journalists
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MEDIA LENS ALERT: TECTONIC TILTING – Unlevel Playing Fields And The Rise Of Climate Scepticism
The media at least claim, albeit erroneously, to offer a balance in reporting and commentary, such concerns are deemed irrelevant to advertising. Adverts – arguably an even more powerful influence distorting public perceptions than factual journalism – +all+ promote mass consumerism. Why is it important for a democracy to have balance in reporting and commentary,… Continue reading
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MEDIA LENS ALERT: BROTHERS-IN-ARMS: CAPITALISM AND CORPORATE JOURNALISM
An essential role of corporate journalism is to shore up public confidence in an unjust, crisis-riven financial and economic system. Although plenty of gloom and doom is permitted, especially in the face of obvious crisis, the legitimacy of the system is rarely questioned. Continue reading
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Washington’s Invented Honduran Democracy
As a result of the alarming series of murders of journalists now occurring in Honduras, President Bernard J. Lunzer of The Newspaper Guild Communications Workers of America (representing thousands of working journalists in the U.S. and Canada) joins with Larry Birns, the director of the Washington-based Council in Hemispheric Affairs, in denouncing the slaughter of… Continue reading
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MEDIA LENS ALERT: GATES OF DELUSION Media Distortions And +Real+ Climate Scandals
Since November last year, the public has been bombarded with the story of stolen emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, revealing a supposed “scandal” of scientific malpractice, stupidly and lazily named “climategate”. Further media frenzy erupted over an erroneous Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change statement that 80 per cent… Continue reading
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Video: Shooting the messenger – the media under fire
Shooting the Messenger, Al Jazeera’s documentary on the deliberate killing and intimidation of journalists in conflict zones, has been nominated for a presitigious Emmy award. Continue reading
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GUEST MEDIA LENS ALERT: A COMPARATIVE REVIEW OF FLAT EARTH NEWS AND NEWSPEAK – PART 2 By Jonathan Cook
The professional journalist, they suggest, is trained to seek out facts from which he or she constructs an “objective” news report. On this view, journalists select facts in the same way that, adopting an analogy used by Edwards and Cromwell, a geologist collects rocks for research. “Geologists have no emotional attachment to their rocks –… Continue reading
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MEDIA LENS: THE BBC’S JEREMY PAXMAN ON IRAQ – “WE WERE HOODWINKED”
Does not government submission of evidence mark the point where serious journalism +begins+ rather than ends? What is the reason for journalism at all, if the responsibility is simply to accept what a US Secretary of Defence says because we “know” he “is an intelligent, thoughtful man, and a sceptical man”? Continue reading
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MEDIA LENS ALERT: THE BALANCE OF POWER – EXCHANGES WITH BBC JOURNALISTS – PART 1
Journalists who criticise powerful interests can be attacked for their ‘bias’, for revealing their prejudices. On the other hand, as we will see in the examples below, almost no-one protests, or even notices, the lack of balance in patriotic articles reporting on the experience of British troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, on the credibility… Continue reading
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Media Lens Alert: The Westminster Conspiracy
Last month, Greg Dyke, who was the BBC’s director general from 2000-2004, described the BBC as part of a “conspiracy” preventing the “radical changes” needed to UK democracy. “The evidence that our democracy is failing is overwhelming and yet those with the biggest interest in sustaining the current system – the Westminster village, the media… Continue reading
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Wikileaks: Investigative journalists, pressure groups top new threats to national security
This significant, previously unpublished document (classified “RESTRICTED”, 2389 pages), is the UK military protocol for all security and counter-intelligence operations. The document includes instructions on dealing with leaks, investigative journalists, Parliamentarians, foreign agents, terrorists & criminals, sexual entrapments in Russia and China, diplomatic pouches, allies, classified documents & codewords, compromising radio and audio emissions, computer… Continue reading
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International Journalists Union Expels Israel After Fight Over Politics and Money By Alex Weisler and Nathan Jeffay
The Israeli group –— the National Federation of Israel Journalists — was ousted June 7 in a unanimous vote of the international union’s executive committee. The vote immediately raised the specter of another effort by international unions to boycott Israel for political reasons; recently, a number of academic unions around the world have voted to… Continue reading
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Media Lens 24 April, 2009: Protesting War – An Exchange With The BBC’s Diplomatic Editor, Mark Urban
You would have us believe that this original, grubby motivation can be separated from the effort “to bring about a successful outcome in southern Iraq”. It cannot. ‘Success’ in Iraq has always meant securing control of the country and its oil resources – the welfare of the Iraqi people was, of necessity, always subordinated to… Continue reading
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MEDIA LENS: CAN THIS BE TRUE? GEORGE MONBIOT CHALLENGES MEDIA LENS ON HYPOCRISY
How casually Monbiot has chosen to confront us with this damning public criticism. This, of course, is how internet-based media with essentially no resources are often treated by corporate journalism. If Monbiot had been targeting a powerful think tank or political party, he would perhaps have checked if the posting was “correct” Continue reading
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Media Lens: ‘Living Our Values’: Guardian News & Media And The Climate – Part 2
Earlier this month, the Observer smeared climate activists by highlighting police warnings of a “growing threat of eco-terrorism”. The alleged threat is presented by a group called Earth First!, which the paper claimed “has supporters who believe that reducing the Earth’s population by four-fifths will help to protect the planet”. Continue reading
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Media Lens: Propping Up Propaganda IRAQ, CLIMATE AND THE CORPORATE MEDIA’S FEAR OF THE PUBLIC
October 22, 2008 Since starting Media Lens in 2001, we have learned that corporate journalists are very often ill-equipped, or disinclined, to debate vital issues with members of the public. In 2004, the esteemed Lancet medical journal published a study showing that 98,000 Iraqis had most likely died following the US-led invasion. John Rentoul, chief Continue reading
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MEDIA LENS: INTELLECTUAL CLEANSING – PART 2
This preference for untested Oxbridge graduates can probably be explained by the filtering process too. The selected graduates always came from the same predictable backgrounds, and were the product of lengthy filtering processes endured in the country’s education system. The Guardian appeared to be more confident that such types could be relied on without the… Continue reading
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MEDIA LENS ALERT: NEWS INTERNATIONAL THREATENS MEDIA LENS WITH LEGAL AND POLICE ACTION
MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media July 10, 2008 On June 28 and July 3, Media Lens received repeated threats of both legal and police action from Alastair Brett, legal manager of News International’s Times Newspapers. Noam Chomsky described the threat, pithily, as “pretty sick.” (Email, June 28, 2008) David Continue reading
The New Dark Age 