All articles by David Edwards

Tony Blair: Greasing his way through the Middle East with the Indy
David Edwards — July 20, 2010 0 Comments
More than six weeks after our initial challenge to the Independent’s Donald Macintyre, we are still waiting for a response.
Media

Gen McChrystal: Death Squad poster boy
David Edwards — July 1, 2010 1 Comment
“It is a bitter irony of source journalism that the most esteemed journalists are precisely the most servile. For it is by making themselves useful to the powerful that they gain access to the ‘best’ sources.” (Quoted Sharon Beder, Global Spin, Green Books, 1997, p.199)
Politics

Brothers-In-Arms: capitalism and corporate journalism
David Edwards — June 16, 2010 0 Comments
An essential role of corporate journalism is to shore up public confidence in an unjust, crisis-riven financial and economic system. Although plenty of gloom and doom is permitted, especially in the face of obvious crisis, the legitimacy of the system is rarely questioned
Media

Projectile Dysfunction – Iron Dome, Israel, Trident, And The Media
David Edwards — May 20, 2010 7 Comments
Even prior to the December 27, 2008 Operation Cast Lead offensive – when Israel attacked Gaza with hundreds of bombing raids and drone attacks, and thousands of artillery and tank shells – 14 Israelis had been killed by mostly home-made rockets fired from Gaza over the previous seven years as against 5,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces. Some 1,400 Palestinians were massacred in the Cast Lead assault
Politics
Media distortions and “real” climate change scandals
David Edwards — February 22, 2010 2 Comments
“The gap between public perception and scientific reality is now enormous. While some of the public is just becoming aware of the existence of global warming, the relevant scientists – those who know what they are talking about – realize that the climate system is on the verge of tipping points. If the world does not make a dramatic shift in energy policies over the next few years, we may well pass the point of no return.”
Media
Iran: The War Dance
David Edwards — October 1, 2009 1 Comment
What level of social insanity is it that persuades people to imagine that a single individual has the power to undo what centuries of entrenched, organised and determined vested interests (that have not gone away) have put in place?
Politics
Hired Hands — Part 2
David Edwards — July 12, 2009 0 Comments
George Monbiot got it right: mainstream journalists, quite simply, are “hired hands defending a corporate or institutional position”.
Politics
Hired Hands: Obama, Gaza, and MPs expenses
David Edwards — July 7, 2009 1 Comment
We do not live in a totalitarian society – the public potentially has enormous power to interfere. The goal, then, is to persuade the public that corporate-sponsored political choice is meaningful, that it makes a difference. The task of politicians at all points of the supposed ’spectrum’ is to appear passionately principled while participating in what is essentially a charade
Politics
The left-wing media fallacy
David Edwards — May 11, 2009 10 Comments
It is a mistake to imagine that media corporations are impervious to all complaints and criticism. In fact, senior editors and managers are only too happy to accept that their journalists tend to be ‘anti-American,’ ‘anti-Israel,’ ‘anti-Western,’ indeed utterly rotten with left-wing bias
Media
Generic Invader Nonsense (GIN) — Obama on Iraq
David Edwards — March 10, 2009 2 Comments
David Edwards parses Obama’s words on Iraq, and the slavish media reaction.