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David Aaronovitch
David Aaronovitch at Guildford Skeptics in the Pub in July 2012
Born	David Morris Aaronovitch (1954-07-08) 8 July 1954 (age 70) Hampstead, London, England
Alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford University of Manchester
Occupation(s)	Journalist, broadcaster, author
Children	3
Parent(s)	Sam Aaronovitch Lavender Aaronovitch
Relatives	Owen Aaronovitch (brother) Ben Aaronovitch (brother)
Awards	Columnist of the Year Orwell Prize for Political Journalism

David Morris Aaronovitch (born 8 July 1954) is an English journalist, television presenter and author. He is a regular columnist for The Times and the author of Paddling to Jerusalem: An Aquatic Tour of Our Small Country (2000), Voodoo Histories: the role of Conspiracy Theory in Modern History (2009) and Party Animals: My Family and Other Communists (2016). He won the Orwell Prize for political journalism in 2001, and the What the Papers Say "Columnist of the Year" award for 2003. He previously wrote for The Independent and The Guardian.

Early life and education

Aaronovitch is the son of communist intellectual and economist Sam Aaronovitch, and brother of actor Owen Aaronovitch and author and screenwriter Ben Aaronovitch. His parents were atheists whose "faith was Marxism", according to Aaronovitch, and he is ethnically half Jewish and half Irish. He has written that he was brought up "to react to wealth with a puritanical pout".

Aaronovitch attended Gospel Oak Primary School until 1965, Holloway County Comprehensive (now Holloway School) until 1968, and William Ellis School from 1968 to 1972, all in London. He studied modern history at Balliol College, Oxford. Aaronovitch completed his education at the Victoria University of Manchester, graduating in 1978 with a 2:1 BA (Hons) in history.

While at Manchester, Aaronovitch was a member of the 1975 University Challenge team that lost in the first round after answering most questions with the name of a Marxist ("Trotsky", "Lenin", "Karl Marx" or "Che Guevara"). The tactics were a protest against the fact that the University of Oxford and Cambridge University were allowed to enter each of their colleges into the contest as a separate team, even though the colleges were not universities in themselves.

Aaronovitch was initially a Eurocommunist, and was active in the National Union of Students (NUS). There he got to know the president at the time, Charles Clarke, who later became Home Secretary. Aaronovitch himself succeeded Trevor Phillips as president of the NUS from 1980 to 1982. He was elected on a Left Alliance ticket.

Career in journalism

Aaranovitch began his media career in the early 1980s as a television researcher and later producer for the ITV programme Weekend World. In 1988, he began working at the BBC as founding editor of the political current affairs programme On the Record.

He moved to print journalism in 1995, working for The Independent and The Independent on Sunday as chief leader writer, television critic, parliamentary sketch writer and columnist until the end of 2002.

He began contributing to The Guardian and The Observer in 2003 as a columnist and feature writer. Aaronovitch's columns appeared in The Guardian's G2 section. His desire for his pieces to appear on the main comment pages, according to Peter Wilby, was reportedly vetoed by the section editor, Seumas Milne, although Aaronovitch himself does not know if Milne was involved in the decision. Since June 2005, he has written a regular column for The Times that he set to depart from in March 2023 following an announcement he made in January 2023 on Twitter. He has also been a columnist for The Jewish Chronicle. In addition, Aaronovitch has written for a variety of other major British news and opinion publications, such as the New Statesman. In addition, he has written for New Humanist, and is an "honorary associate" of its publisher, the Rationalist Association.

Aaronovitch 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.

Aaronovitch also hosted the BBC series The Blair Years (2007), which examined the prime ministership of Tony Blair. Some journalists were unimpressed with Aaronovitch or dismissed the series.

Political views

Aaronovitch said the case had "been made" for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and that he "reluctantly support military action," his "biggest reason" being "the failure of "vigilant containment" to help the people of Iraq." Since the invasion he maintains the view that it liberated Iraqis, and has played down the significance of Iraq's putative weapons of mass destruction. However, he wrote in 2003: "If nothing is eventually found, I – as a supporter of the war – will never believe another thing that I am told by our government, or that of the US ever again. And, more to the point, neither will anyone else. Those weapons had better be there somewhere." On 7 September 2018, he labelled people who ask him about the article "lamebrains". He remains a strong supporter of former Prime Minister Tony Blair.

