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.
David Cromwell
David Cromwell studied natural philosophy and astronomy and did a PhD in solar physics. He worked for a spell with Shell in the Netherlands and afterwards took up a research position in oceanography in Southampton. He left that in 2010 to work full-time on Media Lens where he is an editor. He is the author of Why Are We The Good Guys? (Zero Books, 2012); co-author, with David Edwards, of two Media Lens books: Guardians of Power (Pluto Books, 2006) and Newspeak In the 21st Century (Pluto Books, 2009); author of Private Planet (Jon Carpenter Publishing, 2001); and co-editor, with Mark Levene, of Surviving Climate Change (Pluto Books, 2007).