This wiki has had no edits or log actions made within the last 45 days and has been automatically marked as inactive. If you would like to prevent this wiki from being closed, please start showing signs of activity here. If there are no signs of this wiki being used within the next 15 days, this wiki will be closed in accordance to the Dormancy Policy (which all wiki founders accept when requesting a wiki). If this wiki is closed and no one reopens it 135 days from now, this wiki will become eligible for deletion. Note: If you are a bureaucrat, you can go to Special:ManageWiki and uncheck "inactive" yourself.Media Lens
About Media Lens
Since 2001, Media Lens have been describing how mainstream newspapers and broadcasters operate as a propaganda system for the elite interests that dominate modern society. The costs of their disinformation in terms of human and animal suffering, and environmental breakdown, are incalculable. Media Lens show how news and commentary are ‘filtered’ by the media’s profit-orientation, by its dependence on advertisers, parent companies, wealthy owners and official news sources..
Media Lens check the media’s version of events against credible facts and opinion provided by journalists, academics and specialist researchers and then publish both versions, together with commentary, in free Media Alerts and invite readers to deliver their verdict both to themselves and to mainstream journalists through the email addresses provided in ’Suggested Action’ at the end of each alert. They urge correspondents to adopt a polite, rational and respectful tone at all times – strongly opposing all abuse and personal attack. Media Lens also publish Cogitations, exploring related personal and philosophical themes.
In 2007, Media Lens was awarded the Gandhi Foundation International Peace Prize.
‘Can I Keep You Safe? Your Future Is Uncertain’: Climate And The Fate Of Humanity
Media Lens - 31 March 2020
In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, the most immediate objective is to slow its spread, minimise the death toll and help people through the crisis. But, despite government promises to support citizens who are now losing their jobs and income, the underlying establishment concern will be as it always has been: to preserve the global inequitable system of wealth and power.
The Shaving Kit - Manufacturing The Julian Assange Witch-Hunt
Editor - 20 June 2019
Last week, UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid signed the US extradition request to hand over Julian Assange, who is charged with 18 counts of violating the US Espionage Act. Assange's immediate fate now lies in the hands of the British justice system.
Javid 'consistently voted for use of UK military forces in combat operations overseas', including war on Afghanistan, Syria and the catastrophic 2011 assault on Libya. In other words, he is a key figure in precisely the US-UK Republican-Democratic-Conservative-Labour war machine exposed by WikiLeaks....See more
Remembrance - The Dehumanised Human
Editor - 16 January 2019
It is clear even from their titles that corporate newspapers are objective, balanced and impartial. Or so we are to believe. The Telegraph and Mail are disinterested systems of communication - the prejudices of telegraphists and postmen/women certainly do not influence the content of the messages they deliver. The Times and Financial Times simply reflect the key events of our time, as of course does the Mirror. The Sun impartially spreads illumination to the benefit of all life on earth. As does the Independent, with no shadows cast by the Russian oligarch by which it is owned or the adverts on which it depends. The Observer looks on and records, a mere Spectator. Only the Guardian hints at political engagement. A staunch defender of 'free' comment and 'sacred facts', the title is commonly understood to indicate the paper's determination to act as a guardian of ordinary people against powerful interests... See more
Veneration Of Power Leading To Climate Catastrophe
Editor - 12 December 2018
In a recent media alert, we presented a few rules that journalists must follow if they are to be regarded as a safe pair of hands by editors and corporate media owners. One of these rules is that 'we' in the West are assumed to be 'the good guys'. This seriously damaging narrative, flying in the face of historical evidence and endlessly crushing state policies, ensures that the public is kept ignorant and pacified. The consequences have been deadly for millions of the West's victims around the world, and now mean climate catastrophe that could end human civilisation.... See more
Limits Of Dissent - Glenn Greenwald And The Guardian
Editor - 06 December 2018
When we think of prisons, we tend to think of Alcatraz, Bang Kwang and Belmarsh with their guard towers, iron bars and concrete. But in his forthcoming book, '33 Myths of the System', Darren Allen invites us to imagine a prison with walls made entirely of vacuous guff:
- 'Censorship is unnecessary in a system in which everyone can speak, but only those guaranteed not to say anything worth listening to can be heard.'
