Media Lens
Excellent UK-based media analysis
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Media Lens: The Dark Heart of Robin Cook’s ‘Ethical’ Foreign Policy – Part 1
22 August 2005 — Media Lens August 6 And The Barbarians Of The Dark Ages Every death is a tragedy to be mourned. August 6 marked the 60th anniversary of the agonizing deaths of 140,000 Japanese people in the city of Hiroshima. In her article, ‘Eight Hundred Metres From The Hypocentre,’ Yamaoka Michiko described her Continue reading
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Media Lens: The New Statesman Editor And Blair’s “Mistake” – In The Service Of A Machine
How often, dear reader, do we go away hungry from the media board, and for the same reasons? What a dismal experience it is to spend twenty minutes leafing through a two-inch wedge of newsprint on a Saturday morning, finding almost nothing of human interest but plenty that offends and grates. Continue reading
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Media Lens: The London Bombings
Terrible ironies attend the use of violence for political ends. Despite their ostensible opposition, two warring factions are often united in their fundamental view of the world. Both insist that continued violence is the only realistic option. Both insist the enemy is the incarnation of mindless evil, completely beyond reason. Both reject as treasonous rational… Continue reading
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Media Lens: The Mysterious Case of the Missing World Tribunal on Iraq
Media Lens has detected a recent shift in media reporting. It is hard to quantify, but there is a palpable uneasiness amongst media professionals at the increasing rise of the ‘blogosphere’ and internet-based ‘alternative’ media sites. Joe and Jo Public are increasingly aware that the news and commentary distributed by the BBC, ITN, Channel 4… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Conspiracy – The Downing Street Memo – Part 2
Imagine our surprise, then, when we finally got round to reading Smith’s original May 1 article, including the memo itself, and found that the real story was the revelation that Straw and Blair had conspired to use inspections to lure Saddam into obstructing the UN, so providing an excuse for war. By implication, the leaks… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Conspiracy – The Downing Street Memo – Part 1
It is remarkable, but now indisputable, that the current leaders of Britain and the United States are responsible for just such a conspiracy…Carne Ross, a key Foreign Office diplomat responsible for liaising with UN inspectors in Iraq, said last week that British government claims about Iraq’s weapons programme had been “totally implausible”. Continue reading
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Media Lens: Kicking the People Who Write the Cheques
It is commonly thought that media businesses like the Guardian tailor their “brand” to target particular readers. This is true, of course, but more importantly they target readers who appeal to big business advertisers. The Guardian‘s primary business, in fact, is selling wealthy audiences to these advertisers. Continue reading
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Media Lens: Manufactured Consensus – The Sun and Saddam Hussein
Just over one year ago, British journalists and politicians were fulminating over photographs published in the Daily Mirror that appeared to show Iraqi prisoners being abused by British soldiers. The British military, it was claimed, now possessed incontrovertible proof that the pictures were fake. Mirror editor, Piers Morgan – a fierce opponent of the war… Continue reading
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Media Lens: BBC still Ignoring Evidence of War Crimes in Iraq
An earlier media alert, ‘Doubt Cast on BBC Claims Regarding Fallujah’ (April 18, 2005; www.medialens.org/alerts/05/050418_doubt_cast_on_bbc.php) noted that Boaden’s Newswatch article failed to address the many specific and detailed allegations of atrocities committed by US forces in their assault on Fallujah last November. Moreover, statements made to us by Human Rights Watch had cast doubt on… Continue reading
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Media Lens: BBC Still Silent on Fallujah
The BBC relentlessly proclaims its commitment to “providing trusted and impartial news and information that helps citizens make sense of the world” (Letter from BBC chairman Michael Grade to David Cromwell, 21 March, 2005). Such grandiose statements are delivered as if on tablets of stone, to be received with gratitude by the multitudes. Thus, Grade… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Burying the Legal Advice for War – Part 2
The following day, this astonishing exposé of government lying and criminality was simply dropped by the broadcast media. There was not one substantive discussion of the legal advice on BBC 18:00 News, the ITN 18:30 News, or the Channel 4 19:00 News. The issue was almost completely invisible in the days that followed. Continue reading
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Media Lens: Burying the Legal Advice for War – Part 1
Marr was clearly using the idea that the Attorney General had not declared the war illegal in his March 7 advice as a reason for dismissing the story as a damp squib. The briefest of glances at earlier media coverage indicates what a mendacious liberal herring this was. Continue reading
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Media Lens: Walking Over Corpses – The New Statesman and the Guardian on Voting Labour
In the New Statesman, the editor declares that despite “Mr Blair’s prosecution of a murderous, illegal war” two considerations “compel a Labour vote on 5 May”. Not a strategic vote, notice, not a vote to rein in and punish Blair without empowering the Tories – we are compelled simply to vote Labour. Continue reading
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Media Lens: Manufactured Consensus – The Sun and Saddam Hussein
Just over one year ago, British journalists and politicians were fulminating over photographs published in the Daily Mirror that appeared to show Iraqi prisoners being abused by British soldiers. The British military, it was claimed, now possessed incontrovertible proof that the pictures were fake. Mirror editor, Piers Morgan – a fierce opponent of the war… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Iraq and Zimbabwe – A Tale of Two Elections
In January, we showed how the British print and broadcast media were all but unanimous in celebrating the January 30 elections in Iraq as the country’s “first democratic elections in fifty years”. As we noted, this was an excellent example of how the corporate mass media function as a de facto propaganda system for state-corporate… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Doubt Cast on BBC Claims Regarding Fallujah
The BBC has again failed to address the many specific allegations we forwarded to them of atrocities committed by US forces in their assault on Fallujah last November. We return to this point below. Continue reading
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Media Lens: “No Great Way to Die” – But the Generals Love Napalm
Traditionally, Western journalists give massive emphasis to acts of violence committed by official enemies of the West, while lightly passing over Western responsibility for often far more extreme violence. Continue reading
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Media Lens: No Politics – Only Elections
Issues like the environment, foreign policy, poverty and defence were “all but invisible”. (Golding, email to Media Lens, June 10, 2001) Defence, for example, comprised 0.6 percent of reporting. There was no mention of New Labour’s “ethical foreign policy” deception, of the non-existent “genocide” used as a pretext for Blair’s bombing of Serbia, of his… Continue reading
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Media Lens: A Warning from Auschwitz
16 March 2005 — Media Lens How Do You Shoot Babies? Facing execution for his role in the murder of more than 1 million people, many of them children, Auschwitz commandant, Rudolf Hoess, reflected on his life and works: “Today, I deeply regret that I did not spend more time with my family.” (Hoess, ‘Auschwitz, Continue reading
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Media Lens: Every Bloodbath Has A Silver Lining – Part 2
We wrote to Jonathan Freedland about his article, “The war’s silver lining”, and asked him: “Are you not, here, celebrating the efficacy of state terrorism as a political tool? Is Damascus not literally terrorised by what it has seen in Iraq?” Continue reading
The New Dark Age 