Special Issue On the Irving-Lipstadt Libel Trial
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The Internet Anti-Fascist: Saturday, 29 January 2000
Vol. 4, Number 9 (#383)
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[Introduction to the Dispute]
Jennifer Rosenberg (Holocaust Newsletter)
27 Jan 00
The Holocaust Libel Trial
Some believe it will end the controversy; others believe it will legitimize
Holocaust denial.
On Tuesday, January 11, 2000, one of the most important trials regarding
the Holocaust began. In this landmark case, an alleged Holocaust denier,
David Irving, is suing historian Deborah Lipstadt and her publisher,
Penguin Books Ltd., for libel.
After years of research on a subject many of her colleagues didn't think
should be taken seriously, Deborah Lipstadt published her book, Denying the
Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory in 1993 through Plume, a
subsidiary of Penguin Books. In her book, Lipstadt detailed the history and
growth of Holocaust denial from the end of World War II to the present and
included information about the Institute for Historical Review, the gas
chamber controversy, and the recent prevalence, via ads, of Holocaust
denial on college campuses. Lipstadt also dealt with specific people,
including David Irving, whom she called "Holocaust deniers" - an accusation
that Irving denies.
Though Lipstadt's book Denying the Holocaust was published in the United
States in 1993, it was its printing in the United Kingdom (where the trial
is being held) in July 1994 that made these proceedings possible.
The suit began in 1996 when Irving named Deborah Lipstadt, Penguin Books
Ltd., and four Waterstone's bookstore employees (David Crank, Alistair
Babb, Stanley Bromley, and Colin Orr) as defendants.
Irving explained in 1996 why he was suing the bookstore employees:
When I published my book on Goebbels, I visited 900 shops in England. These
four gentlemen were particularly offensive, saying, "We have given
instructions that our store will never stock your book." That's why they
have found themselves singled out in this way. These particular gentlemen
took the decision to sell her book.* The booksellers have since settled
out of court; thus the defendants in the current suit are Deborah Lipstadt
and Penguin Books Ltd.
The case is being heard at the High Court in London, in Court 73. On the
first day of the trial, there was standing room only as the judge, without
a jury, prepared to hear the case. The trial began with opening statements
from both sides: from David Irving, who is representing himself, and from
Richard Rampton, QC (Queen's Counsel), who is representing the defendants.
In a British libel suit, the plaintiff, David Irving, will be responsible
for proving that his reputation has been harmed by the alleged libelous
words in Lipstadt's book. On the other hand, the defendants, Deborah
Lipstadt and Penguin Books Ltd., will have to prove the accuracy of the
statements in the book.
David Irving has enumerated the specific sections of Lipstadt's book that
he argues are libelous in his "Statement of Claim" (Irving's site). A few
selections include:
Page 181: "Irving is one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust
denial. Familiar with historical evidence, he bends it until it conforms
with his ideological leanings and political agenda. A man who is convinced
that Britain's great decline was accelerated by its decision to go to war
with Germany, he is most facile at taking accurate information and shaping
it to confirm his conclusions."
Page 179: "In his foreword to his publication of the Leuchter Report,
Irving wrote that there was no doubt as to Leuchter's 'integrity' and
'scrupulous methods.' He made no mention of Leuchter's lack of technical
expertise or of the many holes that had been poked in his findings. Most
important, Irving wrote, 'Nobody likes to be swindled, still less where
considerable sums of money are involved.' Irving identified Israel as the
swindler, claiming that West Germany had given it more than ninety billion
deutsche marks in voluntary reparations, 'essentially in atonement for the
'gas chambers of Auschwitz.'' According to Irving the problem was that the
latter was a myth that would 'not die easily.'"
Page 161: "Scholars have described Irving as a 'Hitler partisan wearing
blinkers' and have accused him of distorting evidence and manipulating
documents to serve his own purposes. He is best known for his thesis that
Hitler did not know about the Final Solution, an idea that scholars have
dismissed. The prominent British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper depicted
Irving as a man who 'seizes on a small and dubious particle of 'evidence,''
using it to dismiss far-more-substantial evidence that may not support his
thesis. His work has been described as 'closer to theology or mythology
than to history,' and he has been accused of skewing documents and
misrepresenting data in order to reach historically untenable conclusions,
particularly those that exonerate Hitler. An ardent admirer of the Nazi
leader, Irving placed a self-portrait of Hitler over his desk, described
his visit to Hitler's mountaintop retreat as a spiritual experience, and
declared that Hitler repeatedly reached out to help the Jews."
