This is an odd little story. For some days now, the journalist Ali Abunimah has been raising concerns about the hiring of Joshua Treviño by the Guardian‘s US team, partially due to this tweet from June 2011:
Dear IDF: If you end up shooting any Americans on the new Gaza flotilla — well, most Americans are cool with that. Including me.
— Joshua Treviño (@jstrevino) June 25, 2011
As Abunimah noted yesterday in on Al Jazeera:
Among the passengers, whose killing by Israel Treviño endorsed, were poet and author Alice Walker, elderly Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein and several journalists, including Joseph Dana on assignment for The Nation.
Treviño responded with a blog post “clarifying” his tweet, expressing his horror that anyone would have thought he “urged the Israeli Defense Force to shoot Americans participating in the second incarnation of the Gaza flotilla”. Because he didn’t urge that. He was just cool with that if it happened.
But here’s where the story gets bizarre. After Abunimah’s story went live, the Guardian US press office contacted him, telling him:
Josh Trevino is not a correspondent for the Guardian. He is a freelance writer on contract to write opinion pieces. His articles will appear on the Guardian’s Comment is Free section of the site (https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/us-edition) along with articles from many other freelance writers. Thank you in advance for making this correction.
Except: one problem. As this screen capture shows, the Guardian edited its original press release. This is the new one:
Today the Guardian announced the addition of Josh Treviño to its commentary team in the United States. Formerly of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Treviño will be the newest commentator for the Guardian‘s growing US politics team through his column On Politics & Persuasion which launches on Monday 20 August.
And this is the old one:
Today the Guardian announced the addition of Josh Treviño to their editorial team. Formerly of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Treviño will be the newest Correspondent for the Guardian’s growing US politics team through his column “On Politics & Persuasion” which launches on Monday, August 20.
Now, there’s chutzpah: silently editing your own press release, then asking for a “correction” to reflect the new information.
As Abunimah points out, the current press release still gives the Guardian‘s US press officer as a contact for “bookings” for Treviño, which they don’t do for any old Cif contributor (full disclosure: I am any old Cif contributor).
It also ignores the fact that Treviño has written for the Guardian before: in February 2011, March 2012 and August 2012, according to his author page. It would be odd to press release “Person Who Has Written For Us Before is Still Writing”.
So what’s going on? I contacted the Guardian, and a spokesperson told me “this really was just a straightforward error, albeit an unfortunate one”, adding:
I can confirm that there has been no change in Josh Trevino’s terms of employment – the contract has not been altered and he has most certainly not been “demoted” as some articles have suggested. In fact, a simple mistake was made in the press release and this was later corrected. It was clumsy but there is no change to Josh’s position.
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