JOURNALISTS at The Guardian have apologised to a former Asian co-worker whose request for a boycott of a pub over racism, received little backing from his co-workers.
During his tenure at the Guardian – the two-century-old newspaper known for its liberal stance – the Asian employee was racially abused at the Coach & Horses pub in Farringdon. He was labelled a “P***”.
Vivek Chaudhary, whom made his name as a sports writer and who spent 15 years working for The Guardian, claimed he stopped going to the bar despite his colleagues’ knowledge that he had experienced racial abuse there.
According to the reports, newspaper staff members voted a motion this week in which they expressed; “We apologise unreservedly for the mishandling of this incident”. The journalists’ apology was made 15 months after Chaudhary’s complaint.
Chaudhary said: “I recall a senior editor informing us, money had been put behind its bar to celebrate an award”. “His comment to me was, ‘I know you don’t go there but you can stand outside, and we’ll pass you a pint’,” Chaudhary, 57, wrote.
He said he “could not stomach The Guardian fixating on the police’s canteen culture but failing to address its own”.
“What was particularly sickening was seeing colleagues report so expertly on police racism but then head off to the pub where they knew a fellow journalist did not drink because he had been racially abused,” he wrote.
The National Union of Journalists members at the newspaper decided to boycott the pub, but the decision only brought about a “vicious response,” according to Chaudhary, who also claimed that it “revealed deeper racial fault lines in the office.”
Chaudhary was also accused of being overly sensitive.
He said when the boycott was overturned later – those who voted went out “to celebrate, leaving me disgusted”.
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