New Statesman
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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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Why bad movies keep coming out and what to do about it By John Pilger
As an inveterate film fan, I turn to the listings every week and try not to lose hope. I search the guff that often passes for previews, and I queue for a ticket with that flicker of excitement reminiscent of matinees in art deco splendour. Once inside, lights down, beer in hand, hope recedes as… Continue reading
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WikiLeaks is a rare truth-teller. Smearing Julian Assange is shameful By John Pilger
Last December, I stood with supporters of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange in the bitter cold outside the Ecuadorean embassy in London. Candles were lit; the faces were young and old and from all over the world. They were there to demonstrate their human solidarity with someone whose guts they admired. Continue reading
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Imperialism, despotism, and democracy in Syria By Joseph Massad
In the context of the US invasion of the Gulf in 1991, British academic Fred Halliday announced his new right-wing affiliations in the British newspaper the New Statesman by declaring: “If I have to choose between imperialism and fascism, I choose imperialism.” It never occurred to Halliday that he could have opposed both and supported… Continue reading
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BBC Trust rules in favour of censoring ‘Palestine’
The BBC has denied it was wrong to edit the word ‘Palestine’ from an artist’s performance on Radio 1Xtra, but has said its producers may have been ‘overcautious’. Continue reading
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Media Lens: Selective Outrage – Iran And Libya
News that a fourth scientist in two years, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, had been assassinated in Iran by an unknown agency generated minimal outrage in the press. Continue reading
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Talk Amongst Yourselves By Dan Hind
On Saturday 14 October people will be heading into the Square Mile, the centre of the UK’s financial sector, in conscious imitation of Occupy Wall Street and similar actions in Europe and the Middle East. Continue reading
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Tzipi Livni: A very special mission By Ben White
Last month, on the day that changes in universal jurisdiction law went into effect, Israel’s former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said she “received a phone call” from UK Ambassador to Israel Matthew Gould telling her “there is no longer a warrant for my arrest”. Continue reading
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The imperialist rape of Libya By John Pilger
The Observer, which has yet to apologise for its catastrophic promotion of Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction, is in thrall to the ‘honourable intervention’ of Sarkozy and Cameron and their ‘humanitarian and emotional’ motives. Continue reading
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The Aaronovitch Code By Dan Hind
I’d more or less put David Aaronovitch out of my mind recently, what with the paywall and everything. But he turned up on Newsnight last night as part of the programme’s efforts to erase memories of the previous night’s now-notorious ‘ask the public’ episode. Continue reading
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‘Public Opinion’: The Phantom Menace By John Brissenden
Any 11 year old who saw Avatar or The Matrix has a basic understanding of constructed reality; teenagers carefully construct and reconstruct their online identity; politicians and pundits alike talk without shame or irony about presentation, optics and symbolism rather than policy. It is no different on the left. Resistance to the cult of austerity… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Collateral Damage – WikiLeaks In The Crosshairs
Speech that incites violence against individuals at home is unacceptable. Speech that incites mass death and destruction against entire nations is met with indifference, and/or high office and awards! 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: Putting Out The People’s Eyes – Machiavelli And The Press Complaints Commission
The results of the PCC’s work speak for themselves: if a member of the public makes a complaint against the press, he or she has about a 250:1 chance of getting an adjudication in his or her favour. Moore describes these as “pretty terrible odds” Continue reading
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Media Lens: The BBC, Impartiality, And The Hidden Logic Of Massacre — Part 2
Despite the input of hundreds of journalists working for numerous large, well-resourced corporations, we were unable to find a mainstream account that made sense of what was happening in Gaza. 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: 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 wins the Gandhi Foundation Peace Award And An Appeal For Support
The Gandhi Foundation Peace Award And An Appeal For Support MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media November 13, 2007 We are happy to report that we will be accepting the Gandhi Foundation International Peace Award on December 2. See here: http://www.gandhifoundation.org/peaceaward.html Continue reading
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Media Lens: Walking Over Corpses – The New Statesman and the Guardian on Voting Labour
In the New Statesman, the editor declares that despite “Mr Blair’s prosecution of a murderous, illegal war” two considerations “compel a Labour vote on 5 May”. Not a strategic vote, notice, not a vote to rein in and punish Blair without empowering the Tories – we are compelled simply to vote Labour. Continue reading
The New Dark Age 