Journalists at the Guardian and Observer need a break from all the animosity surrounding the latter’s sale – which hit new heights last week when Guardian editor-in-chief Katherine Viner asked a meeting of angry hacks if them if they were giving the Scott Trust’s Norwegian chair Ole Jacob Sunde a hard time “because he is foreign” and chided a young female reporter for asking a “sexist” question about CEO Anna Bateson’s superyacht meeting with James Harding, founder of the Observer’s new owner Tortoise.
In order to relax, they might consider buying tickets to an event to be held elsewhere in King’s Place, the building that also houses their offices, on December 16. Rather embarrassingly, star attraction is the food writer and broadcaster Jay Rayner, who quit the Observer in November and sent an email to friends attacking Viner for failing to stand up to antisemitism among Guardian staff.
“For years now being Jewish, however non-observant, and working for the company has been uncomfortable, at times excruciating,” he wrote. “Viner likes to deny it but there are antisemites on the daily’s staff and she has not had the courage to face them down.”
