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. Patrick Cockburn noted in the Independent:...
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Snow, White And The Two Daves - The Guardian Responds
Our most recent media alert, Silence Of The Lambs, created a small ripple in the Guardian universe. We had asked why even the paper’s most radical journalists, Seumas Milne and George Monbiot, are...
View ArticleUN 'Travesty': Resolutions Of Mass Destruction - Part 1
It has been said that compassion is 'the only beauty that truly pleases' (Aryasura, The Marvelous Companion, Dharma Publishing, 1983, p.305). While beauty ordinarily provokes the fiery itch of desire...
View ArticleUN 'Travesty': Resolutions Of Mass Destruction - Part 2
On February 6, a cry of moral outrage arose from that collection of selfless humanitarians otherwise known as The Times newspaper. Responding to fighting in the Syrian city of Homs, which has...
View ArticleIran – Next In Line For Western ‘Intervention’?
What would it take for journalists to seriously challenge government propaganda? A war with over one million dead, four million refugees, a country’s infrastructure shattered, and the increased threat...
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Bombing Osirak, Burying UN Resolution 487 – An Exchange With The BBC’s...
On June 7, 1981, eight Israeli aircraft bombed the Iraqi Osirak nuclear reactor ten miles southeast of Baghdad. Ten Iraqis and one French civilian were killed. In his book State of Denial, journalist...
View ArticleConstructing Consensus - The 'Victims-And-Aggressor Meme'
Journalists are supposed to tell the truth without fear or favour. In reality, as even the editor of the Independent acknowledges, MPs and reporters are ‘a giant club’. Together, politics and media...
View ArticlePostcard From The Precipice - An Appeal For Support
Erich Fromm understood that ‘selective inattention’ was at the heart of the problem. He devoted his life to exposing man’s capacity for ‘not observing what he does not want to observe; hence, that he...
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When Populism Is Dangerous For Democracy - To The Media Gallows With...
George Galloway’s stunning victory in last week’s Bradford West by-election afforded a rare opportunity to witness naked imbalance, establishment scorn of any challenges, and blatant anti-Muslim...
View Article‘People Will Die’ - The End Of The NHS. Part 1: The Corporate Assault
Few political acts have exposed the sham of British ‘democracy’ like the decision to dismantle the National Health Service. In essence, the issues are simple: 1. The longstanding obligation of the UK...
View Article‘People Will Die’ - The End Of The NHS. Part 2: Buried By The BBC
In Part 1 of this alert, we exposed the sham of UK ‘democracy’ in opening the door to the corporate ransacking of the National Health Service. Every day, researcher Éoin Clarke runs a check on the...
View ArticleGood Rockets, Bad Rockets - BBC Bias On India And North Korea
In the space of one week last month, the BBC offered an opportunity to compare its reporting on two nuclear powers: India, an ally of the British government; and North Korea, an official enemy. The...
View ArticleA Private Conversation - The Leveson Inquiry, Corporate Journalism And Elite...
Advertising revenue is almost the life-blood of the press. Although the figure has fallen in recent years, today it constitutes around 60 per cent of newspapers’ total income, including 'quality'...
View ArticleThe Houla Massacre
The appalling massacre of 108 people, including 49 children, in Houla, Syria, dominated the Independent on Sunday’s latest front cover. Above a few short lines of commentary the banner headline read:...
View Article'Shades Of Grey'- Rethinking The Houla Massacre
In our recent alert, The Houla Massacre, we noted how virtually all UK corporate media instantly found, not just the Syrian government, but its leader Bashar Assad, wholly responsible for the...
View ArticleGame Over For The Climate?
Whatever happened to the green movement? It’s been 50 years since the publication of Rachel Carson’s classic Silent Spring, a powerful book about the environmental devastation wreaked by chemical...
View ArticleIncinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work
By: David Edwards On June 19, in a final bid to avoid extradition to Sweden, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange requested asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Credible commentators argue that...