David Irving is seeking a yet undisclosed amount for "damages and
aggravated damages" and a ban on both Lipstadt and Penguin Books from
publishing Lipstadt's book, Denying the Holocaust, and other defamatory
words against Irving. The trial is expected to last three months.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Irving vs. Lipstadt & Penguin Books
Dan Yurman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5th Update: 27 Jan 00
Where this file and the contents described below can be found.
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/i/irving-david/press/irving-v-
lipstadt.html
Permission granted to post for non-profit purposes on any public data
network, web site, or mailing list. This is an independent index and
comments on the press coverage of the trial. The publication of this
article on a web site or mailing list does not imply endorsement of that
site or list's content by the author of this article.
*** Background on the Trial
In her book "Denying the Holocaust; The Growing Assault on Truth & Memory,"
Emory University Professor Deborah Libstadt accuses David Irving, a British
writer, of skewing and misrepresenting the facts regarding the Holocaust.
Irving denies that six million people died in the Holocaust. He denies that
the Nazi's gassed Jews in concentration camps.
Irving is now suing Lipstadt and her publisher Penguin Books for defamation
in a British court. The trial began January 11th and has attracted
worldwide press coverage. Under British law the burden will be on Lipstadt
to prove she did not "defame" Iriving in her book.
Proving the Holocaust, which is the theme of the trial, will focus a
spotlight on the issues and the deniers. The outcome of the trial, which
is expected to take 12 weeks, will likely have impacts on the world's
perceptions of the history of the Holocaust for years to come.
The cutting edge of the trial, which is being heard before a judge but no
jury, will likely be brought to bear on four key issues.
* Descriptions of Irving's extremist views and descriptions of his
statements about the Holocaust, [Lipstadt]
* Documentation of Irving's manipulation of historical source material to
support his denier viewpoint, [Evans]
* The truth of the real number killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust, and
* Hitler's role in the 'final solution,"which Irving categorically denies.
*** How to Use this Update
This is one of a series of updates on media coverage of the libel trial
taking place in London. The updates will continue weekly, or more
frequently, as long as the trial is in progress. The trial proceedings
take place Monday through Thursday each week. It began on January 11,2000,
and is expected to take 12 weeks.
The information in this posting consists of pointers or URLs, e.g., web
site addresses, which contain news media reports about the trial. This
update does not itself contain any content from these web sites, only their
addresses on the Internet. The objective of this update is to provide the
reader with access to information. Ultimately, the decision to read about
this trial is up to you. If you are interested, point your web browser to
the addresses listed in this article.
*** Online Archive & Sources
--- Lipstadt
Deborah Lipstadt, on the advice on her attorney, has said very little to
the press. There is no "official" website carrying material from her or
the defense team.
--- FTP Archive Holocaust Denial on Trial
Media Clips; Main indexes
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/i/irving-david/press/irving-v-
lipstadt.html
This online archive of media clips include a robust catalog of much of the
UK, US, and Jewish press coverage of the trial.
You can view each of the files in this directory with any web browser. All
of the files are plain text. This is an archive of selected media clips,
mostly from the UK press, about the trial. As the trial is taking place in
London, this is good source material. US coverage is included when it is
available. You can download these clips using the FTP protocol built into
your web browser or with a third party software package like WS-FTP.
--- Web Portal
http://holocaust.about.com/
This web site includes a very good selection of US and UK media clips
archive about the trial. It includes plain English summary updates about
the trial proceedings, source materials from the principals, moderated
forum for comments from readers, and a wealth of reference materials and
web links about the Holocaust. All materials are in HTML format so you can
read them with any web browser.
-- David Irving's web sites
There is a very large volume of source material related to the trial at
these sites. Irving is the plaintiff in the case. All sites listed below
are accessible with your web browser.
website: http://www.fpp.co.uk
daily newsletter: http://www.fpp.co.uk/online.html
two year dossier on the action with all the pleadings, etc.:
http://www.fpp.co.uk/Legal/Penguin/PenguinIndex.html
special trial link: http://www.fpp.co.uk/trial
daily transcripts from the court reporter service:
http://www.fpp.co.uk/docs/trial/transcripts.html
*** Update on Media Coverage
--- Jewish Press
Coverage for the U.S. and international Jewish press, including Israeli
newspapers, is based for the most part on the Jewish Telegraphic Service,
http://www.jta.org/ Several times a week JTA's web site includes in-depth
news reports on the trial from Douglas Davis, a London-based correspondent.
