David Cromwell

David Cromwell (born 1962) is a Scottish oceanographer, writer and activist. Cromwell is co-editor of Media Lens.

Born in Glasgow, Cromwell spent most of his formative years in Barrhead and Cumbernauld. He graduated in physics and astronomy from the University of Glasgow. After a PhD in solar physics he moved to the United States in 1988 to pursue a year-long postdoc at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

Returning to Europe, he joined Shell International in 1989 as an exploration geophysicist. After five months of training in geology, geophysics, and "management skills", Cromwell was posted to Shell's exploration and production company in Assen, Netherlands, while living in nearby Groningen. He left Shell in 1993 to take up a research position in the institution now known as the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, United Kingdom.

In 2001, he co-founded Media Lens with David Edwards and webmaster Phil Chandler, later succeeded by Oliver Maw. Media Lens is a media analysis website which monitors the broadcast and the print media in the UK, attempting to show evidence of bias, distortions and omissions on such issues as climate change, Iraq and the "war on terror". The founders of Media Lens acknowledge a debt to the 'Propaganda Model' of media control advanced by Cromwell's fellow ZNet contributors Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman.

Journalist Oliver Kamm, leader writer for The Times, has strongly criticised Media Lens for comments on the Srebrenica massacre and Rwandan Genocide, describing the group as a "reliable conduit for denying genocide and whitewashing war crimes". In 2006, Kamm challenged Cromwell's dependence on American historian Howard Zinn, and both men's knowledge of source material relevant to the American atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, claiming this was "a subject wholly outwith Cromwell's competence". David Cromwell wrote further on the issue in January 2008. George Monbiot, columnist for The Guardian, has accused Media Lens of "tak[ing] the unwarranted step of belittling the acts of genocide committed by opponents of the western powers".

Cromwell is the author of Private Planet (Charlbury: Jon Carpenter Publishing, 2001), and has written two books with Edwards. The earliest of these titled Guardians of Power: The Myth of the Liberal Media, was published by Pluto Press in 2006. The authors argue, with reference to numerous examples from press and broadcasting, that the mass media in Britain enable 'state-corporate' power to pursue destructive aims at home and abroad. It contains details of debates with editors and journalists from the BBC, The Guardian, ITN, Channel 4, The Independent and others. A later book, Newspeak in the 21st Century, taking a similar approach, appeared in 2009. Cromwell has also contributed to the ZNet website.

External links

• MediaLens Media Lens website
• Private Planet Website relating to Cromwell's book Private Planet
• National Oceanography Centre Homepage with links to scholarly publications
• ZNet Author page
• David Cromwell discusses "Newspeak"