Is this true? For example, how easy is it to encounter genuinely uncompromised analysis locating the Guardian within a propaganda system designed to filter news, views and voices to serve powerful interests?
It is a key issue because the Guardian is the best 'centre-left' newspaper we have. If The Times and Telegraph define the limits of thinkable thought on the 'mainstream' right, then the Guardian does the same at the other end of the 'spectrum'. In other words, the Guardian defines corporate media limits in accepting left views and voices. If it's not in the Guardian, it's not going to be anywhere else in the 'mainstream'.... See more
The Filter Bubble
Owen Jones And Con Coughlin - 14 November 2018
There is something dreamlike about the system of mass communication sometimes described as 'mainstream media'. The self-described 'rogue journalist' and 'guerrilla poet' Caitlin Johnstone tweeted it well:
- 'The Iraq invasion feels kind of like if your dad had stood up at the dinner table, cut off your sister's head in front of everyone, gone right back to eating and never suffered any consequences, and everyone just kind of forgot about it and carried on life like it never happened.'
In a dream, the common sense rules and rationality of everyday life are, of course, suspended – we float to the top of the stairs, a cat smiles, a person is beheaded at the dinner table and the vegetables are served.... See more
How To Be A Reliable ‘Mainstream’ Journalist
Editor - 8 November 2018
There are certain rules you need to follow as a journalist if you are going to demonstrate to your editors, and the media owners who employ you, that you can be trusted.
For example, if you write about US-Iran relations, you need to ensure that your history book starts in 1979. That was the year Iranian students started a 444-day occupation of the US embassy in Tehran. This was the event that 'led to four decades of mutual hostility', according to BBC News. On no account should you dwell on the CIA-led coup in 1953 that overthrew the democratically-elected Iranian leader, Mohammad Mossadegh. Even better if you just omit any mention of this... See more
Blanket Silence: Corporate Media Ignore New Report Exposing Distorted And Misleading Coverage of Corbyn
Editor - 3 October 2018
If there's one thing we've learned in the 17 years since Media Lens began, it's that media professionals generally hate being challenged, critiqued or criticised. This fierce antipathetical belligerence underlies the corporate media's total refusal to mention, far less discuss, a recent damning report on how the corporate media have been misreporting Labour and its supposed 'problem' with antisemitism.
The report was published last week by the Media Reform Coalition (MRC), set up in 2011 in the wake of the News International phone hacking scandal, to promote debate about the media and democracy. The MRC coordinates effective action by civil society groups, academics and media campaigners, and is currently chaired by Natalie Fenton, Professor of Communication and Media at Goldsmiths, University of London.... See more
Guest Media Alert by John Pilger: 'Hold the front page. The reporters are missing'
John Pilger - 20 September 2018
The death of Robert Parry earlier this year felt like a farewell to the age of the reporter. Parry was "a trailblazer for independent journalism", wrote Seymour Hersh, with whom he shared much in common.
Hersh revealed the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and the secret bombing of Cambodia, Parry exposed Iran-Contra, a drugs and gun-running conspiracy that led to the White House. In 2016, they separately produced compelling evidence that the Assad government in Syria had not used chemical weapons. They were not forgiven.
Driven from the "mainstream", Hersh must publish his work outside the United States. Parry set up his own independent news website Consortium News, where, in a final piece following a stroke, he referred to journalism's veneration of "approved opinions" while "unapproved evidence is brushed aside or disparaged regardless of its quality."... See more
Propaganda Blitz - A New Media Lens Book And An Urgent Appeal For Support
Editorial - 19 September 2018
When we started Media Lens in 2001, our guiding aspiration was that independent, web-based activism would have a profoundly positive impact on public discourse.
Hard to believe now, but we nurtured hopes that the greater honesty and compassion of thousands of non-corporate media activists would force traditional media to improve. 'Mainstream' outlets that continued to sell elite bias as objective Truth would be relentlessly exposed, become a laughing stock - they would simply have to raise their game. We even had a notion that decent, or half-decent, people working within corporate media might secretly welcome these pressures and quietly embrace change out of enlightened self-interest. Why? Because corporate executives love their children, too. As was very obvious then, and is even more obvious now, the prioritising of profit over people and planet must be reversed.
