October 13, 2005

Pinter's prize

Harold Pinter won the Nobel Prize for Literature today and so I was looking for stuff on him when I stumbled on his website. My favourite bit was when he wrote to the Guardian to rebut what Christopher Hitchens had said about him in the wake of 9/11. It's in a section headed "Misrepresentation in Media"
Dissenters put the record straight
Guardian Friday September 28, 2001

In the last two months two assertions have been attributed to me by the Guardian. Both were serious and both were false. The first was "Milosevic is innocent - Pinter" (August 1). I had said no such thing. The second was by Christopher Hitchens (September 26), stating "that if one of the hijacked aircraft had crashed into the Capitol or White House, I would have found myself reading Pinter or Pilger on how my neighbourhood had been asking for it". I have said no such thing. Nor has John Pilger. The Guardian has apologised to "all concerned" in its Corrections column and explained that they were both "editing errors". I believe that the existence of such highly damaging "editing errors" at such a critical time should be more widely known, which is why I have written this letter.
Harold Pinter
It gets better when Hitchens tries to distance himself from what he had written.
Having been informed that Harold Pinter had made an incautious statement in the wake of September 11, I included two disobliging references to him in my column. Discovering I had been wrongly apprised, I asked the relevant editor for the mentions of Harold to be removed. Only one was spotted and excised and so I have inadvertently done him an injustice. At a time like this, it is very important that there be no jeering or witch-hunting***, so I would be grateful if you would give this retraction the same prominence you gave my original remarks.
Christopher Hitchens
Washington DC
*** Tell that to Cindy Sheehan.

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