January 2006
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Media Lens: Climate Change– “Welcome to Mars (or North Korea)!”
31 January 2006 — Media Lens The Great Media Silence on Causes and Solutions “One fundamental goal of any well-crafted indoctrination program is to direct attention elsewhere, away from effective power, its roots, and the disguises it assumes.” (Noam Chomsky, ‘Deterring Democracy’, Vintage, 1992, p.303) Continue reading
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How the BBC hollows out the news By William Bowles
A major problem anybody confronts when trying to sort fact from fiction in the news—aside from any confusion that occurs in trying to figure out if anything the mainstream media ‘reports’ is ‘news’ or merely opinion posing as fact—is the sheer volume and consistency of the coverage, which ultimately depends on specific words and phrases… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Paved With Good Intentions – Iraq Body Count – Part 1
On the rare occasions when the issue of civilian casualties is discussed in the mainstream media three words are invariably mentioned: Iraq Body Count (IBC). IBC describes itself as a project which maintains “the world’s only independent and comprehensive public database of media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq that have resulted from the 2003 military intervention… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Beyond The ‘Blog-O-Bots’ – Part 2
23 January 2006 — Media Lens In Part 1 of this alert we reviewed Robert Fisk’s observation that “more and more people are trying to find a different and more accurate narrative of events in the Middle East. It is a tribute to their intelligence that instead of searching for blog-o-bots or whatever, they are Continue reading
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The US-Iran ‘crisis’ – it’s the oil stupid By William Bowles
Anybody who doesn’t think control of energy sources is at the root of USUK actions in Iraq and elsewhere is suffering a serious (but hopefully treatable) delusional disease of denial. Even the most cursory exploration of the 20th century reveals the centrality of oil to pretty well every event of any significance, and in no… Continue reading
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Media Lens: The Point of No Return – Where James Lovelock Meets BP
16 January 2006 — Media Lens Billions Will Die The Independent and the Independent on Sunday (IoS) pride themselves on their environmental coverage. No doubt their editors will indicate today’s dramatic front page as a case in point. The paper depicts the Earth from space overlaid by a dramatic headline: ‘Green guru says: We are Continue reading
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The Iran ‘crisis’ – the bullshit continues By William Bowles
A story in the London Independent (14/1/06) is typical of the kind of propaganda war being waged by the UK and the US over Iran’s alleged programme to acquire nuclear weapons. In fact, the story is a model piece, worthy of dissection for the various messages it carries to a public which has been deliberately… Continue reading
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Prime (Time) Evil By William Bowles
Iran’s relations with its erstwhile partners in Europe seem to be hurtling downhill like a snowball out of control.– Bridget Kendall, BBC diplomatic correspondent, 27 October 2005 No prizes awarded for what inspired this classic piece of state propaganda but it speaks reams about the relationship between the state and the corporate media. After all,… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Beyond The ‘Blog-O-Bots’ – Robert Fisk On The British Media – Part 1
In the 1960s, psychologist Lester Luborsky used a camera to track the eye movements of subjects asked to look at a set of pictures. Some of the pictures were sexual in content – one showed the outline of a woman’s breast, beyond which a man could be seen reading a newspaper. The response of some… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Bambi Journalism – The Art Of Professional Naivety
9 January 2006 — Media Lens On October 20, 2005, we published a Media Alert, ‘Real Men Go To Tehran,’ www.medialens.org/alerts/05/051020_real_men_go_to_tehran.php We detailed media reactions after an anonymous British official had accused Iran of supplying Iraqi insurgents with sophisticated roadside bombs that had killed eight British soldiers and two security guards since May, 2005. Tony Continue reading
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Ahmed Chalabi – Petroleum’s Point Man By William Bowles
Convicted fraudster, bagman, carpetbagger, (dis)informant, playboy, opportunist, failed mercenary army leader, go-between creature of imperialism, of one thing we can be sure, Ahmed Chalabi is a survivor by virtue of (almost) always being on the ‘right’ side. Continue reading
The New Dark Age 