Product Description

Can a corporate media system be expected to tell the truth about a world dominated by corporations? Can newspapers, including the 'liberal' "Guardian" and the "Independent," tell the truth about catastrophic climate change - about its roots in mass consumerism and corporate obstructionism - when they are themselves profit-oriented businesses dependent on advertisers for 75 per cent of their revenues? Can the BBC tell the truth about UK government crimes in Iraq when its senior managers are appointed by the government? Has anything fundamentally changed since BBC founder Lord Reith wrote of the establishment: "They know they can trust us not to be really impartial"? Why did the British and American mass media fail to challenge even the most obvious government lies on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before the invasion in March 2003? Why did the media ignore the claims of UN weapons inspectors that Iraq had been 90-95 per cent "fundamentally disarmed" as early as 1998? This book answers these questions, and more.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34976 in Books
• Published on: 2005-12-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 241 pages

Review
"'In telling us the unvarnished truth, Media Lens is the best thing to happen to the British media for as long as I can remember.' John Pilger 'Regular critical analysis of the media, filling crucial gaps and correcting the distortions of ideological prisms, has never been more important. Media Lens has performed a major public service by carrying out this task with energy, insight, and care.' Noam Chomsky 'Media Lens is doing an outstanding job of pressing the mainstream media to at least follow their own stated principles and meet their public service obligations. [This is] fun as well as enlightening.' Edward S. Herman"

Edward S. Herman
"Media Lens is doing an outstanding job of pressing the mainstream media to...meet their public service obligations."

About the Author
David Edwards is author of Free To Be Human (Green Books, 1995, published in the United States as Burning All Illusions, South End Press, 1996) and The Compassionate Revolution (Green Books, 1998). He is a regular columnist for New Statesman magazine. David Cromwell is author of Private Planet (Jon Carpenter Publishing, 2001). He is a researcher in ocean circulation and climate at Southampton Oceanography Centre. He is a regular columnist for New Statesman magazine.

Customer Reviews

Excellent expose of the media
This book is an excellent expose of the pressures put on the media of our 'free' society to conform to an agenda and set of assumptions which pose no threat to the ruling class.Indeed it is probably the best and the clearest example of this subject area- at least as good as Chomsky and Herman's 'Manufacturing Consent'.The final chapters are a bit of a let-down, but the section on maslakh refugee camp and it's non-coverage by the 'mainstream' media is worth the price of the book alone.Great stuff.Works like these, exposing the revenue pressure on the media to submit and conform to the assumptions of their advertisers,are vital to understanding the reality of our society: free and fair debate within consensual boundaries which can only be described as totalitarian.

Unputdownable
I finished reading this book at 3.30am last night and have thought about nothing else all day. It is a seminal read; one of those books, which changes the way you look at the world, and your role within it. I have been a subscriber to the New Internationalist magazine for many years, joined the Green Party in 1991, support all sorts of NGOs working with development and environmental issues, but have been only sporadically active. Over the years I have learnt to view the world differently, but have been frustrated to find that the media -and my family and some friends -regard people motivated by compassion for others of different races in faraway countries with friendly bafflement. As the New Internationalist advert says: they don't get it. This book explains that these people have been conditioned by a state and corporate media system which serves state and corporate interests, not ours, and certainly not the interests of people on the ends of our 'benevolent' bombs or sanctions in Afghanistan, Iraq or Kosovo. Newspaper readership is weakening as people turn to bloggers and organisations like Media Lens, who help us think about the framing of news stories in a rational, critical and compassionate manner. The crimes of our society against the Iraqi people (the genocidal sanctions, the illegal bombings, the illegal war) are examined under the microscope. It means that you will never watch Andrew Marr, Jon Snow or read David Aaranovitch again with the same complacent feeling that they are on your side. Monbiot's The Age of Consent, the film The Corporation and now this book have made me finally reach my 'tipping point'. Passive interest is turning into activism. I recommend that you get your library or school to get a copy, or that as soon as you have finished reading it, that you should pass it on to as many friends as possible. This book's polemic would be sure to get any Book club fizzing and will ignite people's interest in turning off the telly, hooking up to the internet and reading books, which are truly unputdownable because they expose the truth about our world.

Is it me, or are things just getting worse!!!
READ THIS BOOK!!! What a fabulous, and scary, read. If like myself, you have turned to the Guardian or Independant for a better picture of world events - you will be amazed at some of the evidence brought up in this book. Now, I am not an intellectual but found this really easy to read (and rivetting, couldn't put it down). I found the references given in the text were much more useful than trawling through the back of the book for them and overall can say this publication offers a succinct and straight talking approach to a subject most of us wish wasn't happening. All trainee journos should read as part of their training! It won't disappoint, essential reading.