Media Lens
Excellent UK-based media analysis
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Media Lens: Death By A Thousand Cuts: Earth Enters The ‘Danger Zone’
Last week, climate researchers at both NASA and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that 2014 was the planet’s warmest year in the modern record, going all the way back to 1880. The ten warmest years have now occurred since 2000, with the sole exception of 1998 when there was a strong El… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Charlie Hebdo And The War For Civilisation
To criticise ‘mainstream’ media from this perspective is to render oneself a despised unperson. In response to our polite, decidedly inoffensive challenges on Twitter we have been banned by champions of free speech like Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, Jon Snow of Channel 4 News, Jeremy Bowen of the BBC, Peter Beaumont of the Observer and… Continue reading
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Media Lens: ‘Grievous Censorship’ By The Guardian: Israel, Gaza And The Termination Of Nafeez Ahmed’s Blog
At the time of writing, Ahmed’s July 9 Earth Insight piece has received a massive 68,000 social media shares and is far and away the most popular Guardian article on the Gaza conflict. In the event, however, it was the last article published by him in the Guardian. The following day, his valuable Earth Insight… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Russell Brand’s ‘Revolution’ – Part 2, The Backlash
If Julian Assange was initially perceived by many as a controversial but respected, even heroic, figure challenging power, the corporate media worked hard to change that perception in the summer of 2012. After Assange requested political asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, the faux-feminists and corporate leftists of the ‘quality’ liberal press waged war… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Russell Brand’s ‘Revolution’ – Part 1, ‘The Fun Bus’
His 10-minute interview with Jeremy Paxman on the BBC’s Newsnight programme not only attracted millions of viewers – the YouTube hit-counter stands at 10.6 million – it won considerable praise and support from corporate journalists on Twitter. Brand was arguing for ‘revolution’ and yet was flavour of the month, cool to like. Something didn’t add… Continue reading
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Media Lens: A Match Made In Heaven – President Obama And The BBC’s John Simpson
Sometimes a piece of propaganda is so glaring you almost have to splash cold water on your face to make sure your eyes are not deceiving you. Take a bow John Simpson, the grandly titled ‘World Affairs Editor’ of BBC News. You don’t earn a moniker like that by offending the global power elite. But… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Damascene Conversions – Isis, Assad And The Bombing Of Iraq
This time last year, Western corporate media were focused on a single, grave threat to human life and civilised values. An endless stream of atrocity claims – some real, some fabricated with ‘evidence’ posted on YouTube – depicted President Assad of Syria as the latest incarnation of Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, bin Laden, Gaddafi: namely, the… Continue reading
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Media Lens: A Tale Of Two Titans – Jon Snow of C4 News And Jeremy Bowen of BBC News
On July 4, Independence Day in the United States, Channel 4 News broadcast a Jon Snow interview with Hillary Clinton, former US Secretary of State and presumed presidential candidate. For a self-proclaimed ‘pinko liberal’ like Snow, this was a glorious opportunity to ask hard-hitting questions about US foreign policy and Clinton’s own role in shoring… Continue reading
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Media Lens: The Failure Of The Left By David Edwards
Consider the entrenchment of Orwellian ‘Perpetual War’ – the state-corporate determination to bomb someone, somewhere, every couple of years for reasons that have everything to do with realpolitik and nothing to do with reason or righteousness, or ‘the responsibility to protect’. Despite self-evident crimes resulting in mass death on a scale that almost defies imagination,… Continue reading
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Media Lens: ‘Gosh, Are They Still At It?’ An Appeal For Support
A Media Lens reader quipped recently that he had discovered a solution to the climate crisis. Simply harnessing the energy produced by Orwell turning in his grave would provide a limitless source of cheap, clean energy. The comment was prompted by the decidedly Orwellian news that the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland had been awarded the Orwell… Continue reading
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Media Lens: The Great White ‘Nope’ – Genevieve Jacobs, Paul Mason and Alain De Botton By David Edwards
When corporations own the news and advertisers ‘sponsor’ the shows, journalists know they are above all answerable to the company managers and allied interests who pay their salaries. The mere public, especially voices of dissent, can be treated with indifference, even contempt. Journalists have power without responsibility, and they know it. Continue reading
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Media Lens: Thinking The Right Thoughts By David Cromwell & David Edwards
There are always convenient news-hooks on which corporate journalists can hang their power-friendly prejudices about the West being ‘the good guys’ in world affairs. Channel 4 News is not immune from this chauvinism. For example, Matt Frei introduced a report about last month’s elections in Iraq with this propaganda bullet: ‘Now, America once invaded Iraq… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Eeny, Meeny Madness – Beyond Racism By David Edwards
The additional absurdity of the filtered, ‘mainstream’ response to racism and sexism, is that these forms of prejudice are treated as exotic and incurable diseases from which most decent folk are free. Evidence is sought of any slip, any tiny evidence of infection. If discovered, an individual’s reputation is deemed to have been destroyed; their… Continue reading
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Media Lens: The Neverending ‘Wakeup Call’ By David Cromwell and David Edwards
For more than 25 years, since the IPCC was set up in 1988, there have been numerous scientific ‘wakeup calls’ and nothing significant has changed. In fact, turbo-charged, fossil-fuel driven capitalism has proceeded to run amok. And, for the vested interests who are the winners in the global economy, the tiny ‘one per cent’ or… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Scotlandshire: BBC Scotland Coverage Of The Independence Referendum By David Cromwell
Coverage of the Scottish independence referendum, due to be held on September 18 this year, is a compelling example of the deep establishment bias of the corporate media. Some critics have characterised the BBC’s coverage, in particular, as though Scotland is merely a region or a county of the United Kingdom called ‘Scotlandshire’. Continue reading
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Media Lens: The ‘Professorial President’ And The ‘Small, Strutting Hard Man’ By David Cromwell and David Edwards
Exactly what is happening in Ukraine is not easy to disentangle from corporate news media reports. The current crisis began last November when the Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, withdrew from a cooperation agreement with the European Union to forge closer ties with Russia. Continue reading
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Media Lens: Bias Towards Power *Is* Corporate Media ‘Objectivity’: Journalism, Floods And Climate Silence By David Cromwell
The key to what is precisely wrong with corporate journalism is explained in this nutshell by the US commentator Michael Parenti: ‘Bias in favor of the orthodox is frequently mistaken for “objectivity”. Departures from this ideological orthodoxy are themselves dismissed as ideological.’ Continue reading
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Media Lens: ‘Not Even Close To Reality’ – Filtering Sources On The Syrian War By David Edwards
If corporate media performance on Iraq was shocking, the response to Syria is made worse precisely because the lessons from Iraq could hardly be more obvious. Continue reading
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Media Lens: An Awkward Silence – Burying The Hersh Revelations Of Obama’s Syrian Deceit By David Cromwell
After the nerve gas attack at Ghouta, Obama had unequivocally pinned the blame on Syrian President Assad, a propaganda claim that was fervently disseminated around the world by a compliant corporate news media. Continue reading
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Media Lens: The Media’s Hypocritical Oath – Mandela And Economic Apartheid By David Edwards
What does it mean when a notoriously profit-driven, warmongering, climate-killing media system mourns, with one impassioned voice, the death of a principled freedom fighter like Nelson Mandela? Continue reading
The New Dark Age 