Fwd: Wrestling Goliath - A Request for Support

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Medialens Media Alerts

 

Wrestling Goliath - A Request for Support

 

MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media

 

September 30, 2003

 

 

MEDIA ALERT: WRESTLING GOLIATH – A REQUEST FOR SUPPORT

 

Long years of habit have persuaded many of us to casually hand over our money to

large media corporations portraying themselves as truly ‘independent’

‘guardians’ of people and democracy. In reality they are all firmly embedded in

a system of greedy and ruthless power that precisely depends on deception and

public ignorance.

 

The media forever adhere to a giant ‘gentleman’s agreement’ whereby occasional

references to the truth are made but almost no one goes ‘too far’ in challenging

established power. Consider the former UN humanitarian coordinator, Denis

Halliday, who has repeatedly described Western sanctions policy in Iraq as

“genocidal”, and who resigned in protest in September 1998 – an unprecedented

event at such a senior level in the UN. Halliday was responsible for setting up

the UN’s ‘oil for food’ programme in Iraq - he knows what he’s talking about.

 

And yet in more than 10,500 articles on Iraq, its recent history, its problems,

its apparently endless suffering, Halliday has been mentioned twice in the

Guardian and Observer this year. Chief Unscom weapons inspector, Scott Ritter,

who described Iraq 90-95%, or “fundamentally”, disarmed of WMD by December 1998,

has been mentioned 13 times in these 10,500 articles.

 

This is not hard science, but it is a snapshot indication of the true extent to

which you, we, and the people of Iraq are being betrayed by our ‘best’ media.

This is no joke – people are literally paying with their lives for this media

subservience to power.

 

If our own government’s genocide is not a worthy subject even of discussion,

even of debate, then what price honest debate on any of the other vital issues

and crises that are looming over society but that also happen to tread on the

sensitive toes of important people?

 

It’s time now to seriously start building non-corporate media willing to

challenge the corporate monopoly on truth. If we had powerful alternative media

outlets motivated by authentic compassion and concern for others, rather than

bottom-line profits, the world would be a very different place. But Noam Chomsky

comments on our passivity in supporting such alternatives:

 

“We’re so anti-social that we don’t even see the point of supporting popular

institutions. Remember, even if you’re an activist on the left, what you’ve

constantly been taught from childhood, and what you’ve still got ingrained in

your head is: ‘I’m just out for myself, and therefore if I can get the

information for nothing, why should I help to build an institution?’ Well,

that’s obviously a very anti-social attitude – but you find it’s very hard to

break out of: we’ve just got it.” (Chomsky, Understanding Power, The New Press,

2002, p.279)

 

 

Please Support Media Lens

 

Word about the Media Lens project continues to spread. Since March, we have been

writing regularly for the New Statesman magazine, our Media Alerts have been

posted across the internet, in magazines, and also published in several

collections of essays on the war on Iraq, media issues, and so on. Inspired by

our example, similar sites have been set up, or are being planned, in Australia,

Canada, Denmark and India. By last Christmas, we had recorded 100,000 hits to

the site after 18 months of activity – a figure that now stands at some 320,000

hits.

 

The response of the mainstream continues to be predictable. We are widely read

within the media – as we know from our r database and also from

journalists occasionally breaking cover to take issue with what we have written!

We have been quoted by the BBC (Newsnight), the Observer (unattributed), the

Guardian, the Daily Mirror and the Times. And yet, supportive mentions by John

Pilger in the New Statesman aside, there has been not one attempt to investigate

the purpose or possible significance of what we are doing.

 

Thanks to very kind donations by readers and rs, one of us (David

Edwards) has for the first time been able to take six months off other paid work

from June of this year to concentrate on Media Alerts and also (with David

Cromwell) on the writing of the first Media Lens book, provisionally titled:

Guardians Of Power - The Great Liberal Media Lie. Funds are now running low,

however, and if we are to maintain, and even expand, our activities, we need any

financial support you might feel able to offer.

 

Media Alerts will continue to be free of charge but if you felt able to make a

voluntary monthly payment for receiving them, or to make a one-off donation,

your help would be very much appreciated. Please visit our online donation page:

 

http://www.medialens.org/donate.html

 

Click on the " Make a donation " button for a one-off contribution or set up a

subscription (i.e. regular payment) by clicking on " PayPal " or

" StormPay " .

 

Alternatively, you can set up a regular payment at the site via a standing

order, by paying directly into the Media Lens savings account with the Triodos

Bank.

 

Or you can send a cheque in pounds sterling (or in US dollars for amounts over

$100) made out to " Media Lens " to:

 

Media Lens

c/o 32 Avenue Road

Southampton

SO14 6TT

UK

 

It’s hard to exaggerate the significance of this support. Quite simply, rather

than doing other paid work, it means we can focus all our time and energy on

developing Media Lens.

 

It seems to us that the internet offers an extraordinary, and at present largely

unchecked, tool for challenging organisations which have for so long

subordinated people and planet to short-term profit. Important facts and ideas

challenging state-corporate deceptions that might once have appeared after a

month’s delay in magazines with tiny circulations, are today instantly snapped

up and forwarded around the world to hundreds of thousands of people. Because

people have a nose for truth, the best material is not being swamped by

‘information overload’ – it is getting through.

 

We are determined to make the most of this opportunity to challenge destructive

power in a way that, we believe, is unprecedented. But we can’t do it alone – we

really do need your support.

 

Many thanks

 

David Edwards, David Cromwell and Phil Chandler

Media Lens

 

 

Feel free to respond to Media Lens alerts: editor

 

Visit the Media Lens website: http://www.medialens.org

 

This media alert will shortly be archived at:

http://www.MediaLens.org/alerts/index.html

 

 

 

 

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