--- British Press
The British press has covered the trial extensively. Daily wire service
reports filed by the end of each day the trial is in session are available
at http://www.lineone.net/ Use that web site's search engine to find
current and back issues of the coverage. Seach on "Lipstadt" without the
quote marks. The last three articles about the trial are usually
bookmarked at the site of the current one.
Courtroom trial reports have also appeared on a daily basis on the British
Broadcasting Corp. website at http://news.bbc.co.uk/ All previous BBC
pages about the trial are bookmarked at that site along with the newest
coverage, or it can be retrieved using the BBC web site's internal search
engine. The content is rich in graphics.
The Guardian and Observer have established a special online section of
coverage about the trial http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/irving/ All
coverage by these two papers is available at this site. It also offers a
special text-only web page for each high graphics version making for easy
download or printing. The Guardian's coverage is superb, and includes
guest writers like Holocaust historian David Cesarani, who also wrote a
special column for the TIMES of London. A single web page at the URL noted
above organizes all coverage to date and links to other sites such as
Nizkor http://www.nizkor.org/
The Electric Telegraph has a searchable archive of all trial coverage.
Access is free but registration is required at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
Use the paper's search engine to find its coverage of the trial. The
Telegraph has covered the trial on a daily basis since it started on
January 11th. Searching the site on "Lipstadt" will retrieve all the
paper's coverage to date.
The Times of London has provided steady coverage of the trial by reporter
Tim Jones and others. UK Coverage has also appeared in the Independent,
Financial Times, London Times, and the Scotsman, Ediburgh. Also of note is
the regular coverage by the Irish Times at by reporter Rachel Donnelly.
http://www.the-times.co.uk/
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/
http://www.ireland.com/
http://www.independent.com.uk/
http://www.ft.com/
http://www.scotsman.com/
--- US Coverage Televison
Television coverage in the U.S. includes a major package by CNN in its "CNN
& Time" program aired Sunday 01/16/00 at 2100 HRS EST. A full transcript of
the program can be found at http://cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0001/16/impc.00.html
Otherwise, CNN relied on Reuters for its coverage of the 1st week of the
trial. ABC News has included brief coverage of the trial at its web site
http://www.abcnews.com/
--- U.S. Print
The Atlantic Magazine issue for February 2000 features a major piece on the
trial by D.D. Guttenplan a former Newsday reporter now based in London.
The February issue is on newstands now, and it is also online in four
parts. This is the cover story with profiles of the author and the
magazine's interest in the trial within as well as the article itself.
The magazine's website is http://www.theatlantic.com/ The cover story is
titled "Holocaust on Trial," and in a sub-head calls to the readers'
attention, "In a suit in Great Britain a writer with disturbing views makes
historical truth the defendant."
Only the briefest of notices about the trial have appeared in Newsweek and
Time. U.S. News & World Report has a thought piece on the trial titled
"Debating Degrees of Evil," by Thomas K, Grose at http://www.usnews.com/
--- U.S. Newspapers
In the U.S. the Atlanta Constitution is covering the trial with in-depth
reports from London-based correspondent Bert Roughton, Jr. These can be
found at http://www.accessatlanta.com/partners/ajc/ Atlanta is Lipstadt's
home town where she teaches at Emory University http://www.emory.edu/
Opening day U.S. coverage of the trial from London includes the New York
Times, http://www.nytimes.com/ Los Angeles Times,http://www.latimes.com/
and Chicago Tribune http://www.chicagotribune.com/
I have not found any coverage published in the Washington Post nor in USA
Today. While both papers have correspondents in London, neither has filed
so far, and their editors have apparently not chosen to use wire service
stories from AP or Reuters in their place. Many US papers have used wire
service copy including the Memphis Commercial Appeal, Ft. Worth Telegram,
and the New Orleans Times Picayune, among many others.
The Chicago Tribune, like the other major papers, has been silent since the
11th of January, the opening day of the trial, but then published a major
update on 01.25.00.
