People in power get nervous when the population’s trust in national institutions plummets. It has often been a precursor of significant social unrest, even revolutions.



This is an underlying reason why UK prime minister Rishi Sunak proclaimed, in the face…

Who is unquestionably the greatest writer of all time? And which was obviously the greatest popular music band of all time?



Sorry, but you’re wrong on both counts.



How so?



Well, let me pick your brains a little further: Who is indisputably the greatest…

The 20th anniversary of the illegal, unprovoked US-UK war of aggression on Iraq comes at an awkward time for a UK press currently suppressing the truth of the illegal, provoked Russian invasion of Ukraine. It's particularly awkward for our fearless watchdogs…

On 21 February 2023, climate scientist Professor Bill McGuire issued a stark warning:




‘Remember this date. First rationing of food in UK due to extreme weather. Things will only get worse as climate breakdown bites ever harder.’




This was in response…

Eliot Jacobson is a retired professor of mathematics and computer science who regularly appears on our Twitter feed discussing the climate crisis. He sends tweets under the grim title, ‘Your “moment of doom” for the day’. These channel the latest news on…

The 20th anniversary of the illegal US/UK-led invasion of Iraq has demonstrated once again the subservience of state and corporate media to Western power. Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s international editor, veered as close to the truth as BBC News allows in an…

In a society built on lies, the search for truth is a game.



Consider the debate surrounding alleged ‘threats’ to the BBC’s ‘independence’, even as the BBC itself reports of its outgoing chairman:




‘As for Mr Sharp's departure, I understand conversations…

In a recent Guardian advert pleading for readers to hand over money to the paper, leading columnist Marina Hyde declared:




‘My absolute favourite thing about the Guardian is not being told what to write.’




Hyde – or Marina Elizabeth Catherine Dudley…

Descartes famously declared: ‘Cogito ergo sum’, or, ‘I think therefore I am.’



But a thought has no awareness; it is a mere packet of information. ‘It’s hot in here’, is like a telegram, a note. The telegram does not itself have awareness, is not conscious.…

The death of novelist and essayist Martin Amis on 19 May triggered a ‘mainstream’ wave, not just of admiration, but of adoration. It is clear from the obituaries that Amis died with his reputation intact and untarnished.



In tweeting a link to his obituary…

The late writer, broadcaster and wit Clive James formulated what he called the ‘Barry Manilow Law’:




‘Everyone you know thinks Barry Manilow is absolutely terrible. But everyone you don’t know thinks he’s great.’ (James, cited Martin Amis, ‘Inside Story…

The Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko famously said that:




‘When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie.’




In this country, as in other western ‘democracies’, important truths are effectively being silenced. As we have written on many…

Why are we at Media Lens utterly terrified by climate collapse while other people we know are mildly concerned, blithely indifferent or cockily contrarian?



The simple answer is that we are doing this full-time and ‘doing this’ includes reading the unfiltered…

None of us has previously witnessed a barrage of extreme weather events of the kind that has been devastating lives across the globe this summer. Canadian wildfires the size of Austria, a Hawaiian town incinerated by a hurricane-fuelled firestorm, a Greek…

A key function of state-corporate media is to keep the public pacified, ignorant and ill-equipped to disrupt establishment power.



Knowledge that sheds light on how the world operates politically and economically is kept to a minimum by the ‘mainstream’…

The human mind stands at the centre of a circle of mirrors.



The mirrors – parents, friends, lovers, teachers, strangers – constantly reflect images of who we are. We’re told we’re annoying, adorable, stupid; that we're a show-off, that we’re not academic…

The ego’s difficulty with the happiness of others is relentlessly communicated to children.



Adults stoically tolerate youthful exuberance for a while – their happiness is our priority, right? But the glee soon starts to grate. Our auditory senses become…