In late 2005, Aaronovitch was co-author, with 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 had denied the Srebrenica massacre. A Guardian readers' editor found that the newspaper had misrepresented Chomsky's position on the Srebrenica massacre, and that judgement was upheld in May 2006 by an external ombudsman, John Willis.

In his column of 5 September 2013, Aaronovitch criticized the Labour leader Ed Miliband for allegedly providing no alternative to military intervention in Syria, after the use of chemical weapons in the Ghouta attacks of 21 August 2013. For Aaronovitch, "politically is not a presence at all, he is an absence" and "is neither hunter nor prey, he is scavenger. He is a political vulture."

During 2013, though Aaronovitch had vigorously supported the bombing campaigns against Iraq, Libya and Syria, he became the chairman of the human rights organisation Index on Censorship, succeeding Jonathan Dimbleby in the role.

In May 2014, he criticised Glenn Greenwald's involvement in the Edward Snowden NSA revelations, and characterised Greenwald as "a stilted writer of overlong, dishonest and repetitive polemics." In response to Aaronovitch's article in an interview with Media Lens Greenwald commented on "the hilarious, inane irony of having someone who publicly cheered for the worst political crime of this generation – the attack on Iraq – trying to deny other people “journalist” status on the ground that they seek to “change the world” rather than simply report."

In August 2014, Aaronovitch was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue.

In 2016, he endorsed the United Kingdom's continued membership of the European Union in the 23 June referendum. Aaronovitch later said that Brexit would eventually be reversed as the number of older voters, who typically voted for Britain to leave the European Union, gradually die.

On 1 July 2024, Aaronovitch sparked controversy after tweeting on X, "If I were Biden, I'd hurry up and have Trump murdered on the basis that he is a threat to America's security #SCOTUS".

Personal life

Aaronovitch lives in London with his wife and three daughters.

In 2011, Aaronovitch was the victim of a "medical accident" following routine surgery. He survived septicemia thanks to antibiotics, a treatment that was not available to his grandmother, who died of an infection following an insect bite in 1930. This experience led him to become an advocate for Antibiotic Research UK and the charity's work to promote proper antibiotic use and the development of new antibiotics.

Works

• Paddling to Jerusalem: An Aquatic Tour of Our Small Country (Fourth Estate, 2000) ISBN 978-1-84115-540-1
• No Excuses for Terror, a 45-minute documentary film that "criticizes how the anti-Israel views of the far-left and far-right have permeated the mainstream media and political discourse."
• Blaming the Jews, a 45-minute documentary film that evaluates anti-Semitism in Arab media and culture.
• God and the Politicians, 28 September 2005, a documentary film that looks at the important question of the increasing religious influence on politics in the UK
• Voodoo Histories: The Role of Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History, Jonathan Cape, 2009, ISBN 978-0-224-07470-4 Published in the US in 2010 by Riverhead Books, ISBN 978-1-59448-895-5
• Party Animals: My Family and Other Communists. Jonathan Cape, 2016.

