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What do John Simpson, Jon Snow, Andrew Rawnsley, David Aaronovitch, Timothy Garton Ash and Jonathan Freedland have in common? Sure, they're the journalists liberal Britain trusts to report the truth. But, surprisingly perhaps, they've also been targets of Media Lens, a campaign dedicated to "correcting the distorted vision of the corporate media".
When Media Lens perceives such "distorted vision" they contact subscribers to mobilise an email campaign to take reporters and editors to task, while stressing the importance of taking a "polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone".
Media Lens accused the BBC News website of distorting an Amnesty International press release on the death penalty wordwide to "isolate and highlight the sins of Iran". They attacked the same website for "wittingly or otherwise" participating |
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A left-wing campaign has accused top liberal journalists of pushing propaganda,
says matt ford
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in an MI6 campaign to generate support for an assault on Iran.
Recently they took on journalists over the way Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is always described as a "controversial left-wing president", when George Bush is simply "US president George Bush" not "controversial right-wing president George Bush". Broadsheet and BBC coverage of Iraq and Kosovo has also been criticised.
But the liberal press doesn't always welcome having its independence questioned, however politely, and recent weeks have seen some spectacular counter-attacks. The Observer's foreign affairs editor Peter Beaumont called the Media Lens email campaigns "a curious willy-waving exercise" by "a trainspotters' club run by Uncle Joe Stalin". John Simpson wrote: "It takes an enormous act of will to believe [the BBC is a government mouthpiece], 
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