The LA Times' initial coverage of the trial, reported by Kim Murphy of that
paper, and published 01/07/00, got a hostile reception from the Jewish
community in Southern California. The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles ran
three special articles criticizing the LA Times including one by noted
Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum and another by the Journal's
editor-in-chief. http://www.jewishjournal.com/cover.berenbaum.1.14.0.htm
Berenbaum called the LA Times article "misleading, inaccurate, distored,
and uninfomed reporting." Journal editor Gene Lichtenstein wrote that the
LA Times coverage "inflamed some members of LA's Jewish community."
http://www.jewishjournal.com/gene.1.14.0.htm No other US coverage has
attracted such numbers of negative response.
Canadian papers in Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa, and the Canadian
Broadcasting Service, have run coverage from their UK counterparts or wire
service copy.
--- Voices National Public Radio 01.11.00
http://search.npr.org/cf/cmn/cmnps05fm.cfm?SegID=69035
Real Audio is required to hear this opening day report. National Public
Radio reported live from outside the courtroom on opening day of the trial.
Irving has made himself available to the press at will, but Lipstadt, on
advice of her lawyers, has made very few comments to the press, and all
were taken before the trial got underway.
*** Search Engines
If you want to search for coverage of the trial on your own, here are some
suggested search engines. These are the tools I use to write this report.
Excite at http://www.excite.com/ offers a news clipping service. It is
free, but registration is required before you can set up news tracking.
The performance of this free service with US papers is hit-or-miss. It
does well with some sources, but not well at all with others. Excite does
a good job of indexing the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the Jerusalem Post,
and Ha'aretz.
Northern Lights at http://www.northernlight.com/ got off to a slow start
indexing the US and UK press. Nothing showed up in its new, and apparently
still experimental, "Alert Service" for the first three weeks of the trial
now in progress. This week (01.25.00.) a strong stream of citations began
to appear. Many articles from the UK press are included in the engine's
"Special Collection," which can be retrieved for free or for a fee of from
$1-3 per article. Nothern Lights is a good search engine for web-based
material collecting "hits" into topical folders which makes reviewing your
results much easier.
SNAP at http://www.snap.com/ offers a European news page. You still have
to search the individual sites, but at least it organizes the URLs for you.
Many European news media are relying on Reuters in the UK as well as the
French and German wire services.
LYCOS offers an alternative web browser called Neoplanet at
http://www.neplanet.com/ which encodes many web sites in the news category
and has a remarkably efficient news web crawler, at Lycos
http://www.lycos.com/ for turning up clippings on the trial.
YAHOO carries both the Associated Press and Reuters at
http://www.yahoo.com/. You can set up alerts for free in the news pages and
have them emailed to you. To do this you must register, for free, by
creating a "my yahoo" web page with your preferences. Check Yahoo's UK
pages for trial coverage.
The Forward at http://www.forward.com/ is the online version of one of
America's oldest Jewish newspapers. Its home page offers a long list of
US, UK, and Jewish press web sites in both countries and in Israel. If you
don't mind slogging through the web sites one-at-a-time, it is a good
place to start your search.
COPERNIC is commercial software that crawls the web, and can hit most US
and UK news web sites. You can download a free trial version at
http://www.copernic.com/ The full version is a mere $30(US). This is
what I use to check the major dailies in the US each morning, and major
online news sites later in the day. It depends on the dailies for their
indexes, so try searching on "holocaust" rather than "Lipstadt" or "Irving"
to get the best results.
Summary: no search engine or meta web crawler is substitute for going to
each major media web site and checking it directly.
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[Introduction to Yurman's Followup]
Ken McVay (Nizkor)
29 Jan 00
This brief article examines breadth or reach of press coverage in
newspapers covering the libel trial involving issues of Holocaust Denial,
e.g., Iriving vrs. Lipstadt. Some of the discussion traffic on the
Internet has suggested the outcome of the trial, if in Irving's favor,
would have "worldwide impact." Indded, these postings have gone beyond a
prediction of the trial's outcome and claimed Irving's views already have a
"worldwide" readership. Not so, as I describe in this analysis.
You are welcome to share this with others or post it on any public data
network.
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The "Worldwide" Media Attention to Irving vrs. Lipstad?
Dan Yurman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
28 Jan 00
It has been said on some Internet postings recently that the libel trial of
Irving vrs. Libstadt taking place in London has attracted "world-wide"
attention in terms of newspaper coverage. In terms of geographic coverage
this is only partially true, and in terms of absolute circulation numbers
it is not true at all.
Consider this -- the top six circulation newspapers in the world are not
published in Europe or North American, which is where many of the readers
interested in the trial live. The papers I refer to, and there are six,
are all Japanese having a combined readership, according to Editor &
Publisher http://www.mediainfo.com/ , of about 40 million readers per day,
though obviously some readers are taking more than one paper per day.
