The first formulation is ambiguous and can be taken to imply that perhaps he should be writing elsewhere.

It seems disingenuous to now say that it was only about the content.

There seems to be a cobncerted effort by Nick’s mates in the media to smear those who quite rightly took him to task. problem is it’s just making those friends look stupid with their untrue claims that Nick was either ‘bullied’ or that people ‘tried to silence’ him.

As, in the end, do people like me who don’t often read newspapers any more because there’s rarely much of interest in them – the accurate and objective reporting of news has withered on the vine and the dominance of the self-regarding commentariat is more than a trifle dull. Mr. Cohen might well look to the fact that, in the end, his readership pays his wages, and *write something worth buying the paper for*. Otherwise the lot of them will be out of a job soon.

The same goes for Stephen Glover – my parents have recently switched from the Independent to the Times after 26 years, precisely because of this sort of self-indulgent rubbish became too much to bear after Alton took over.

I recall a particularily good writer on the ‘Herald’ who completely lost the plot and ended up losing his job, largely because of readers comments.

It does happen.

I sent this in to the Indy this morning.

—
Stephen Glover writes his column (Media, 6th April) about a letter in The Observer, which challenged Nick Cohen’s claim that the liberal-left betrays and fails to engage liberal Muslims. The letter was an exercise in free speech, not in censorship: there was no intention whatsoever to try to get Cohen sacked. The answer to bad speech is more speech. The letter’s headline “Nick Cohen is wrong about the liberal-left” captures the challenge to his argument from a group of liberals and liberal Muslims engaged in exactly the type of work which Cohen claims never takes place. The rather gentle letter made a “comradely call on Nick Cohen to stop shouting and rejoin the conversation”. As part of his unguided missile polemic against the entire liberal-left for appeasing Islamist fascism, Cohen attacked the Fabian Society and ippr. We could easily document how much the Fabians have done to challenge Islamist extremism in our high-profile work on Britishness and integration. The Observer’s readers editor has written a column to say that Cohen’s accusation was unfounded. Nick Cohen is a talented polemicist, and should continue to write on any subject he chooses, but the value of free speech surely also includes the ability to challenge what is said in the public square, particularly if columnists make nonsense attacks on the democratic credentials of others.

Perhaps some posting here could start to think of practical matters and do a little less point scoring.

Not hard is it? Ignorance is strength…