View ArticleHoula Massacre Update - The UN Report
By: David Edwards In two alerts on May 31 and June 13, we noted how the UK corporate media system instantly found, not just the Syrian government, but its leader Bashar Assad, responsible for the...
View ArticleBlocked By The BBC
By David Cromwell Has the internet made journalists more accountable to the public? Only if media professionals are actually willing to engage with those who consume their output. In the case of the...
View ArticleLibyan Elections – Burying The Amnesty Report
By: David Edwards In January 2005, we described how the British media were united in celebrating Iraq’s ‘first free election in decades’. (Leader, 'Vote against violence,' The Guardian, January 7,...
View ArticleThe Right Kind Of Terror
By David Cromwell and David Edwards When is an act of terrorism not terrorism? When the victims are officially sanctioned state enemies. This was clear from the political and media response to the...
View ArticleThe Return Of The King – Tony Blair And The Magically Disappearing Blood
By David Cromwell How many war crimes does a western leader have to commit before he is deemed persona non grata by the corporate media and the establishment? Apparently there is no limit, if we are to...
View Article'The Man Who Knew Everyone' - Gore Vidal Through The Eyes Of The One Per Cent...
By: David Edwards Gore Vidal took great delight in demolishing the fragile confections of ‘mainstream’ politics. While corporate journalists typically portray US Presidents as benign demigods,...
View ArticleWhy Are We The Good Guys?
Reclaiming Your Mind From The Delusions of Propaganda By David Cromwell One of the unspoken assumptions of the Western world is that ‘we’ are great defenders of human rights, a free press and the...
View ArticleUS Consulate Killings - Spontaneous Religious Or Planned Political?
By: David Edwards On September 11, four Americans, including the US ambassador, were killed in an attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The following day, the BBC's Lunchtime News reported...
View ArticleThe Ice Melts Into Water
Arctic Ice Melt, Psychopathic Capitalism And The Corporate Media By David Cromwell and David Edwards Last month, climate scientists announced that Arctic sea ice had shrunk to its smallest surface...
View Article'But' Or 'And'? Reporting Chavez, Obama, Biden, Miliband, Cameron
By: David Edwards Liberal journalism is balanced, neutral and objective, except when it’s not. A BBC news report on Hugo Chavez’s latest election triumph in Venezuela commented: 'Mr Chavez said...
View ArticleBad Pharma, Bad Journalism
By David Cromwell Ben Goldacre is a medical doctor and science writer who, until November 2011, wrote the Guardian’s Bad Science column which was presented as a thorn in the side of pseudoscience,...
View Article'Sworn Enemies'? A Response To George Monbiot
Hi George It's good to know that your email is intended in a 'friendly and constructive spirit'. We hope you will post a link to this response on your home page and via Twitter. You write that Media...
View ArticleGaza Blitz - Turmoil And Tragicomedy At The BBC
By David Cromwell and David Edwards BBC News is in turmoil. Having last year dropped a report on claims of sexual abuse against the late DJ and television presenter Jimmy Savile, the flagship Newsnight...
View Article'Flatten All Of Gaza' - The 'Benghazi Moment' That Didn't Matter
By: David Edwards On March 30, 2011 - eleven days into Nato’s war on Libya - Professor Juan Cole wrote from his armchair at the University of Michigan: ‘The Libya intervention is legal [sic] and was...
View ArticleWon't Get Fooled Again? Hyping Syria's WMD 'Threat'
By: David Edwards Reading about crimes of state over many years, it is tempting to try to fathom the mind-set of political leaders. What actually is going on in their heads when they order sanctions...
View ArticleThe Illusion Of Democracy
By David Cromwell Liberal Journalism, Wikileaks And Climate Deceptions In an era of permanent war, economic meltdown and climate ‘weirding’, we need all the champions of truth and justice that we can...
View ArticleSilence Of The Lambs
Seumas Milne, George Monbiot & ‘Media Analysis’ In The Guardian Wonderland One of the original aims of Media Lens, when we began in 2001, was to engage in honest, open and rational debate with...
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