BBC
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Media Lens Guest: Kidnapped by Israel – The British Media and the Invasion of Gaza By Jonathan Cook
Few readers of a British newspaper would have noticed the story. In the Observer of 25 June, it merited a mere paragraph hidden in the “World in brief” section, revealing that the previous day a team of Israeli commandos had entered the Gaza Strip to “detain” two Palestinians Israel claims are members of Hamas. Continue reading
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Media Lens: The BBC’s John Simpson Responds – Again
14 June 2006 — Media Lens On June 9, we published a Media Alert: ‘An Exchange With BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson.’ (www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060609_an_exchange_with.php) This alert generated some of the most interesting and insightful letters we’ve ever received from readers. On June 13, we received the following response from John Simpson: Continue reading
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Media Lens: An Exchange With BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson
9 June 2006 — Media Lens On June 6, we sent the following email to the BBC’s Baghdad Correspondent Andrew North, World Affairs Editor John Simpson and Director of News Helen Boaden: Who would guess from your reports and commentary tonight (BBC1, Ten O’Clock News) that the US-UK ‘coalition’ had anything to do with the Continue reading
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And now for something completely (in)different By William Bowles
Okay, okay, I know there’s all kind of shit going down. This morning for example BBC Radio 4 News ran a long piece on the reported death of ‘Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, how he was “leader of al-Qu’eda in Iraq” and how, with his alleged death, things would now be different in Iraq. The report by… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Ridiculing Chavez – The Media Hit Their Stride – Part 2
In Part 1 of this alert we showed how the mainstream media have been united in depicting Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez as an extreme, absurd and threatening figure. In essence, the public has been urged to consider Chavez beyond the pale of respectable politics. Continue reading
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Media Lens: Ridiculing Chavez – The Media Hit Their Stride – Part 1
16 May 2006 — Media Lens Controlling what we think is not solely about controlling what we know – it is also about controlling who we respect and who we find ridiculous. Thus we find that Western leaders are typically reported without adjectives preceding their names. George Bush is simply “US president George Bush”. Condoleeza Continue reading
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Breaking News – UK Govt hurls BBC into alternate universe! By William Bowles
Then it was back to Downing Street, no doubt to plan how to sell us Phase II of the PNAC, taking out Iran and pushing the ‘final’ frontier further Eastward. Not that you’d know it from BBC ‘news’ reports as it seems that the BBC was reporting from what appears to be an almost identical… Continue reading
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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
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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
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Media Misinformation Roundup: How the BBC and the Guardian transform torture into bad PR and “history” for the occupiers By William Bowles
19 February 2006 The Western propaganda onslaught is relentless and most goes unnoticed largely because it appears to be ‘objective’ reporting. What is important to note with this alleged news is the insidious nature of the way events are presented to us, cloaked in seemingly innocuous language, yet an entire mindset is embedded in the Continue reading
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The Devil lives in the detail – Demonising Iran By William Bowles
The Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a signatory (and Israel is not), and to which the BBC reluctantly concedes Iran is in compliance with, was as Simon Jenkins points out, pretty much set up by the then nuclear ‘club’, with the view to keeping everyone else out. Meanwhile, the US is adding to… Continue reading
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How the BBC hollows out the news By William Bowles
A major problem anybody confronts when trying to sort fact from fiction in the news—aside from any confusion that occurs in trying to figure out if anything the mainstream media ‘reports’ is ‘news’ or merely opinion posing as fact—is the sheer volume and consistency of the coverage, which ultimately depends on specific words and phrases… Continue reading
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The Iran ‘crisis’ – the bullshit continues By William Bowles
A story in the London Independent (14/1/06) is typical of the kind of propaganda war being waged by the UK and the US over Iran’s alleged programme to acquire nuclear weapons. In fact, the story is a model piece, worthy of dissection for the various messages it carries to a public which has been deliberately… Continue reading
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Prime (Time) Evil By William Bowles
Iran’s relations with its erstwhile partners in Europe seem to be hurtling downhill like a snowball out of control.– Bridget Kendall, BBC diplomatic correspondent, 27 October 2005 No prizes awarded for what inspired this classic piece of state propaganda but it speaks reams about the relationship between the state and the corporate media. After all,… Continue reading
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BBC Newsspeak – ‘Credible sources’ By William Bowles
By now it must surely be obvious to pretty well everyone that the BBC’s messing with reality is rife, the twists and turns are tortuous and on-going as anyone following the British State’s Broadcasting Company’s coverage of the White Phosphorus will know. The Cat’s Dream Website pretty well blew it apart, so much so that… Continue reading
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The BBC’s Big White (Phosphorus) Lie By William Bowles
Finally, the ‘white phosphorus’ obscenity made it into the BBC’s main news, at least for a couple of days before being relegated into the Beeb’s dustbin of ‘allegations’ which of course, at least according the BBC, is where the story belongs. Of course, ‘making it into the news’ is a bit of a misnomer as… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 