Media Lens is a British media analysis website established in 2001 by David Cromwell and David Edwards. Cromwell and Edwards are the site's editors and only regular contributors. Their aim is to scrutinise and question the mainstream media's coverage of significant events and issues and to draw attention to what they consider "the systemic failure of the corporate media to report the world honestly and accurately".
Media Lens is financed by donations from website visitors. The editors issue regular "Media Alerts" concentrating on mainstream media outlets such as the BBC and Channel 4 News which are legally obliged to be impartial or on outlets such as The Guardian and The Independent which are usually considered left-leaning. The site's editors frequently draw attention to what they see as the limits within which the mainstream media operates, and provide "a riveting exposé of the myth of liberal media based on a variety of empirical case studies", according to Graham Murdock and Michael Pickering.
Media Lens is admired by John Pilger, who has called the website "remarkable" and described the writers as "the cyber guardians of honest journalism". Other journalists, in particular Peter Oborne, have also made positive comments about the group, although it has come into conflict with other journalists. The Observers foreign editor Peter Beaumont asserted that the group ran a "campaign" against John Sloboda and the Iraq Body Count for underestimating the number of deaths in Iraq. George Monbiot wrote that Media Lens was "belittling the acts of genocide" in their defence of Edward S. Herman, who had questioned the number of deaths in the Srebrenica massacre.
Foundation and influences
By the late 1990s, David Edwards had concluded that there was a "media suppression of the truth about the effect of the sanctions" against Iraq, and an indifference to climate change: "the media were still celebrating the idea that Britain might soon be blessed with a Mediterranean climate". Another motivation came from interviewing Denis Halliday, former head of the UN’s humanitarian aid program, after concluding its actions in Iraq were "genocidal".
Meanwhile, David Cromwell had found coverage of certain issues to be "paltry", and had gained 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.
Central to Media Lens analysis 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.
Media Lens has expressed admiration for Australian born journalist John Pilger on several occasions. Around 2006, Media Lens said The Guardian would not publish Pilger "because he’s honest about the media" and "draws attention to the vital role of the entire liberal media establishment in crimes against humanity. So he is persona non grata". In a 2007 interview, Media Lens said Pilger was a "huge inspiration" and, while discussing his work in the mainstream media, stated that "on the one hand, his work has a tremendous effect in enlightening a lot of people. On the other hand, his work is used to strengthen the propaganda system‘s false claims of honesty and openness".
Writing in Z Communications in May 2014, Elliot Murphy said that Media Lens pay careful attention to the writings of George Orwell, "noting the prevalence of clichés which should arouse suspicion in any reader of the press or listener of parliamentary debates. These include 'at a time when', 'demands difficult choices', 'pivotal moment', 'towards', 'inextricably linked', 'courage', 'human being', 'some people say that', 'left of centre', and 'history tells us'. Cromwell and Edwards observe that 'it is not important to make sense in the media; it is important only to be able to bandy the jargon of media discourse in a way that suggests in-depth knowledge: Iran-Contra, IMF, G8, the "roadmap to peace", "UN resolution 1441", and so on' ".