David Cromwell
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Media Lens: Launchpad For A Revolution? Russell Brand, The BBC And Elite Power By David Cromwell
When someone with interesting things to say is granted a high-profile media platform, it is wise to listen to what is being said and ask why they have been given such a platform. Comedian and actor Russell Brand’s 10-minute interview by Jeremy Paxman on BBC’s Newsnight last week was given considerable advance publicity and generated… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Where Journalism Collides With State ‘Security’: BBC News, MI5 And The Mantra Of ‘Keeping People Safe’ By David Cromwell
In our May 13 media alert we highlighted how the state, and a compliant media, relentlessly raise fears of the ‘shadows and threats’ that supposedly assail us. Continue reading
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Media Lens: Tilting At Easy Targets: Climate Change And The ‘Highly Ideological’ Liberal Mindset By David Cromwell
When a senior UN climate official warns that the world is ‘heading for a heart attack’ (The Times, September 23, 2013), there is clearly no time to lose in taking the radical action necessary to avert disaster. But we also have to understand why it is that no matter how many scientific warnings and ‘wake… Continue reading
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Media Lens: ‘Damning Evidence’ Becomes ‘No Clear Evidence’: Much-Delayed Report On Congenital Birth Defects In Iraq By David Cromwell
In a 2010 alert, ‘Beyond Hiroshima – The Non-Reporting Of Fallujah’s Cancer Catastrophe’, we noted the almost non-existent media response to the publication of a new study that had found high rates of infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city. The dramatic increases in these rates exceeded even those found in survivors of… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Snowden, Surveillance And The Secret State By David Cromwell and David Edwards
Washington and its allies, sold to the public by the media as ‘the international community’, are well aware of the stakes. The general population must be subdued and kept in its place. Obama and his officials in the government, and the US intelligence community, need to assert strenuously that Snowden’s exposure of the massive US… Continue reading
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Media Lens: ‘The Planet Can’t Keep Doing Us A Favour’ By David Cromwell
The false ‘balance’ in climate journalism is heavily skewed by the supposed need to share time between climate science and climate science denial. This is irrational ‘journalism’ by media professionals who have been seduced by a stubborn minority of people who ‘refuse to accept that climate change is happening despite the overwhelming scientific evidence’ Continue reading
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Media Lens: When The Next Moment Matters More: ‘The Special One’ – Part 3 By David Edwards
And how amazing, we treat the planet exactly as we treat the present moment: as an intrinsically worthless resource to be ridden, used, exploited on the way to ‘better’ and ‘more’. Our world is being made a hell by the pursuit of seven billion personal utopias, rendered uninhabitable by people who never inhabit the present. Continue reading
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Media Lens: ‘You Say What You Like, Because They Like What You Say’ By David Cromwell
The local elections in England earlier this month saw the right-wing UK Independence Party win over 140 council seats, gaining around 25 per cent of the vote where it stood. This led to a deluge of media headlines and stories echoing UKIP leader Nigel Farage’s gleeful claim of a ‘game changer’ in domestic politics. Continue reading
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Media Lens: ‘The Stupidest And Most Extreme Section Of The British Left’
In a media alert earlier this year, we described our under-resourced challenges of the corporate media as ‘jousting with toothpicks’. Although the analogy was light-hearted, the work of Media Lens is serious and would not be possible without your support. Continue reading
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Media Lens: Heading For A Different Planet By David Cromwell
The systematic propaganda of the corporate media – its deep-rooted antipathy towards upholding proper journalistic standards in the public interest – extends to its coverage of human-induced climate change. The Independent recently delivered a masterpiece of headline obfuscation with: ‘World cools on global warming as green fatigue sets in.’ Continue reading
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Media Lens: BBC Newsnight, Iraq And The Export Of Democracy By David Cromwell
It is a prerequisite for corporate journalists that they respect the ideological conventions of their paymasters and of state power – a vital source of ‘news’ and ‘informed’ comment, after all. At the same time, the corporate journalist likes to project a self-serving image as a valiant investigator, a champion of democracy, and a facilitator… Continue reading
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Media Lens: ‘The Special One’ – Part 2: Looking Under The Lamppost By David Edwards
There is an emptiness at the core of our being. The ego’s great task is to fill that emptiness with evidence that we are ‘someone’ rather than ‘nobody’, that we are ‘special’. But no matter how hard we try, our achievements continue to fall and vanish into the void. Continue reading
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Media Lens: Forever Groundhog Day For Climate? A Tale Of Ice, Smokescreens And Rebellion By David Cromwell
A spectacular event captured on film in a new documentary, ‘Chasing Ice’, depicts the stark impact of global warming on the Arctic. The stunning sequence shows the largest glacier calving event ever filmed. An on-screen graphic emphasises the huge scale of the ice collapse: Continue reading
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Media Lens: Cartoon Politics: Rupert Murdoch, The Pro-Israel Lobby And Israel’s Crimes By David Cromwell
A crucial element of pro-Israel political lobbying is the reprehensible smearing of justified criticism of the Israeli state as ‘antisemitic’. Thus, a recent cartoon by Gerald Scarfe in the Sunday Times provided a convenient target for outrage. Continue reading
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Media Lens: Death Of A Hero By David Cromwell
One measure of a society’s honesty is what it says about its political and military leaders when they die. Are the deceased leader’s perceived virtues exalted, while any blemishes are airbrushed out of the picture? Recent media coverage following the death of General Norman “Stormin’ ”Schwarzkopf, the Allied military commander during the Persian Gulf War… Continue reading
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ColdType, January 2012: Las Vegas / The Rich plus Herman, Cromwell, McGovern, Pilger et al…
10 January 2013 — Coldtype In the January issue of COLDTYPE MAGAZINE – download your free copy today Cover story this month is Tony Sutton’s Las Vegas: Behind The Bright Lights, a photo essay that captures street life away from the gaze of the city that never sleeps. Sharing our spotlight is a 16-page excerpt from Sam Continue reading
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Media Lens: The Illusion Of Democracy By David Cromwell
In an era of permanent war, economic meltdown and climate ‘weirding’, we need all the champions of truth and justice that we can find. But where are they? What happened to trade unions, the green movement, human rights groups, campaigning newspapers, peace activists, strong-minded academics, progressive voices? We are awash in state and corporate propaganda,… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Cogitation: ‘The Special One’ – Celebrity, Comedy And Spiritual Egotism By: David Edwards
Twitter and Facebook have been cunningly designed to exploit our need to feel ‘special’. To be ‘retweeted’, ‘favourited’ and ‘followed’ on Twitter subtly suckles our ego, generating quiet, short-lived satisfaction. Other users who have 100,000 or 1,000,000, or – God help us! – 20,000,000 ‘followers’, seriously challenge the idea that we are ‘the one’. Negative… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Gaza Blitz – Turmoil And Tragicomedy At The BBC By David Cromwell and David Edwards
Newsnight’s journalistic failures on child abuse are bad enough, rightly heaping pressure on the broadcaster. But there was no comparable pressure for senior staff to ‘step aside’ over the BBC’s truly catastrophic failure to challenge US-UK propaganda on Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction and the country’s supposed ‘threat’ to the West. Continue reading
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Media Lens: ‘Sworn Enemies’? A Response To George Monbiot
Above all, we’re trying to stimulate debate and participation. Engaging with journalists is certainly part of that, but we have few illusions about influencing media employees who often have little room for manoeuvre and who are deeply dependent on the corporate system. Continue reading
The New Dark Age 