References

1. "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 27 August 2017.
2. Barker, Martin (1992). Haunt of Fears: Strange History of the British Horror Comics Campaign, University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-0-87805-594-4
3. "The JDOV talks no.3 - David Aaronovitch: Choosing a faith". The Jewish Chronicle. 3 January 2017. Retrieved 18 May 2017.
4. Stephen Byers and the sad ghost of new Labour Archived 26 May 2010 at the Wayback Machine
5. The Old Camdenians Club. Retrieved 31 January 2015
6. Kelner, Simon (22 April 2013). "How did Manchester get so good at University Challenge? Fingers on the buzzers, please". The Independent. Retrieved 28 July 2016.
7. Wilby, Peter (16 April 2016). "The Thin Controller". New Statesman. Retrieved 17 April 2016.
8. Maher, Bron (16 January 2023). "David Aaronovitch to depart The Times after 18 years". Press Gazette. Retrieved 26 July 2023.
9. Cooke, Rachel (22 November 2007). "A great big rip-off". New Statesman. Retrieved 11 April 2020.
10. Lawson, Mark (17 November 2007). "The Blair Years: Economical with the candour". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 11 April 2020.
11. Aaronovitch, David (18 February 2003). "Dear marcher, please answer a few questions". The Guardian. Retrieved 23 July 2023.
12. Aaronovitch, David (11 February 2003). "War or peace - blood will still be spilled". The Guardian.
13. Aaronovitch, David (29 April 2003). "Those weapons had better be there ..." The Guardian.
14. Aaronovitch, David (7 September 2018). "If you search you will find that I responded to the first thousand unoriginal lamebrains who raised it on here. Then, about half a decade ago I thought, 'nah', and just muted".
15. Nelson, Fraser (5 September 2013). "David Aaronovitch: Syria vote shows Ed Miliband is a 'vulture' not a eader'". The Spectator. Archived from the original on 7 September 2013. Retrieved 5 September 2013.
16. The Chomsky Complaint David Aaronovitch's weblog, 20 March 2006. Archived 16 November 2006 at the Wayback Machine
17. Brockes, Emma (31 October 2005). "The Greatest Intellectual?", The Guardian (London); the background was that Chomsky complained that Brockes' article was defamatory in implying he denied the fact of the Srebrenica massacre of 1995. The article has since been withdrawn from the Guardian's website, but, as Chomsky is opposed to censorship, it remains available on the official Chomsky website Chomsky.info Archived 3 January 2006 at the Wayback Machine
18. Willis, John (25 May 2006). External Ombudsman Report, The Guardian.
19. Sellström, Åke; Scott Cairns; Maurizio Barbeschi (13 September 2013). "United Nations Mission to Investigate Allegations of the Use of Chemical Weapons in the Syrian Arab Republic – Report on the Alleged Use of Chemical Weapons in the Ghouta Area of Damascus on 21 August 2013" (PDF). United Nations. Archived (PDF) from the original on 18 September 2013. Retrieved 19 September 2013.
20. "UN Chemical Weapons Report Will Confirm Sarin Gas Used in Aug. 21 Attack". 16 September 2013. Archived from the original on 9 December 2013. Retrieved 17 September 2013.
21. David Aaronovitch "Ed Miliband is no leader. He is a vulture", The Times (subscription), 5 September 2013, cited by Fraser Nelson "David Aaronovitch: Syria vote shows Ed Miliband is a ‘vulture’ not a ‘leader’" Archived 7 September 2013 at the Wayback Machine, The Spectator (Coffee House blog), 5 September 2013
22. "Winners – Index Awards 2013", Index on Censorship, 21 March 2013
23. David Aaronovitch "After Snowden, do you feel less safe?" New Statesman, 28 May 2014
24. "Scottish independence: Celebrities call for Scots No vote", BBC News Scotland, 7 August 2014
25. Peter Dominiczak "Sir Mick Jagger joins 200 public figures calling for Scotland to stay in the UK", The Sunday Telegraph, 10 August 2014;
26. "Party Animals: Brexit could drag all of Europe into disaster". The Times. 11 February 2016. Retrieved 4 January 2017.
27. "BBC Two - Newsnight, 'The Brexit generation is dying out'". bbc.co.uk. 4 January 2018. Retrieved 13 January 2020.
28. "BBC host jokes that Biden should 'have Trump murdered'". NewsNation. Retrieved 2 July 2024.
29. "About David Aaronovitch, from penguin.com". Archived from the original on 30 December 2013. Retrieved 2 September 2013. Not found 21 July 2022
30. David Aaronovitch video from Antibiotic Research UK AGM 2017, retrieved 8 September 2022
31. "No excuses for terror" Archived 25 November 2006 at the Wayback Machine, Honest Reporting, September 2006.
32. "Debunking conspiracy theories", BBC Breakfast, 8 May 2009. Not found 21 July 2022

External links

• David Aaronovitch at IMDb
• David Aaronovitch on Twitter
• David Aaronovitch's Guardian; columns
• David Aaronovitch column in The Times
• David Aaronovitch on Journalisted
• Interview with Aaronovitch on "New Books in History"
• David Aaronovitch blog

• 1954 births
• Living people
• People educated at Holloway School
• People educated at William Ellis School
• Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford
• Alumni of the Victoria University of Manchester
• Presidents of the National Union of Students (United Kingdom)
• BBC newsreaders and journalists
• Critics of conspiracy theories
• English columnists
• English humanists
• English male journalists
• English people of Irish descent
• English people of Jewish descent
• Former Marxists
• People from Hampstead