The Yomiuri Shimbun has 14.5 million readers, the Asahi Shimbun has 12.6
million readers, the Mainichi Shimbun has 5.9 million readers and so on.
No other group of papers in the world has this combined reach in terms of
circulation, and none of them have published anything on the trial. That
pretty much takes care of the "worldwide" issue, but it gets more
interesting as you probe the issue.
While figures for papers in China are not as certain as those in the US,
two papers there, ranked in the top 10, have a combined circulation
estimated to be 11 million readers. The Chinese wire service, which would
reflect Chinese newspaper reporting, has not published anything about the
trial in its English newsfeeds. The German paper Bild with 5.7 million
readers is the only paper not in the Pacific Rim that is also ranked by
Editor & Publisher in the top 10. By comparison, the Wall Street Journal
has about two million readers. It is ranked 19th in worldwide circulation,
and it is the top ranked US paper.
So far I haven't turned up a single dot of ink in any of these papers about
the trial. USA Today, which is ranked 23rd, also has about the same
cirulation as the WSJ, and also has not even run wire service copy about
the trial. The first UK paper to appear in the circulation rankings is the
Daily Mail London, ranked 12th, with circulation of nearly two-and-a-half
million. It has run just two stories on the trial and both were brief.
It isn't until you get to the Los Angeles Times, ranked 41st out of the top
100 papers worldwide, with just over a million circulation, that you find a
paper that has seriously covered the proceedings. It is interesting to
note that the first LAT outing on the trial generated a significant
negative response in the southern California Jewish community. Since then
the LAT has run one more major story and an 'op ed' piece by one of the
critics of the first piece.
Closely matching the LAT in circulation and rank are the New York Times
(42nd) and the Telegraph (44th) in London. The NYT has run one story under
one of its reporter's bylines, on 'op ed' piece, and one AP feed. The
Telegraph London has posted nearly a dozen articles on the trial on its
website for the 'Electric Telegraph,' and is clearly the most interested of
all the papers noted so far in terms of trial coverage.
It's a long fall in the rankings to the next highest circulation paper
covering the story. The Times London is ranked 71st matched by the
Washington Post (73). Both have less than one million circulation. By
comparison The Times of India (62) and Al Ahram in Egypt (53) have higher
circulation numbers, though not by much when compared to the Japanese
numbers. The Times London has covered the trial almost daily. The Times
of India and Al Ahram have used wire sevice copy - once each. So far there
has been no coverage in the WP either from its London bureau or from the
wires.
Bringing up the rear in the top 100 in terms of US papers that have covered
the trial we have the Chicago Tribune ranked 89th with circulation of about
700,000 which has published just two articles in the three weeks since the
trial proceedings got underway.
If we put these numbers in perspective, the trial is not a "worldwide"
phenomenon. What you get are three papers ranked in the first half of the
40th percentile ranking worldwide as the ones with the most coverage.
After that you have to go to the 70th percentile worldwide to get another
newspaper with significant interest in the trial.
Most significantly, two top ranked papers within the US, USA Today and the
Washington Post, have ignored the trial despite coverage in other US papers
and on the wires. The Boston Globe ran wire service copy once. Newsday
ran one story before the trial but has published nothing since. The
Atlanta Constitution, published in Professor Lipsadt's home town, with
ciruclation of around 400,000, has published more reports about the trial
than any other US paper.
Interestingly, many smaller US papers, e.g. with less than 400,000
circulation, have run wire service copy, and often more than once. These
include the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the New Orlean Times Picayune, the Ft.
Worth Star-Telegram, the Oklahoma City Oklahoman, the Memphis Commercial
Appeal, and the Salt Lake City Tribune
The trial is important, both for the way history is done, and for the
participant, but it isn't that important, so far, to the top
papers on the globe are concerned. That doesn't mean it isn't important
to the participants, and that there isn't significant interest
geographically, e.g., US, UK and Europe. However, in absolute terms there
are more sports fanatics in Japan reading newspapers there than in the rest
of the globe reading about anything else. People claiming "worldwide
attention" for their cause should think about this the next time they get
in front of the cameras.
* * * * *
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is
distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and
educational purposes only.
__________________________________________________________________________
FASCISM:
We have no ethical right to forgive, no historical right to forget.
(No permission required for noncommercial reproduction)
- - - - -
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