Media Lens

Media Lens

Screenshot from Media Lens (March 22, 2013)
Type of site	Media analysis
Available in	English
Editor	David Cromwell and David Edwards
URL	www.medialens.org
Launched	2001

Media Lens is a British media analysis website established in 2001 by David Cromwell and David Edwards. The site is financed by donations from its supporters. The aim of the website is to scrutinize and question the coverage of the mainstream media of prominent issues and events to draw attention to what they regard as "the systemic failure of the corporate media to report the world honestly and accurately".

Cromwell and Edwards, who remain the sites editors, write regular 'Media Alerts' concentrating on those mainstream media outlets legally obliged to be impartial (the BBC and Channel 4 News) or usually considered liberal like The Guardian and The Independent. Media Lens frequently disputes the impartiality of the BBC and draws attention to what it sees as the limits within which the liberal press operates.

The editors invite their readers to challenge journalists, editors and programme producers directly via email, specifically discouraging abusive contact.

Media Lens has gained the approval of John Pilger, who has written about their "remarkable website", Other journalists, not necessarily identified with the left, have also made positive comments about the group, but it has come into conflict with others. The Observer's foreign editor Peter Beaumont has claimed the group operated a "campaign" against John Sloboda and the Iraq Body Count. George Monbiot has also criticised Media Lens for their apparent defence of Edward S. Herman Graham Murdock and Michael Pickering describe their work as providing "a riveting expose of the myth of liberal media based on a variety of empirical case studies".

History and activities

David Edwards and David Cromwell of Media Lens receive the Gandhi Foundation Peace Award, 2007

By the late 1990s, David Edwards had gradually come to the conclusion that a "media suppression of the truth about the effect of the sanctions against Iraq existed, and media indifference to climate change: "the media were still celebrating the idea that Britain might soon be blessed with a Mediterranean climate." Meanwhile, Cromwell had found the coverage of certain issues "paltry" and had received a negligible response from the newspapers to which he had written. The two men first met in 1999, and Edwards suggested beginning a collaborative website.

The website is maintained by webmaster Oliver Maw, and is financed through voluntary subscription and donations from grant-funding bodies. Jonathan Cook, a sympathetic journalist who covers the Middle East, has also contributed articles. Their media alerts are published online and distributed without charge by email to a reported international readership of around 14,000 people.

In regular Media Alerts, the editors (and other contributors) scrutinize media coverage in terms of arguments used, source selection, and the framing of events to highlight what they see as incidents of bias, omissions, or direct lies. The editors frequently engage in email exchanges with British journalists and editors, as well as encouraging their readers to do the same through email campaigns. Media Lens hosts a message board and a discussion forum, used for political and media issues. Media Lens have also published several books which build on the themes and topics covered on their website with further arguments and content.

Oliver Boyd-Barrett, an academic specialising in Communications Studies, has pointed to their "relentless commitment" to judging the media "on criteria of rationality and humanity, for what they write and fail to write, and doing so in a tone that is determinedly polite and respectful, even when the content is highly critical." Journalist and academic John Rentoul though, has been unimpressed with the approach of Media Lens' campaigners. He writes that an email exchange with a Media Lens supporter "may continue until journalist is too busy to reply or until the snarl of Chomskian-Pilgerism is unwittingly betrayed and journalist realises he or she has not been engaging with a reasonable person."

Views

Central to Media Lens analyses is the Propaganda model, first developed by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, in their book Manufacturing Consent (1988). The theory posits that the way in which news media is structured (through advertising, media ownership, government sourcing and others) creates an inherent conflict of interest which leads to systemic bias and propaganda for undemocratic forces. Edwards has also cited Erich Fromm, who thought "a society that subordinates people and planet to profit is inherently insane and toxic", and his practice of Buddhism as influences.

According to Media Lens editors, journalists in the mainstream media articulate an "'official' version of events ... as Truth. The testimony of critical observers and participants" and "especially those on the receiving end of Western firepower – are routinely marginalised, ignored and even ridiculed." They state that mainstream journalists gradually absorb an unquestioning corporate mindset as their careers progress, becoming unwilling to question their occupations or governments claims, rather than consciously lying. In a statement 'About Us' they observe: "We all have a tendency to believe what best suits our purpose; highly paid, highly privileged editors and journalists are no exception." In Cromwell and Edwards' opinion, western government actions have followed "a historical pattern of deception" going back several centuries, while they assert that "the corporate media is the source of some of the greatest, most lethal illusions of our age". Peter Beaumont, however, has argued that Media Lens "insist that the only acceptable version of the truth is theirs alone and that everybody else should march to the same step".

A former supporter, the philosopher Rupert Read has criticised their use of "extremely dubious" source material including Michel Chossudovsky, whom he calls a conspiracy theorist, an opinion shared by Times journalist Oliver Kamm.

