Career in Journalism
Interviewed on the same day and for the same job as Peter Mandelson, he started his media career as a television researcher on ITV's Weekend World, later becoming a producer. He moved to the BBC as founding editor of the On the Record in 1988. He moved to print journalism in 1995, working for The Independent and Independent on Sunday as chief leader writer, television critic, parliamentary sketch writer and columnist remaining there until the end of 2002.
For the New Statesman he wrote a pseudonymous column purporting to be the diary of 'Lynton Charles, MP'. Charles and Lynton are Tony Blair's middle names. He began contributing to The Guardian and The Observer in 2003, where he was a columnist and feature writer. Since June 2005, he has written a regular column for The Times and regularly writes columns for The Jewish Chronicle. He also presents or contributes to radio and television programmes, including the BBC's Have I Got News For You and BBC News 24. In 2004 he presented The Norman Way, a three-part BBC Radio 4 documentary looking at régime change in 1066.
In his columns, he takes an iconoclastic view, often upsetting former allies on the left, most notably through his strong support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Since the invasion he has taken the view that it liberated Iraqis, and he has downplayed the significance of Iraq's putative weapons of mass destruction, of which he wrote in 2003: "Those weapons had better be there". Aaronovitch has been critical of attacks on Jewish people who criticise Israeli treatment of the Palestinians.
In late 2005 Aaronovitch was co-author, with blogger Oliver Kamm and journalist Francis Wheen, of a complaint to The Guardian after it published an apology to Noam Chomsky for an interview by Emma Brockes in which she asserted that Chomsky denied the Srebrenica massacre. A Guardian readers' editor found that the newspaper had misrepresented Chomsky's position on the Srebrenica massacre, and his judgement was upheld in May 2006 by an external ombudsman, John Willis, In his report for The Guardian, Willis detailed his reasons for rejecting the argument put forward by Aaronovitch and the others.
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