thanks for this beautiful piece of writing vanessa; the haitian people are extraordinary and inspiring... thanks again...............

Well I think it's hard to compete with the mainstream media for hard news, and I don't think you need to. The truth is in there always, it's just distorted by all the structural biases of corporate or elite media. The point is to analyse that. I would love to have a proper mainstream democratic socialist daily, but it ain't happening.

That's the thing, we get 1k hits a day most days, sometimes double that if something's popular. And our Google analytics are high for some reason beyond me. It's just a question of sustaining momentum I think, if you let it down for a bit, the flame can go out...

Good article by the way, I think Lakoff's approach is interesting intellectually, but kind of an impossible task to take on, we by definition have less money and resources than the Right.

It's an interesting point, and I don't get The New Standard. What did they spend that money on?

The Comment Factory has never earned more than 20 bucks. And we have to pay for the hosting etc. Everything we have done has been from volunteering -- i.e. Me (and Leah more recently) editing commissioning, Mog doing the technology, and Patrick Fry doing this design.

And I think it kicks the asses of loads of other monied sites.

A good one to look at is this Periscope Post thing I read about. It's got thousands of dollars and tonnes of people behind it, and yet I can't find anything worth reading on it.

I think if you take people's work seriously, like being rigorous over detail etc, most want to be read, so it's not a question of money... It's more just having the time to put aside.

Sorry I have read the interview. In the paper at the time, and more recently.

I have done no salvaging. It wasn't a new claim. It was in the article. Did you read it?

Ok I agree we are going round in circles. I have one question. How would I prove the assertion that she lost the recording on purpose? It would have to be her own testimony surely? Something which I'm guessing will not be forthcoming.

In the absence of that, I'm taking a guess at what happened, having evaluated the facts of the debacle. I can't get inside Ms Brocke's head, the only way to obtain incontrovertible proof.

I don't see how this has to do with inexperience. Journalists analyse and speculate on the motives of people all the time.

We can call an end to this though.

I cannot prove that Ms Brockes purposefully lost the recording of the interview, nor can you do the opposite. We have to take her word for it, which I cast doubt on, based on the fact I know that as a professional journalist if you do an important interview for a national newspaper (or any) you make sure just in case anything is contended afterwards that the recording is preserved.

If she did honestly lose it by recording over it, then that's terrible professional behaviour and a disrespect to her interviewee who has no recourse to check anything he is alleged to have said. In that respect, the Guardian was right to take it down. Do you disagree with that?

Besides that, the interview was a complete hatchet job. She had her angle when she went and would have got those results whatever was said.

Those things combined -- that Brockes doesn't seem unprofessional and obviously had an angle -- makes me doubt the official story.

“You're only 26 so maybe you're not expected to know much about the Balkans and the Bosnian war, but please try and take serious issues seriously.”

That’s a hollow point. Age doesn’t matter. I know enough about the Balkans and the Bosnian war. I just don’t know the specifics of the wrangle between Chomsky and Vuillamy. Is that too hard to understand?

“You've acknowledged that you insinuated that Brockes had fiddled her interview and disposed of the materials.”

Without being inside Brockes head, how can anyone disprove her claim?

“You demand evidence but you don't seem that bothered with it yourself. OK, say that you're not interested, by all means, but don't make out that you're a journalist, this is all playboy stuff.”

That’s complete rubbish. I didn’t say I wasn’t bothered with evidence. I’m not bothered with Kamm. He has a nasty history in which he has bullied and tried to end the career of a journalist Neil Clark for writing a bad review of his book. He supported the invasion of Iraq, and the massacres in Lebanon in 06 and Gaza in 08-09. He’s on a witch hunt.

I just don’t have time to debate with someone like that, I find his bullyboy tactics unsavoury. He can do his peacocking somewhere else.

“If you can't see that repeating untruths about crimes is secularly important and something slightly different from mania, God help the Financial Times.”

Of course it is important to be right about crimes. But it is also important to maintain a culture of open debate, where there isn’t just ad hominem attack flying around. Chomsky is mercilessly attacked for one comment in which he doubted one bit of reporting, and defending the right to free speech of a scholar. He might be wrong, I don’t know because I don’t have the requisite knowledge of the incident to judge, but it helps if we can just maintain a level of civility.

“You don't deal with the points people make, you slide over them by dealing with superficialities.”

I’d say that was Kamm’s tactic. I have asked for the opposite, I wanted to get behind all the hysteria and look at the claims made against Chomsky, which I was provided a link to. I’m still working my way through.

I assume that he kept the interview on his website as an example of ridiculous journalism.

Chomsky said he was "probably wrong", right? I don't have sufficient knowledge of the case to pass judgement.

Although I would say the mania of people on this board about this case and Chomsky's opinions on the Balkans does prove his point about how devout this debate has become.