians are justified in terrorism if the consequences are overwhelmingly good. For two years, Prof. Honderich has been vigorously denying that he is an anti-Semitist or a supporter of terrorism in general. Then he issued his speech. It can’t have been the freshest thing on the menu at Edinburgh: it was a rehash of an earlier speech he’d given in Boston in March, and the basic issues discussed seem to be the same as in After the Terror. Afterwards, he gave an interview that was covered by several media agencies including – unsurprisingly given the subject matter – Al-Jazeera. So far, so good.
Then, for reasons known only to themselves, some people decided that now, and only now, was the time to complain. Among those leading the charge was Sam Lebens of UCL Union Jewish Soc., who didn’t think the lecture should be posted up on UCL’s website for all to see, and said so. And so it was that in early September, the whiz kids in Malet Street decided that this minor controversy should be splashed all over London Student. Together with a story about a King’s lecturer with a thing about burkhas, this made for a nice two-page spread. Shame, then, that such a heavyweight story - by LS standards – was not more sensitively covered.
The person who covered it, UCL’s Dex Torricke-Barton (SSEES II), is a shady character: in LS he goes by such curious noms de plume as ‘Dex Barton-Torrick’ or ‘Dex Barton’. To us, though, he’ll always be our Dex. While one can appreciate the strain of being Pi Magazine’s news editor at the same time, it seems curious that he didn’t talk over such a big story with his boss at Pi, Rosheen Kabraji. Had he done so, she might have remembered her own coverage of earlier anti-Honderich sentiments in Pi last year, and how it was qualified with mention of Honderich denying any anti-Semitism. But apparently, he didn’t. It must have been a busy week.
A busy week too, no doubt, for LS news editors Angharad Davies and Chaminda Jayanetti. Having (presumably) read Dex’s article, they decided that it needed no checking (the job that section editors in real papers are paid to do) and also that it merited ther headline ‘HONDER- SICK’ and a strapline saying that Honderich branded terrorism against Jews “acceptable”. Never mind that the article didn’t back that up; never mind that the headline and strapline put the rather harmless retired prof somewhere between Heinrich Himmler and Jonathan King. Never mind also that Dex didn’t seem to have got approval from Sam for his quotations, given what happened next.
London Student duly appeared, on September 20 or thereabouts. It raised a few eyebrows, and not just because of the exciting new masthead. Prof. Honderich didn’t like the coverage of his views on page 2, and Sam Lebens didn’t like the way he’d been quoted. In fact, he considered cmplaining, but decided against an official complaint; instead he wrote to Prof. Honderich to distance himself entirely from the article.
Cue punctilious letter to LS editor Alexi Duggins from the prof ’s solicitors, one Farrer & Co, of 66 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, WC2. “It appears that Mr Barton-Torrick [sic] has not read, never mind understood, Prof. Honderich’s paper. Had he read and understood it, the clear implication in the articles that Prof. Honderich is anti-Semitic would not have been made”, the letter claimed. More importantly, it highlighted inaccuracies such as the fact that Prof. Honderich was not back at UCL this term (being retired) as page 1 suggests. In fact, most of the inaccuracies were on the part of Angharad Davies, who wrote the front page article.
For journalists, inaccuracy is a Very Bad Thing; it violates Article 1 of the Editor’s Code of Practice of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), which doesn’t bind student papers but is worth sticking to. For lawyers, however, inaccuracy is a Very Good Thing because it means a libel case. And this, predictably, is what Farrer & Co waved under Duggins’ nose if he didn’t immediately publish a reply exactly to Prof. Honderich’s requirements and pay his legal costs. What if Duggins had refused? Perhaps the the prof wouldn’t have been able to afford a protracted legal struggle (as libel cases can be).
But, bereft of an independent regulator and no doubt under pressure from his paymasters, Duggins caved in. The ensuing reply in the following issue on October 11 – complete with huge and unnecessary picture of Prof. Honderich staring out from page 5 – is far in excess of the PCC’s idea of a correction with due prominence, filling as it did the entire page. But this was not a proper newspaper, nor a clash of equals.
Everyone seems quite happy about it now though. Dex beams as he asserts that London Student has run up a sizeable legal bill, apparently ignorant of his failure to master some of the most basic tenets of journalism. Honderich appears pacified. And we can all relax in the assurance that the world of student media is just as badly run and regulated as ever.
