Excellent UK-based media analysis
17 October 2018 — Media Lens
In June, the BBC reported that someone operating under the name ‘Philip Cross’ had been extraordinarily active in editing Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit:
‘”Philip Cross” has made hundreds of thousands of edits to Wikipedia pages. But in the process he’s angered anti-war activists and critics of British and Western foreign policy, who claim he’s been biased against them.’
3 October 2018 — Media Lens
If there’s one thing we’ve learned in the 17 years since Media Lens began, it’s that media professionals generally hate being challenged, critiqued or criticised. This fierce antipathetical belligerence underlies the corporate media’s total refusal to mention, far less discuss, a recent damning report on how the corporate media have been misreporting Labour and its supposed ‘problem’ with antisemitism.
27 September 2018 — Media Lens
Some 250,000 miles later, having spent 20 minutes waiting for the other guy to get down the ladder, Buzz Aldrin became the second person to walk on the moon, July 21, 1969.
Back on Earth, 600 million people looked up in wonder: how must it feel to be the first humans to set foot on another world? Aldrin and Neil Armstrong were viewed as the ultimate pioneers at the cutting edge of human experience; if anyone was really alive, ‘doing it’, they were. So how did it feel to be up there living life to the max? Aldrin recalled of his return to Earth:
‘I said to Neil, “We missed the whole thing.” We didn’t share the moment of exhilaration here on Earth. We were sort of out of town doing something else.’
20 September 2018 — Media Lens
This is a slightly amended version of the foreword to the new Media Lens book, ‘Propaganda Blitz – How The Corporate Media Distort Reality’, published today by Pluto Press. Warm thanks to John Pilger for contributing this superb piece to our book.
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The death of Robert Parry earlier this year felt like a farewell to the age of the reporter. Parry was “a trailblazer for independent journalism”, wrote Seymour Hersh, with whom he shared much in common.
19 September 2018 — Media Lens
When we started Media Lens in 2001, our guiding aspiration was that independent, web-based activism would have a profoundly positive impact on public discourse.
Hard to believe now, but we nurtured hopes that the greater honesty and compassion of thousands of non-corporate media activists would force traditional media to improve. ‘Mainstream’ outlets that continued to sell elite bias as objective Truth would be relentlessly exposed, become a laughing stock – they would simply have to raise their game. Continue reading
12 September 2018 — Media Lens
Last week, Peter Brookes tweeted his latest cartoon for The Times, commenting:
‘#Novichok not the only poison being spread around Britain. #LabourAntisemitism #Corbyn.’
Referencing allegations that two Russian agents had been responsible for the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury on March 4, the cartoon depicted a British policeman holding up mugshots of a menacing, bug-eyed ‘Jeremy Korbynski’ (wearing an ‘I Love Hamas’ badge) and a vampiric, evil-looking ‘Seumasov Milne’ (wearing a ‘Down With Israel’ badge), with the policeman saying:
6 September 2018 — Media Lens
The US political commentator Michael Parenti once observed that:
‘Bias in favor of the orthodox is frequently mistaken for “objectivity”. Departures from this ideological orthodoxy are themselves dismissed as ideological.’