The editors reject claims that their analyses are conspiracy theories, arguing that the patterns of bias they identify are the predictable consequence of media corporations subject to market forces operating within a profit driven system. According to Cromwell: “there is, of course, no conspiracy. It is more subtle, powerful and pervasive than that”. In the view of the editors, the liberal wing of the mainstream media are gatekeepers "of acceptable debate from a left or Green perspective, 'thus far and no further'" and insist that in a corporate system dissenting views have difficulty gaining attention. In their view, "the corporate media is an extremist fringe" with which progressives should completely dissociate themselves.

Coverage

Iraq

Justification for war

Prior to the Iraq War in 2002 Media Lens argued that the UK and US government's justification for a war on the basis that Iraq possessed a credible Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) threat and had an active WMD program was fraudulent. Media Lens cited the work of former chief UN arms inspector Scott Ritter, who stated that 4 years previously, after thorough investigation by UN inspectors, it was found that Iraq had been "fundamentally disarmed" with 90-95% of its WMD capability eliminated. The editors further cited Ritter's opinion that it would have been impossible for Iraq to rearm "from scratch" within the four years since the UN had left given the level of scrutiny they were under.

A 30 April 2003 Media Lens database search covering the period leading up to and including the invasion of Iraq found that of the 5,767 articles published by The Guardian and its sister paper The Observer only 12 made any mention of Scott Ritter. According to Edwards, this constituted "a shocking suppression of serious and credible dissident views", which he said were "soon to be entirely vindicated". This is a view shared by Eddie Girdner, who cites Media Lens as among those who drew this conclusion before the war began.

According to Richard Alexander, in respect of the Iraq war, Edwards and Cromwell have "trenchantly dissected the servant role the British media played in bolstering the lies to the British public purveyed by the UK government, despite the prominent liberal self-image of 'freedom of expression'."

Reporting of conflict

Media Lens argue that in 2003, the BBC's reporting on the Iraq war took the form of "Boys' Own war pornography". They have cited a rhetorical question posed by BBC correspondent Bridget Kendall in 2006 about whether the Iraq war was "justified" or a "disastrous miscalculation" as a demonstration of personal bias, which they see as being the "norm", rather than impartiality. They argue this excludes the opinions of the anti-war movement, and ex-UN secretary general Kofi Annan, who are considered to have seen the war as "an illegal war of aggression".

Media Lens has argued that journalists regularly present inflated assessments of the accomplishments of western politicians. They cite comments made by Andrew Marr in 2003, while the BBC's political editor, a journalist they consider overtly sympathetic to the former prime minister: "[Blair] said that they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath, and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating. And on both of those points he has been proved conclusively right". The Media Lens editors asserted in 2003 that "there never was an Iraqi threat" and "If Tony Blair and George W. Bush are not guilty of war crimes, who is?"

They contrast the positive comments the mainstream media make about western leaders with the epithets used to describe other politicians such as Hugo Chávez, the former President of Venezuela. In 2004 they complained about the limited media references to Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, both of whom resigned from the UN over the sanctions they administrated.

Casualty figures

Media Lens have challenged the mainstream press coverage of the extent of killings during the conflict. One example they present is the treatment of data from several academic surveys on the casualties during the Iraq War published in The Lancet by academics from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, which estimated that 655,000 excess deaths had occurred since the invasion than would have been expected in the absence of a conflict. Despite the survey using recognised statistical methods its findings were rejected by US and UK governments who cited a much lower figure, a position which was largely supported in US and UK media coverage. Media Lens contrasted the media response to the Iraq study with uncritical coverage of a similar study by the same researchers, using the same methods which had estimated 1.7 million deaths in the Congo. Following criticism from Media Lens over an article written for The Guardian, mathematician John Allen Paulos acknowledged he had been wrong to use a "largely baseless personal assessment" to call into question the findings of the Lancet study. Swapna Mukhopadhyay in the The Mathematics Enthusiast journal, concluded the discussion facilitated by Media Lens was notable in that "an extended and logical debate led to some reasonable consensus."

Media Lens challenged The Independent's Mary Dejevsky to explain an editorial comment in the paper that, "by extrapolating from a small sample... While never completely discredited, those figures were widely doubted". Dejevsky responded that, while the sample may have been standard, it seemed small from her "lay perspective". She said her main point "was less based on my impression than on the fact that this technique exposed the authors to the criticisms/dismissal that the govt duly made, and they had little to counter those criticisms with, bar the defence that their methods were standard for those sort of surveys". The response was considered incoherent by Edward Herman who stated it was "Massive incompetence in support of a war-apologetic agenda". According to Mukhopadhyay the exchange was evidence that journalists, who do not have the statistical expertise to evaluate technical reports, "do not always take the obvious step of seeking expert advice". Reviewing Media lens' engagement with press coverage of the lancet study Arvind Sivaramakrishna drew a similar conclusion stating, "Political correspondents are clearly ignorant of sampling frames and techniques, confidence limits, significance levels, likelihood estimators, and so on."

