Thread by @jrschlosberg

John Ware claims he declined to sue me because I have a "young family". I'd love to believe such an act of benevolence. But I wonder why, in that case, he has steadfastly refused to answer the sort of questions I've been putting to him for 2 years:

jewishnews.co.uk/opinion-denied…

In the above article Ware laments that his rebuttals have been 'ignored'. I have a similar frustration, beginning more or less when he refused to address my pre-publication questions for this article in 2020:

novaramedia.com/2020/07/22/bbc…

In particular, the article revealed that in spite of the BBC's repeated claims that it offered a 'full right of reply' to Labour, aspects of that reply - which spoke directly to key sequences in the programme - were ignored...

One example concerned the programme's focus on an email by former head of strategy Seumas Milne in which he raised concern about the party disciplining significant numbers of Jewish members for antisemitism...

The programme ignored this point wholesale as well as Labour's reply on it, cherry picked 2 short phrases (10 words), and presented them to viewers (in reverse order) to suggest the email was simply an 'instruction' for a generic 'review' of processes

https://twitter.com/jrschlosberg/status/1285920436564439040

I've also asked Ware and the BBC why the programme made no mention of repeated efforts by Corbyn's office to encourage swifter and tougher action on antisemitism complaints...

efforts that were met by apparent obfuscation by factionally hostile staff and which seemed to directly contradict the programme's preferred narrative that it was the staffers who were being restrained by the leadership in their efforts to tackle antisemitism...

Evidence of this was in the public domain 3 months before Panorama aired and long before either the leaked Labour report, Forde Report, or Al Jazeera's #LabourFiles...

buzzfeed.com/alexwickham/le…

As recently as last month I posed the question again to Ware (who presumably is an avid reader of my tweets since he quotes them prolifically - albeit selectively - in his latest article)...

https://twitter.com/jrschlosberg/status/1582458563770793985

In his court testimony Ware claimed he was disappointed not to get the chance to respond directly to allegations about the programme in open court. I share this disappointment. Perhaps he'd be willing in that case to do so in a public debate with a fair and impartial anchor...

I would very much welcome the opportunity to engage in a reasoned and constructive discussion with Ware about what I think are the very serious journalistic failings of the programme, and to listen carefully and respectfully to his responses.