BBC
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Economics 10000001 or the revenge of the Ninjas By William Bowles
12 September 2007 Explaining economics is probably the most difficult thing for any writer to undertake, especially if one’s take on things is not in the mainstream, that is to say, not what they call classical economics, which is another way of saying that capitalism is the only possible system, so it’s interesting to see Continue reading
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Media Lens: Loaded Words: ‘Surge’, ‘Reconstruction’ And ‘Withdrawal’
News media this week are devoting huge swathes of coverage to the report by General David Petraeus, the top US military commander in Iraq, on the impact of the so-called ‘surge’ of US troops. The surge boosted the number of US troops in Iraq earlier this year by 30,000 to 168,000. Continue reading
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The BBC’s hall of mirrors By William Bowles
26 August 2007 “However, especially in the years since Hutton, we’ve come to focus on it [public trust or rather, lack of it] first and foremost in the context of journalism. Accuracy, impartiality, resolute defence of our editorial independence, a willingness to acknowledge mistakes when we make them: meeting all these expectations simultaneously is an Continue reading
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Media Lens: Facts are not sacred: Royal Tantrums And The Cold War Billions
August 9, 2007 — MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media When Royals Attack The big media story of the last month has been the BBC apology to the Queen for showing footage that implied she had stormed out of a portrait session during a documentary. This followed the revelation that Continue reading
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How Truth Slips Down the Memory Hole by John Pilger
Source: Antiwar.com One of the leaders of demonstrations in Gaza calling for the release of the BBC reporter Alan Johnston was a Palestinian news cameraman, Imad Ghanem. On 5 July, he was shot by Israeli soldiers as he filmed them invading Gaza. A Reuters video shows bullets hitting his body as he lay on the Continue reading
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All Aboard! By William Bowles
A couple of facts: The Indian Railway is the single biggest civil employer of people on the planet and the then newly-appointed minister of Transport’s first act was to rescind a decision to replace the locally made pottery cups that everyone traveling on the railway uses, with plastic ones, because the switch resulted in 100,000… Continue reading
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Whose culture is it anyway? By William Bowles
29 June, 2007 “And so, the end of the Blairite decade. Tributes, applause and a standing ovation at PM’s Question Time. Gushing reflections from fellow politicians and sundry acolytes. And, of course, the whole panoply of deferential BBC coverage replete with helicopter ‘reportage’ of official cars going to and from the Palace. How abjectly depressing, Continue reading
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In His Master’s Voice – The BBC’s Mark Urban does a hatchet job on Media Lens By William Bowles
4 June 2007 I don’t know how many readers follow the exchanges between the BBC and other mainstream media outlets and Medialens (there are number of them archived here in the Media section of the site but please do pay a visit to their site). There’s no doubt that ML perform a valuable service by Continue reading
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Media Lens: Illegal, Immoral, Unwinnable – A British Army Oofficer Replies to Mark Urban
1 June 2007 — Media Lens Yesterday, in response to our latest Media Alert, ‘Newsnight Diplomatic Editor Mark Urban Responds,’ we received a further reply from Mark Urban. Urban argued that our analysis “is put together by you sitting at home, sifting current events through a dense filter of ideology”. In particular, he lampooned our Continue reading
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Media Lens: The Shining City On A Hill – Part 2
11 May 2007 — Media Lens The BBC’s Justin Webb On ‘Anti-Americanism’ The Lexicon Of Totalitarianism In Part 1 of this alert (www.medialens.org/alerts/07/070508_the_shining_city.php), we analysed Justin Webb’s recent BBC Radio 4 series on “anti-Americanism”, ‘Death to America’. It is worth considering Webb’s premise that “anti-Americanism” is a meaningful concept that merits ‘balanced’ analysis. Continue reading
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Media Lens: The Shining City On A Hill – Part 1
8 May 2007 — Media Lens The BBC’s Justin Webb On ‘Anti-Americanism’ “The shining city upon a hill” was how John Winthrop, one of the early Pilgrims, described America, his new homeland. Winthrop was making reference to the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus had addressed a large crowd: Continue reading
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Media Lens: Newsnight Editor Responds On The Nicholas Burns Interview
26 April 2007 — Media Lens On April 17, we published our Media Alert, ‘The BBC’s Gavin Esler Interviews US Undersecretary Of State Nicholas Burns’ (www.medialens.org/alerts/07/070417_the_bbcs_gavin.php) We noted how Esler had completely failed to challenge Burns on the catastrophe afflicting Iraq, despite damning reports just published by the Red Cross and the United Nations High Continue reading
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Media Lens: The BBC’s Gavin Esler Interviews Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns
Who would guess from media reporting that Iraq is being convulsed by a human cataclysm? And who would guess that this catastrophe is the result of American and British criminality? Continue reading
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Beware the Ides of March By William Bowles
25 March 2007 “Inspired” “Engineered” “Involvement” “Intelligence” “Circumstantial” “Link” — The BBC hedging its bets on alleged Iranian involvement in the ‘insurgency’ in Iraq “There is intelligence about this [Iranian involvement], but no hard proof” BBC 6pm News, 23/3/07 Well we all know what ‘intelligence’ means but this didn’t stop the same ‘news’ broadcast leading Continue reading
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Media Lens: Burying the Insurgency in Iraq
Since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the BBC, like the media more generally, has consistently attempted to delegitimise armed opposition to Britain and America’s illegal occupation of Iraq. Continue reading
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Why I believe David Kelly’s death may have been murder by Dan Newling MP
David Kelly did not commit suicide and may have been the victim of a murder and subsequent coverup, according to a campaigning MP. Norman Baker has spent six months investigating the death of the Government weapons expert, found dead in an Oxfordshire wood three years ago. Continue reading
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Remind me again, which century am I living in? By William Bowles
The mass media has divorced our populations almost entirely from the real world ‘out there’ including I’m sorry to say, many so-called leftists. For example, a recent interview conducted by Democracy Now [sic] with Chris Hedges and As’ad AbuKhalil, professor of political science at California State University reveals just how ‘embedded’ the Western left is,… Continue reading
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Israel – just testing the waters? By William Bowles
From the days of the Balfour Declaration (1914) through to the establishment of Israel in 1948 and then the Suez War in 1956, the Six Day War in 1967 and finally the war of 1973, Israel has proved itself to be a loyal vehicle of Western imperial objectives. That it also has objectives that to… Continue reading
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Israel, ‘Ye reap what ye sow’ By William Bowles
Well, as the bible says ‘ye reap what ye sow’ and the events currently unfolding in the Occupied Territories constitute a real turning point. The Zionist state has created a situation for which there are only two options open to it. Either it follows through with its decades-long objective of totally erasing what’s left of… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 