Media Lens
Excellent UK-based media analysis
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‘Israel Says’ Is Not Journalism
Late last Sunday, a targeted Israeli attack killed prominent Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif alongside several colleagues. They were in a tent outside the main gate of Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital. Also killed were Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal, together with freelance cameraman Momen Aliwa and freelance… Continue reading
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Burying Genocide – The BBC, Gaza And The Role Of The UK
One might naively think that a national public-service broadcaster would inform the public about matters of national interest. Surely no reasonable person would deny that the public has a right to know what the government is doing in our name. But, over and above this basic requirement, a responsible public-service broadcaster should also scrutinise the… Continue reading
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The ‘Selfie Yacht’ – Greta Thunberg And The Merchants Of Smear
If there’s one thing the ‘impartial’, ‘independent’ ‘free press’ can’t stand, it’s someone – citizens, journalists, politicians, celebrities, anyone – protesting the West’s wars. Continue reading
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Genocide in Gaza: The BBC’s Self-Inflicted ‘Trust Crisis’
BBC News regularly proclaims its supposed editorial principles of fearless, independent, impartial, fair and accurate journalism. In a January 2023 speech to the Whitehall & Industry Group in London, then BBC Chairman Richard Sharp boasted that BBC journalism is the ‘global gold standard’ of credible news reporting. Continue reading
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Würden Wir Alle Deutsch Sprechen! The Case Against Fighting For Sir Keir Starmer
Tuesday, 18 March 2025 — Media Lens Former BBC Newsnight diplomatic editor Mark Urban covered wars in Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. He has written books with titles like ‘Generals: Ten British Commanders Who Shaped the World’, ‘Rifles: Six Years with Wellington’s Legendary Sharpshooters’ and ‘The Tank War: The British Band of Brothers’. He has… Continue reading
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‘A Dagger To The Heart’: BBC Credibility Nosedives Even Further
The BBC’s withdrawal of the powerful documentary, ‘Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone’, epitomises how much the UK’s national broadcaster is beholden to the Israel lobby. Continue reading
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Orange Peace
In January 1961, in his farewell address, US president Dwight D. Eisenhower warned that, as a result of the Second World War and the ensuing Cold War, the United States had ‘been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions’. Continue reading
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Media Silent Over Israel’s Use Of The ‘Hannibal Directive’ on 7 October 2023
In an interview with Israeli television last Thursday, Yoav Gallant, the former Israeli defence minister, confirmed that the so-called ‘Hannibal Directive’ was implemented by Israeli military forces on 7 October 2023, the day of attacks by Hamas and other Palestinian fighters. Continue reading
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Manufacturing Consent For Regime Change In Syria
Monitoring corporate media performance for 25 years – week after week, war after war – has done little to diminish our dismay at the robotic automaticity of ‘mainstream’ enthusiasm for US-authored regime change. Continue reading
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‘Burn In Hell’ Henry Kissinger – Social Media Warrior Mode And The Case For Compassion
Left-progressives writhe in agony when the usual suspects to the right of the ‘mainstream’ media ‘spectrum’ continue to pour bile and abuse on the likes of Howard Zinn, Edward Herman, Harold Pinter, Robert Fisk and John Pilger in the immediate aftermath of their deaths. Continue reading
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Buried Out Of Sight
Imagine an experienced Ukrainian surgeon breaking down in front of a committee of British MPs as he related how Russian forces had been deliberately targeting Ukrainian children. Continue reading
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‘Part Of The Mechanism Of Genocide In Palestine’: The Complicity Of ‘Mainstream’ Media
Propaganda often works in subtle ways. Consider a BBC News headline on its website on 3 October: ‘Israeli air strike kills 18 people in occupied West Bank’ This was noteworthy in that, for once, the BBC had made it clear that Israel was responsible for killing people, rather than using a contorted form of wording… Continue reading
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Elite Fear Of The Public: Ukraine, Gaza and Assange
It is a historical fact that powerful elites do not wish to be diverted from pursuing their selfish interests by the public. Minimal, unthreatening expressions of dissent may be tolerated in ostensible ‘democracies’. But public opinion needs to be managed, manipulated or, if necessary, simply ignored. Continue reading
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‘A Beautiful Outpouring Of Rage’ – The Observer, The Great Peace March And Nord Stream
The 20th anniversary of the illegal, unprovoked US-UK war of aggression on Iraq comes at an awkward time for a UK press currently suppressing the truth of the illegal, provoked Russian invasion of Ukraine. It’s particularly awkward for our fearless watchdogs to recall the great anti-war march of 15 February 2003 when, in 2023, they are… Continue reading
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Harry The ‘Traitor’ And Lynch ‘The Grinch’ – The Corporate Media’s Automatic Smear Machine
In truth, we don’t need to like or support – and may even abhor – the targets of media bias highlighted in our analyses. Our goal is simply to provide examples that most clearly expose the propaganda function of ‘mainstream’ media. Inevitably, that involves our focusing on thorns in the Establishment’s side. Continue reading
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‘Nearly Every War Has Been The Result Of Media Lies’: Julian Assange, State-Corporate Media And Ukraine
Julian Assange once observed that, ‘Nearly every war has been the result of media lies.’For daring to publish evidence of US war crimes, Assange now sits in the high-security Belmarsh prison in London, at risk of being extradited to the US within the next few weeks. The prospects for a fair trial range from miniscule to zero. Continue reading
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The Medium – An Appeal For Support
On November 15, as 90 Russian cruise missiles struck at Ukraine’s energy network, a companion US-UK propaganda blitz blamed the Russian missiles for the deaths of two workers on a farm in Poland. Continue reading
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‘On The Highway To Climate Hell’ – The Climate Crisis, Activism And Broken Politics
Last month, the United Nations environment agency issued arguably its starkest warning yet about the climate crisis. The failure by governments around the world to cut carbon emissions means there is ‘no credible pathway to 1.5C in place’. Limiting the rise of global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels was the international agreement at COP21, the UN… Continue reading
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Imposed Insanity – Royalty, Propaganda And The Coming Catastrophe
If every single high-profile journalist, politician and priest is currently expressing heartfelt devotion to Britain’s deceased, 96-year-old monarch, it is not because she ‘served’ her country diligently in doing her ‘duty’ for 70 years. The powerful interests that determine Britain’s political and media agenda are not sentimentalists; they do not impose ‘managed democracy’ as a… Continue reading
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Why There Is No Public Sense Of A Climate Crisis
Increasingly, now, we do have citizens among us: scientists – particularly, climate scientists – who are awakening from their ‘mainstream’ slumber to the reality that they are citizens of a decaying society on a dying planet. Continue reading
The New Dark Age 