What could be more Frontline Club than giving a platform to the associate editor of The Spectator, Toby Young, whose magazine had just trashed the Club and Vaughan Smith? Young took part in a Brexit debate. See the link to Vaughan Smith’s email to members after Young and reporter James Kirchick’s vicious pre-meditated “takedown” on a place that tries daily to do something for the greater good of journalism, especially in support of freelancers and local journalists and filmmakers. http://goo.gl/3OAAf9
The email exchange between Kirchick & Young, shared with us, tells you all you need to know about their intended malice.
We did get our opportunity to confront Young in our members’ room.
He said he’d support our right to reply in his magazine if the editor agreed but he wouldn’t guarantee it would be in the magazine as well as online.
I told Young what most offended me was his reporter Kirchick’s cheap shot description of war correspondents. I pointed to the display case with pictures of journalists who’d been killed on assignment, including our members Marie Colvin and Tim Hetherington.
I also pointed to the case of donated memorabilia that Kirchick had mocked in his piece. I said that he ought to make those comments to Salim Amin who donated the artificial arm designed for his father Mohamed Amin, the great African cameraman or to Kathy Eldon who gave us her son, Dan’s camera and journals. He was killed with 3 other journalists in Somalia.
Young said little but was polite and congenial.
