Wednesday, 19 January 2022 — Media Lens
There has been much gnashing of ‘liberal’ teeth and pulling out of ‘centrist’ hair following the Tory government’s announcement that the BBC licence fee will be abolished in 2027.
Category: Media Lens
Excellent UK-based media analysis
‘A Crime Against Humanity’: The ‘Greenwash Festival’ Of COP26
8 November 2021 — Media Lens
One of the most damning assessments of COP26, the UN climate conference being held in Glasgow, came from Greta Thunberg, the Swedish climate activist:
‘#COP26 has been named the must excluding COP ever.
This is no longer a climate conference.
This is a Global North greenwash festival.
A two week celebration of business as usual and blah blah blah.’
Manufacturing Ignorance: Keeping The Public Away From Power
22 October 2021 — Media Lens
In their classic book on the news media, ‘Manufacturing Consent’, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky presented a ‘propaganda model’ of how the major broadcasters and newspapers operate. Whereas the ‘mainstream’ media declare that their aim is to educate, inform and entertain the public, their actual societal purpose ‘on matters that are of significance for established power’ is to avert any ‘danger’ that the public can ‘assert meaningful control over the political process’ (Herman and Chomsky, ‘Manufacturing Consent’, Vintage, 1988/1994, p. 303).
Gaslighting The Public: Serial Deceptions By The State-Corporate Media
22 September 2021 — Origin: Media Lens
During last week’s Tory Cabinet reshuffle, ITV political editor Robert Peston inadvertently summed up the primary function of political journalists:
‘I simply pass on’
A Remarkable Silence: Media Blackout After Key Witness Against Assange Admits Lying
1 July 2021 — — Origin: Media Lens
As we have pointed out since Media Lens began in 2001, a fundamental feature of corporate media is propaganda by omission. Over the past week, a stunning example has highlighted this core property once again.
‘That Is Actually Bollocks’: 20 Propaganda Horrors From 20 Years of Media Lens – Part 2
18 June 2021 — Origin: Media Lens
11. The BBC On The Saintly Motives For Waging War On Iraq And Libya
In focusing on the grim future in April, US vice president, Kamala Harris, surely revealed far more than she intended about the grim past:
‘For years and generations, wars have been fought over oil. In a short matter of time, they will be fought over water.’
‘That Is Actually Bollocks’: 20 Propaganda Horrors From 20 Years of Media Lens – Part 1
16 June 2021 — Origin: Media Lens
After 20 years of Media Lens, it seems only natural that we should look back in gratitude at the support we’ve received. In response to one of our early pieces, a kindly columnist at the Observer commented:
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Two Centuries Of ‘The Imperialist, Warmongering, Hate-Filled Guardian’
2 June 2021 — Media Lens
In contrast to Media Lens modestly marking a mere two decades in July, the Guardian has been deluging itself with praise on reaching two centuries this year. Not that we would expect otherwise. As editor Katherine Viner proclaimed in a long, celebratory essay:
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‘The Savage Punishment Of Gaza’: Israel’s Latest Assault On Palestine’s Open Prison
25 May 2021 — Origin: Media Lens
Recent media coverage of Israel and Palestine, not least by BBC News, has been full of the usual deceptive propaganda tropes: Israel is ‘responding’ or ‘reacting’ to Palestinian ‘provocation’ and ‘escalation’; Palestinian rockets ‘killed’ Israelis, but Palestinians ‘have died’ from unnamed causes; Israel has ‘armed forces’ and ‘security forces’, but Hamas has ‘militants’. And, as ever, Palestinians were killed in far greater numbers than Israelis. At least 248 Palestinians were killed by Israeli bombardment in Gaza, including 66 children. Palestinian rocket fire killed 12 in Israel, including one child.
Shocking Omissions: ‘Capitalism’s Conscience – 200 Years Of The Guardian’ – John Pilger and Jonathan Cook Respond
20 April 2021 — Origin: Media Lens
Long before ‘the propaganda model’ flew off Edward Herman’s keyboard and into ‘Manufacturing Consent’, the book he co-authored with Noam Chomsky, Leo Tolstoy had captured the essence of non-conspiratorial conformity:
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Propaganda By Omission: Libya, Syria, Venezuela And The UK
29 March 2021 — Media Lens
We live in a war-like society; one that supports, and is in league with, the world’s number one terrorist threat: the United States of America. Corporate media propaganda plays a key role in keeping things that way.