Peter Beaumont accused the group in April 2006 of a campaign apparently intended to silence John Sloboda and his Iraq Body Count project, because it produced a victim count lower than the Lancet study. In the same month in 2006, David Fuller, a journalist on Newsnight, covered their critique of Sloboda and the IBC's methods and also summarised his findings on the BBC website. The Media Lens editors considered Fuller's attack "the most distorted and damaging smear of our work" up to that point but the editors' decision not to accept invitations to appear on Newsnight led Fuller to accuse them of "[refusing] to engage in any way that does not allow them total control of the interaction." Sloboda said Media Lens "are a pressure group that use[s] aggressive and emotionally destructive tactics". Media Lens in turn have accused Sloboda of not being an epidemiologist and therefore unqualified to undertake, or criticise, studies on unexpected mortalities in Iraq. Sloboda acknowledged that Iraq body count were "amateurs" but strenuously denied this should have any negative connotations on their work.

Srebrenica: Chomsky and others

Concerning the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995, the Media Lens editors' asserted in November 2009, "Apart from affirming that a massacre did take place, we have written virtually nothing about Srebrenica". The sources of conflict with their critics have been the distinction between a massacre and the act of genocide and the freedom to contest generally accepted evidence for historical events.

The Guardian newspaper published on 31 October 2005 an interview with Noam Chomsky conducted by Emma Brockes. Chomsky complained about the interview in a letter to Ian Mayes the readers editor on 3 November 2005, after which Media Lens quickly responded with their first article on this issue on 4 November. The Guardian apologised within a few weeks concluding that they had misrepresented Chomsky's views on the Srebrenica massacre and his support for Diana Johnstone. Neither of them "have ever denied the fact of the massacre" it was concluded. Media Lens responded to The Guardian's change of mind in a second article posted on 21 November.

The fall out from the Brockes interview continued for some time. Ian Mayes, then the readers' editor of The Guardian, wrote on 12 December 2005 about "several hundred" emails from Media Lens followers, who were campaigning in support of Chomsky, to Mayes himself and Brockes.

In June 2011 George Monbiot accused Media Lens of "maintain[ing] that [Edward S.] Herman and [David] Peterson were 'perfectly entitled' to talk down the numbers killed at Srebrenica". (Media Lens editors had written in 2009: "Herman and Peterson, then, are not denying that mass killings took place at Srebrenica. They also do not accept the figure cited by [Oliver] Kamm and others, but that they are perfectly entitled to do.") Monbiot accused Herman, and Media Lens, of taking "the unwarranted step of belittling the acts of genocide committed by opponents of the western powers". Media Lens responded that their argument had been that that Herman and Peterson were "perfectly entitled" to debate the facts not that "they are entitled to falsify, mislead, wilfully deceive, or whatever 'talk down' was intended to suggest". Journalist Jonathan Cook agreed, stating that media Lens' position had been "that Herman and Peterson should be allowed to make their case about Rwanda and Bosnia".

Aside from Holocaust denial, which Media Lens finds particularly insidious "because of the extreme racism and hatred motivating the doubt in this particular instance", they have written:

To be clear, we reject the right of any court, any government, indeed anyone, to apply labels like 'genocide' to historical events and then, not merely argue but demand that they be accepted. The assumption that human institutions are in possession of Absolute Truth belongs to the era of The Inquisition, not to serious debate.

The Times commentator Oliver Kamm, ("[o]ne of our most relentless critics"), wrote in October 2012: "The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) has revealed the identity of 6,598 people missing since the fall of Srebrenica, through DNA analysis of human remains in mass graves. It estimates the total number of victims as around 8,100. If ML maintains that deniers [Herman and Peterson] are “perfectly entitled” to their position, it must believe that the ICMP has faked that analysis".

Media Lens asserted that they had only written "defending Noam Chomsky" against the Guardian's claims in the rescinded interview by Brockes.

Syria

Rupert Read, an academic and Green Party politician, has claimed that Media Lens tends to talk up the numbers of victims from western actions but minimise those of regimes in conflict with the west, such as those of Milošević and Bashar al-Assad in Syria. He has accused them of using dubious source material on fatalities in the 2012 Syrian crisis from Aisling Byrne and Robert Dreyfuss. David Edwards responded that Pilger, David Peterson and others, responded positively to their alerts on Syria and that "We have received literally one negative response – from Rupert Read". David Edwards responded that they had received a "tremendously positive response" to the alerts on Syria, but only a single "negative response – from Rupert Read".

