November 24, 2010
NEW MEDIA LENS WEBSITE AND AN APPEAL
We are happy to announce that, beginning September 20, David Cromwell took the big leap out of paid work into full-time co-editing of Media Lens, there to join David Edwards who has been working full-time on the project since 2002.
This represents a huge step forward for us, one that for a long time appeared unachievable. After all, the web is awash with websites and bloggers asking for support: for donations, adverts, even for a few words to fill their empty comment boxes. We have no glossy advertisers, no wealthy philanthropists helping behind the scenes. And of course we don’t charge.
This means we are dependent on the £1, £2, £5 and sometimes higher monthly donations we receive from individual readers. If, as Roger Alton, former editor of the Observer and Independent, argues, we are “poisonous c*nts”, then truly we are the People’s Poisonous C*nts. We only exist because members of the public find value in what we write and choose to support us.
And it is not because we have inherent credibility - we have none. We are not tenured professors at prestigious universities; we are not boosted by a world-famous newspaper. We are two people writing on the internet. In a protracted sneer, the Observer’s foreign affairs editor Peter Beaumont described us as “these self-appointed media watchdogs” (http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1800328,00.html). And that’s the point: we are appointed by no-one; we are accountable to no authority. It is difficult for Beaumont and his pals to understand, but +that+ is what people like about our work.
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What is Media Lens?
Media Lens is our response to the unwillingness, or inability, of the mainstream media to tell the truth about the real causes and extent of many of the problems facing us, such as human rights abuses, poverty, pollution and climate change.CONTINUE
