Media Lens
Excellent UK-based media analysis
-
Media Lens: Maelstrom Of Vitriol – The BBC Smears Media Lens
3 May 2006 — Media Lens On April 28, BBC online published an article by David Fuller titled, ‘Virtual war follows Iraq conflict,’ (news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4951320.stm) The article discussed challenges made by Media Lens and others to the website Iraq Body Count (IBC) which had released a “rebuttal” of criticisms the previous day (www.iraqbodycount.net/editorial/defended/). Continue reading
-
Media Lens: BBC News Website Editor Responds On Amnesty Coverage
25 April 2006 — Media Lens On April 21, we published a Rapid Response Media Alert: ‘Demonising Iran – BBC Distorts Amnesty International Press Release,’ (www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060421_demonising_iran.php). Yesterday, we received this response from Steve Herrmann, editor of the BBC News website: Continue reading
-
Media Lens: Demonising Iran – BBC Distorts Amnesty International Press Release
21 April 2006 — Media Lens In a recent speech at New York’s Columbia University, John Pilger commented: “We now know that the BBC and other British media were used by MI6, the secret intelligence service. In what was called ‘Operation Mass Appeal‘, MI6 agents planted stories about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction – Continue reading
-
Media Lens: ‘You Could Kill Whoever You Wanted’
An ancient Roman aphorism made a crucial point: “The senators are good men, but the senate is a beast.” In the same way, no matter how deeply media corporations may be compromised by profit-orientation and links to establishment power, some journalists will always be willing to respond reasonably to criticism. Continue reading
-
Media Lens: Iraq Body Count – A shame becoming shameful
10 April 2006 — Media Lens John Pilger And A Leading Epidemiologist Challenge IBC Noam Chomsky once observed: “If you are not offending people who ought to be offended, you’re doing something wrong.” (www.journalism.sfsu.edu/www/pubs/gater/spring95/apr27/chom.htm) One indication that the Iraq Body Count (IBC) project is doing something wrong is that it is deemed, not merely inoffensive, Continue reading
-
Media Lens: Cartoon Time – Channel 4 Smears Chavez
5 April, 2006 — Media Lens On March 27, Channel 4 News included a report by Washington Correspondent Jonathan Rugman: ‘Hugo to go?’ (www.channel4.com/news/special-reports/special-reports-storypage.jsp?id=2046) Rugman relentlessly smeared Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, in a piece described by John Pilger as “one of the worst, most distorted pieces of journalism I have ever seen”. (Email to Channel Continue reading
-
Media Lens: Curiosities Of Utopian Thinking
Sean O’Grady wrote recently in the ad-filled motoring supplement of The Independent: “in answer to the many letters we get criticising some of our coverage, we don’t make cars. We just write about them. […] We try to concentrate on telling our readers about the many many ways you can enjoy motoring without costing the… Continue reading
-
Media Lens: Iraq Anniversary – BBC Whitewash
How could the war possibly be justified when the ‘justification’ was said by Tony Blair to be the “serious and current threat” posed by Iraqi WMD? And how can “disastrous miscalculation” be presented as the opposing argument? Continue reading
-
Media Lens: Disappearing Genocide – The Media And The Death Of Slobodan Milosevic
20 March 2006 — Media Lens “If we don’t know history, then we are ready meat for carnivorous politicians and the intellectuals and journalists who supply the carving knives. But if we know some history, if we know how many times presidents have lied to us, we will not be fooled again.” (Howard Zinn, historian) Continue reading
-
Media Lens: Iraq Body Count Refuses To Respond
We found that the first 18 pages of the IBC database, covering the period between July 2005 and January 2006, contained just six references to ’coalition’ helicopter attacks and airstrikes killing civilians. Our research revealed that the IBC database consistently features the same bias – massive numbers of deaths caused by insurgents as compared to… Continue reading
-
Media Lens: Alert: The Guff of Tonkin Incident – Silence, Secrecy and Book Reviews
Consider, for example, the issue of book reviews. What could be a less threatening or problematic area for the media? Surely it is inconceivable that literary editors would bother to suppress reviews of books written from ‘controversial’ perspectives. Continue reading
-
Media Lens: Hacks and Spooks By Richard Keeble
So how many journalists are actually agents of the state, or working for agents of the state? We can think of several very likely candidates – and not just in the right-wing media. Continue reading
-
Media Lens: Paved With Good Intentions – Iraq Body Count – Part 2
First, the dramatic absence of examples of mass killing by US-UK forces suggests that the low IBC toll of civilian deaths in comparison with other studies is partly explained by the fact that examples of US-UK killing are simply not being reported by the media or recorded by IBC. Visitors to the site – directed… Continue reading
-
Media Lens: Oil For The Killing Machine – The BBC On Iraq
The political analyst Bertram Gross argued that there is no great malice driving the coalition of “the ultra-rich, the corporate overseers, and the brass in the military and civilian order” as it “squelches the rights and liberties of other people both at home and abroad”. It is just that their pursuit of profit inevitably means… Continue reading
-
Media Lens Cogitation: The Ultimate Propagandist
17 February 2006 — Media Lens In March 2004, alongside our Media Alerts, we began sending out more philosophical pieces called Cogitations. In case you were unaware of these, you can subscribe here free of charge: www.medialens.org/cogitations/ Below is our most recent Cogitation from February 11. Best wishes The Editors Continue reading
-
Media Lens: Iran – The Media Fall Into Line
Writing in the Guardian last month, Timothy Garton Ash observed: “Now we face the next big test of the west: after Iraq, Iran.” Garton Ash thus blithely ignored the fact that every last scrap of evidence coming out of Iraq has pointed to only one conclusion – that Iraq’s “big test” was in fact the… Continue reading
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
The New Dark Age 