I'm a supporter of Eric S. Raymond, in a way, having purchased and enjoyed very much his New Hacker's Dictionary. Wonderful and fascinating work.
Wikipedia, in its article on Fisk, also mentions "fisking" and devotes a section of the main article to criticism of Fisk's reporting. As far as I can tell, it is the usual mudslinging that any reporter can expect if he is not singing from the Zionist hymnal and is more of a testament to his integrity and refusal to sell out than to any reportorial deficiencies. Here is the Wikipedia summary of the criticisms levelled against Fisk: (no quote marks hereafter, since everything that follows is a direct quote from wikipedia)
Fisk's reporting and commentary style has made him the object of criticism, to the extent that some bloggers[19][20][21] have coined the blogosphere term fisking ("a point-by-point refutation of a blog entry or a news story"). [22][23][24][25] Robert Fisk has been bitterly criticised by the Irish opinion columnist Eoghan Harris. Harris has written, "I think he does us a favour by being so forthright. For my money his analysis of Middle East politics is a first cousin to believing that aliens take away people in Flying Saucers".[2]
In an essay titled, "Why does John Malkovich want to kill me?", Fisk states that he and other journalists who criticize U.S. and Israeli policy in the Middle East will have to deal with hate mail and death threats. In that essay, he refers to actor John Malkovich's remark in May 2002 at the Cambridge Union Society, when asked who he would like to fight to the death, that he would rather just shoot Fisk.[26]
Guardian columnist Simon Hoggart (also a former Northern Ireland reporter), has leveled criticism at Fisk for being, "dreadfully pessimistic" since 9/11, because of his predictions that "the (actions of the) West (in response to 9/11) was about to bring total disaster upon its own head". Hoggart also cites claims brought forward in commentary submitted by Fisk over the years, specifically that "a group of British soldiers lost in the desert" meant that Desert Storm would fail, and that the bombing campaign during the Kosovo crisis would "only make things worse" . While acknowledging "his brilliant and vivid reporting", Hoggart stated in 2001 that Fisk's pessimism reveals judgement that is, "not just mistaken, but reliably mistaken".[27]
Ethan Bronner, in a New York Times review of Fisk's book, The Great War for Civilisation argues that Fisk is "most passionate and least informed about Israel," pursues his agenda "nearly to the exclusion of the pursuit of straight journalism" and allows his points to be "warped by his perspective."[28]. Sean Gannon, in an article for Frontpage agrees writing that Fisk's worldview is "shaped almost entirely by the highly-partisan historical and political perspectives Osama bin Laden described as 'neutral'... For Fisk the real axis of evil comprises, not the terror-sponsoring, WMD-seeking dictatorships of the world, but the ?Likudist? establishment in Jerusalem, Washington?s neo-Conservative cabals and the ?international Zionist lobby." [3]
Israeli historian Efraim Karsh, in a Commentary Magazine book review, commented on what he saw as Fisk's carelessness with facts:
? It is difficult to turn a page of The Great War for Civilisation without encountering some basic error. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, not, as Fisk has it, in Jerusalem. The Caliph Ali, the Prophet Mohammed?s cousin and son-in-law, was murdered in the year 661, not in the 8th century. Emir Abdallah became king of Transjordan in 1946, not 1921. The Iraqi monarchy was overthrown in 1958, not 1962; Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, was appointed by the British authorities, not elected; Ayatollah Khomeini transferred his exile from Turkey to the holy Shiite city of Najaf not during Saddam Hussein?s rule but fourteen years before Saddam seized power. Security Council resolution 242 was passed in November 1967, not 1968; Anwar Sadat of Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, not 1977, and was assassinated in October 1981, not 1979. Yitzhak Rabin was Minister of Defence, not prime minister, during the first Palestinian intifada, and al-Qaeda was established not in 1998 but a decade earlier. And so on and so forth.[29] ?
The pro-Israel Boston-based media watchdog CAMERA has criticised Fisk on a number of occasions for things he has written or said. In one case, they criticised Fisk for quoting an Israeli journalist to the effect that "[Israeli PM Menachem] Begin described [the Palestinians] in a speech in the Knesset as 'beasts walking on two legs'." According to CAMERA, Begin was not speaking about Palestinians in general but only about terrorists who harm Israeli children.[4][5]
CAMERA also accused Fisk of asserting that journalistic objectivity is "no longer relevant" to the Middle East and that instead journalists are "morally bound ... to show eloquent compassion to the victims."[30][31]