CDC Reports 1,095 Deaths Following Experimental COVID Vaccines While UK Government Reports 294 Deaths
1 March, 2021 — Global Research
Health Impact News 26 February 2021
The CDC has done another data dump today into the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a U.S. Government funded database that tracks injuries and deaths caused by vaccines.The data goes through February 18, 2021, with 19,907 recorded adverse events, including 1,095 deaths following injections of the experimental COVID mRNA shots by Pfizer and Moderna.
‘Our Indifference To Ourselves’ – Beyond The ‘Virtue’ Of Self-Sacrifice – Part 2
11 February 2021 — Media Lens
Cogitation By David Edwards
As we saw in Part 1, in 1914 and again in 1939, millions of men and women welcomed war. Arnold Ridley and his pals did make this choice, but in reality the choice had been made for them by decades and centuries of the relentless ‘patriotic’ propaganda described by Tolstoy, which most people were powerless to resist.
‘Our Indifference To Ourselves’ – Beyond The ‘Virtue’ Of Self-Sacrifice – Part 1
9 February2021 — Media Lens
A Cogitation by David Edwards
The name Arnold Ridley will be familiar to many viewers of ‘Dad’s Army’, one of Britain’s best-loved TV comedies, which ran a long time ago (1968-1977) but is still shown on prime time BBC TV.
Ridley played Private Godfrey, the loveable, most doddery member of a Second World War platoon of elderly Home Guard troops tasked with defending a stretch of the British coast ‘from the Novelty Rock Emporium to Stone’s Amusement Arcade’.
Stuck In A Lift With John Pilger – ‘News And How To Use It’ by Alan Rusbridger
4 December 2020 — Media Lens
Noticing the way journalists seemed unable to resist commenting on our work, even if it was just to slag us off, Glenn Greenwald tweeted us in 2012:
‘You are really deeper in the heads of the British establishment-serving commentariat than anyone else – congrats.’ (Greenwald, Twitter, 12 September 2012)
If that was true then, our relationship with the commentariat now feels more like a case of out of sight, out of mind. We have been blocked en masse on Twitter, even by loveable liberals like Jeremy Bowen, Jon Snow, Mark Steel (yes, ‘radical’ Mark Steel!), Steve Bell, Frankie Boyle (the less said about that the better) and, of course, Owen Jones and George Monbiot.
The Dead And Those About To Die – Climate Protests And The Corporate Media
17 November 2020 — Media Lens
The Roman poet Horace famously declared:
‘Dulce et decorum est pro patrie mori.’
It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. Wilfred Owen, the great English poet of the First World War, described this phrase as ‘the old Lie’ in his famous war poem, ‘Dulce et decorum est’. Patriotism so often means ‘honouring’ those who ‘fell in service to this country’, grand ceremonies at war memorials, feasts of royal pageantry. And then sending yet more generations of men and women to fight in yet more wars.
‘None Of It Reported’: How Corporate Media Buried The Assange Trial
7 October 2020 — Media Lens
One of the most imposing features of state-corporate propaganda is its incessant, repetitive nature. Over and over again, the ‘mainstream’ media have to convince the public that ‘our’ government prioritises the health, welfare and livelihoods of the general population, rather than the private interests of an elite stratum of society that owns and runs all the major institutions, banks, corporations and media. Continue reading
‘Absolute And Arbitrary Power’: Killing Extinction Rebellion And Julian Assange
9 September 2020 — Media Lens
The use and misuse of George Orwell’s truth-telling is so widespread that we can easily miss his intended meaning. For example, with perfect (Orwellian) irony, the BBC has a statue of Orwell outside Broadcasting House, bearing the inscription:
‘If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’
UK: ‘A Perpetual Motion Machine Of Killing’
6 August 2020 — Media Lens
Alleged Cover-Up Of Civilians Murdered By UK Special Forces In Iraq And Afghanistan
On August 1, a rare in-depth investigative piece appeared on the BBC News website based on credible and serious allegations that UK Special Forces had executed unarmed civilians in Afghanistan. The BBC article was produced in tandem with a report, ‘”Rogue SAS Afghanistan execution squad” exposed by email trail’, published by the Sunday Times.
‘Six Months To Avert Climate Crisis’: Climate Breakdown And The Corporate Media
22 June 2020 — Media Lens
In his classic science fiction novel, ‘Foundation’, Isaac Asimov posited a future in which ‘psychohistorians’ could predict outcomes based on past history and the large-scale behaviour of human populations by combining psychology and the mathematics of probability. Using ‘psychohistory’, the protagonist Hari Seldon discovers that the 12,000-year-old Galactic Empire will collapse in 500 years. He warns the galactic rulers of this likely fate, while explaining that an alternative future in which human knowledge is preserved can be attained. For his trouble, he is exiled to the remote planet of Terminus.
The New Dark Age 