But, of course, human beings and human societies are not that reasonable and rational. It was never going to be that easy.
What has actually happened is that, as non-corporate media have increasingly exposed the limits and failings of corporate media, the latter have adopted a bunker mentality, shutting out inconvenient truths, shutting out dissent, shutting down communication with critics. When we started sending media alerts, BBC and Guardian journalists regularly responded with quite rational, reasonable responses. Now, we mostly receive stony silence, or abusive sneers.... See more
Charges 'Without Merit' - Jeremy Corbyn, Antisemitism, Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky
By Editor - 12 September 2018
Last week, Peter Brookes tweeted his latest cartoon for The Times, commenting:
'#Novichok not the only poison being spread around Britain. #LabourAntisemitism #Corbyn.'
Referencing allegations that two Russian agents had been responsible for the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury on March 4, the cartoon depicted a British policeman holding up mugshots of a menacing, bug-eyed 'Jeremy Korbynski' (wearing an 'I Love Hamas' badge) and a vampiric, evil-looking 'Seumasov Milne' (wearing a 'Down With Israel' badge), with the policeman saying:
'THESE TWO MEN ARE SUSPECTED OF SPREADING POISON AROUND BRITAIN...'
As Brookes made clear in his tweet, the alleged 'poison' Corbyn and Milne, Labour's director of communications, are supposedly spreading is, of course, antisemitism.
We have always been struck by the sense of complete unreality surrounding this debate and decided to check when and how often Corbyn has been accused of antisemitism since first being elected as an MP in 1983.... See more
Empire Journalism: Venezuela, the US and John McCain
Editorial - 6 September 2018
The US political commentator Michael Parenti once observed that:
'Bias in favor of the orthodox is frequently mistaken for "objectivity". Departures from this ideological orthodoxy are themselves dismissed as ideological.'
Once you understand the truth of that remark, seeing the daily biases and distortions of the corporate media becomes obvious. Thus, there is plenty of space on the BBC News website, and plenty of time on the BBC's airwaves, to discuss the Venezuela migrant crisis, hyper-inflation and food shortages. Rob Young, a BBC News business correspondent, wrote:
'Venezuela, now in its fourth year of recession, has joined a sad list of other countries whose economies imploded as hyperinflation tore through them.'...
Israel Is The Real Problem
Editor - 11 August 2018
Elite power cannot abide a serious challenge to its established position. And that is what Labour under Jeremy Corbyn represents to the Tory government, the corporate, financial and banking sectors, and the 'mainstream' media. The manufactured 'antisemitism crisis' is the last throw of the dice for those desperate to prevent a progressive politician taking power in the UK: someone who supports Palestinians and genuine peace in the Middle East, a strong National Health Service and a secure Welfare State, a properly-funded education system, and an economy in which people matter; someone who rejects endless war and complicity with oppressive, war criminal 'allies' such as the United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel... See more
'World On Fire’: Climate Breakdown
Editor - 01 August 2018
What will it take for society to make the deep-rooted changes required to prevent the terrifying and awesome threat of climate breakdown? This summer's extreme weather events are simply a prelude to a rising tide of chaos that will be punctuated by cataclysmic individual events – floods, heatwaves, superstorms – of increasing severity and frequency. How long before people demand radical action from governments? Or, and this is what is really needed, how long until citizens remove corporate-captured governments from power and introduce genuine democracy? Consider just some... See more
No Nerve Agents Found - The OPCW Interim Report On Douma
Editor - 17 July 2018
In terms of suffering caused, there is often not, in fact, much to choose between dismembering and burning people alive with high explosives, shredding them with shrapnel, and choking them with poison gas. Modern 'conventional' weapons can be far more cruel and devastating than, for example, chlorine gas. But chemical weapons, prohibited by international law, are extremely potent in allowing Western 'humanitarians' to justify 'intervention' in response to crimes - real, hyped or imagined - that the West has itself far surpassed using more respectable forms of mass murder.
Noam Chomsky has observed that 'propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state'. This is certainly true for social control at home, but propaganda also allows nominally democratic states to wield their military bludgeons abroad in much the same way as totalitarian states.
Thus, in April, it happened again: the entire corporate media system rose up with instant certainty to damn an enemy state for crimes against humanity on April 7, in Douma, Syria... See more
