David Neiwert/Orcinus: C-SPAN plays the fool

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Though it no doubt would like to have put the controversy behind it, C-SPAN's Sunday broadcast of its BookTV program on Deborah Lipstadt's book on her ordeal by libel trial with Holocaust denier David Irving wound up only demonstrating that the concerns over its highly questionable approach were indeed well grounded.

The chief guest on the program was Washington Post reporter T.R. Reid, who, as noted earlier, was probably not the best-informed "expert" the program could have featured. As Reid himself told the New York Sun, he has not read Lipstadt's book.

"I haven't read her book. I told them that. I told C-SPAN I hadn't read the book," the reporter said. "They asked me to come and talk about a trial."

Why, one must ask, did a program about books ask Reid to come talk about a trial?