The cartoonist and writer Martin Rowson in June 2012 suggested they indulge in "shilling for tyrants" following an exchange with them on Twitter in which the editors accused him of depicting a bloodstained Bashar al-Assad after the Houla massacre without having evidence of the Assad regime's responsibility for the atrocity and for using only his "'cartoonist's hunch'" as proof. They asked Rowson on Twitter: "Would you rely on a 'hunch' in depicting Obama and Cameron with mouths smeared with the blood of massacred children?" According to Rowson though, accusing them of advocating literalness in his work: "despite my repeated requests, they still won’t or can’t tell me why they don’t also demand my evidence for alleging that Merkel [Angela Merkel] and Lagarde [Christine Lagarde] have really truly desecrated corpses".

Reception

Peter Barron, former editor of the BBC's Newsnight, commented in 2005 on Media Lens lobbies over the programme's content. He added: "In fact I rather like them. David Cromwell and David Edwards, who run the site, are unfailingly polite, their points are well-argued and sometimes they're plain right." Roy Greenslade of The Guardian, who recalled being "at the sharp end" of one of their critiques commented that their courtesy "seems to upset the editors and journalists that they approach when probing their motives, actions and results." Journalist Peter Oborne, when researching media coverage of the Iraq war, found the site "extremely useful". He describes the site as "often unfair but sometimes highly perceptive".

John Pilger believes Media Lens has "had such an extraordinary influence since" their work began "that, without their meticulous and humane analysis, the full gravity of the debacles of Iraq and Afghanistan might have been consigned to bad journalism's first draft of bad history". Media Lens though are critical of dissenting voices, like Pilger, who work in the mainstream media. While considering the Australian-born journalist a "huge inspiration", they argue that Pilger's "work is used to strengthen the propaganda system‘s false claims of honesty and openness".

The journalist Peter Wilby ("their basic critique is correct"), who occasionally commissioned them while he was editor of the New Statesman lamented in a review of their book Guardians of Power (2006) that: "The Davids are virtually unknown; as leftist critics, they are marginalised." Writing about the same work Pilger commented: "Not a single national newspaper reviewed the most important book about journalism I can remember", including the left-wing Morning Star, although the newspaper did review their second book in 2009.

Peter Beaumont, who describes them as "controlling Politburo lefties", says their email campaigns amount to contact from "a train spotters' club run by Uncle Joe Stalin". Guardian journalist Michael White at the end of an article in January 2012 addressed Media Lens directly: "Times are tough for all media, including the liberal media. Bear it in mind, comrades: who would you have to attack if we weren't there?"

Arvind Sivaramakrishna, writing in The Hindu, reviewing Newspeak in the 21st Century (2009), the editors' second joint book, commented that the work is a "valuable contribution to the growing body of authoritative criticism of the mainstream press." He concluded that their critique of the British media is relevant to the global media and that their work "deserves a global readership." According to Jeff Sparrow, writing for The Age, wrote of Guardians of Power that despite possessing "something of the child's naive obstinacy in the authors' refusal to accept the journalistic practices at which most people cynically shrug ... [Edwards and Cromwell] expose the fundamental contradiction between, on the one hand, our need for information about the world and, on the other, the need of media conglomerates to deliver returns to their shareholders."

Awards

On 12 December 2007, Edwards and Cromwell were awarded the Gandhi International Peace Award. The award was presented by Denis Halliday, former United Nations Humanitarian Co-ordinator in Iraq and himself a recipient of the award in 2003.

Legal threat from The Times

On 7 July 2008 Peter Wilby reported in The Guardian that The Times' legal manager Alastair Brett had written to Edwards threatening legal action. He had asked the editors of Media Lens, on copyright grounds, to remove emails received from Bronwen Maddox which they had incorporated into an article on her writings concerning Iran. This was complied with.

Brett added that Maddox had received "vexatious and threatening emails from visitors to Media Lens" and threatened an application for a high court injunction to prevent their users from contacting Maddox. Although Maddox reported receiving dozens of comments, the only email directly quoted by Brett and Maddox was from "the second coming of Jesus Christ" with a threat to fire Maddox, which had been sent in similar form to dozens of other journalists and to Media Lens itself. Wilby quoted Edwards asking "what world do these people live in that they have to be so protected from the rough and tumble of political debate?"

Further reading

The editors of Media Lens have co-authored two books:

• Guardians of Power: The Myth of the Liberal Media, Pluto Press (London), 2006 ISBN 978-0-7453-2483-8
• Newspeak in the 21st Century, Pluto Press (London), August 2009 ISBN 978-0-7453-2893-5]

David Cromwell's Why Are We The Good Guys? (September 2012, Alresford: Zero Books, ISBN 978-1780993652) also draws on Media Lens' contact with journalists.

See also

• Casualties of the Iraq War
• Media Matters for America
• Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
• Media coverage of climate change
• Project Censored

External links

• Media Lens website
• David Edwards and David Cromwell, New Statesman articles (2003-6)
• Gandhi International Peace Award acceptance speech