Newspeak in the 21st Century

Since 2001, Media Lens has encouraged thousands of readers to challenge the filtered and distorted version of the world provided by major broadcasters. The media responses, collected in Newspeak, are an exposé of the arrogance and servility to power of our leading journalists Picking up where the highly acclaimed and successful Guardians of Power (2006) left off, Newspeak is packed with forensic media analysis, revealing "balanced" reporting. Even the "best" UK media -- the Guardian, the Independent, Channel 4 News and the BBC -- turn out to be cheerleaders business and war. Alongside an A-Z of BBC propaganda and chapters on Iraq and climate change, Newspeak focuses on the demonization of Iran and Venezuela, conflict, the myth of impartial reporting and the dark art of smearing dissidents.

David Edwards is co-founder/editor of, and works full-time for, Media Lens (www.medialens.org). He is author of Free to be Human (1995), The Compassionate Revolution (1998) and co-author of Guardians of Power: The Myth of the Liberal Media (Pluto, 2006). David Cromwell is co-founder and editor of Media Lens (www.medialens.org), and a researcher in ocean circulation and climate at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton. He is author of Private Planet (2001) and co-author of Guardians of Power: The Myth of the Liberal Media (Pluto, 2006). In 2002, he co-founded the Crisis Forum (www.crisis-forum.org.uk) with Mark Levene, a fellow academic at the University of Southampton. Surviving Climate Change: The Struggle to Avert Global Catastrophe, edited by Cromwell and Levene, was published in 2007 by Pluto.

"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  "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  "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. It is fun as well as enlightening to watch their representatives, while sometimes giving straightforward answers to queries, often getting flustered, angry, evasive, and sometimes mistating the facts. This won't change the media very much, but it will make them a bit more careful and honest, and it will help educate the public, which will have its own useful spinoff." --Edward S. Herman