David Cromwell
Encyclopedia
David Cromwell is a Scottish
oceanographer, writer
and activist. He is the author of Private Planet (Charlbury: Jon Carpenter Publishing, 2001) and of numerous articles published in several newspapers and magazines. Cromwell is currently a monthly ZNet commentator and co-editor of Media Lens.
Cromwell spent most of his formative years in Barrhead
and Cumbernauld
. He graduated in physics
and astronomy
from the University of Glasgow
. After a PhD in solar physics
he moved to the United States
in 1988 to pursue a year-long postdoc at the National Center for Atmospheric Research
in Boulder
, Colorado
.
Returning to Europe
, he joined Shell International
in 1989 as an exploration geophysicist. After five months of training in geology
, geophysics
, and "management skills
", Cromwell was posted to Shell's exploration and production company in Assen
, Netherlands
, while living in nearby Groningen. He left Shell in 1993 to take up a research position in the institution now known as the National Oceanography Centre
, Southampton
, United Kingdom
.
Cromwell's articles and letters on human rights
, the environment
and grassroots
activism have appeared in newspapers and magazines including The Guardian
, The Independent
, Financial Times
, The Scotsman
, The Herald
and Z Magazine. In 2001, he co-founded Media Lens with David Edwards
(author of Free To Be Human and The Compassionate Revolution) and webmaster Phil Chandler, later succeeded by Oliver Maw. Media Lens is a media analysis website which monitors the broadcast and the print media in the UK, attempting to show evidence of bias, distortions and omissions on such issues as climate change
, Iraq
and the "war on terror
". The founders of Media Lens acknowledge a debt to the 'Propaganda Model
' of media control advanced by Cromwell's fellow ZNet contributors Noam Chomsky
and Edward S. Herman
.
Journalists have strongly criticised Media Lens and Cromwell for comments on the Srebrenica massacre
and Rwandan Genocide
. Oliver Kamm
, leader writer for The Times
, has likened Media Lens to Holocaust deniers and described it as a "reliable conduit for denying genocide and whitewashing war crimes". George Monbiot
, columnist for The Guardian
, has accused Media Lens of "tak[ing] the unwarranted step of belittling the acts of genocide committed by opponents of the western powers".
Cromwell and Edwards have written two books, the first titled Guardians of Power: The Myth of the Liberal Media
, was published by Pluto Press
in 2006. The authors argue, with reference to numerous examples from press and broadcasting, that the mass media enable state
-corporate
power to pursue destructive aims at home and abroad. It contains details of debates with editors and journalists from the BBC
, The Guardian, ITN, Channel 4
, The Independent and others. A second book, Newspeak in the 21st Century, appeared in 2009.
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
oceanographer, writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
and activist. He is the author of Private Planet (Charlbury: Jon Carpenter Publishing, 2001) and of numerous articles published in several newspapers and magazines. Cromwell is currently a monthly ZNet commentator and co-editor of Media Lens.
Cromwell spent most of his formative years in Barrhead
Barrhead
Barrhead is a town in East Renfrewshire, Scotland, southwest of Glasgow on the edge of the Gleniffer Braes. As of the 2001 census its population was 19,813....
and Cumbernauld
Cumbernauld
Cumbernauld is a Scottish new town in North Lanarkshire. It was created in 1956 as a population overspill for Glasgow City. It is the eighth most populous settlement in Scotland and the largest in North Lanarkshire...
. He graduated in physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
and astronomy
Astronomy
Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...
from the University of Glasgow
University of Glasgow
The University of Glasgow is the fourth-oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotland's four ancient universities. Located in Glasgow, the university was founded in 1451 and is presently one of seventeen British higher education institutions ranked amongst the top 100 of the...
. After a PhD in solar physics
Solar physics
For the physics journal, see Solar Physics Solar physics is the study of our Sun. It is a branch of astrophysics that specializes in exploiting and explaining the detailed measurements that are possible only for our closest star...
he moved to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in 1988 to pursue a year-long postdoc at the National Center for Atmospheric Research
National Center for Atmospheric Research
The National Center for Atmospheric Research has multiple facilities, including the I. M. Pei-designed Mesa Laboratory headquarters in Boulder, Colorado. NCAR is managed by the nonprofit University Corporation for Atmospheric Research and sponsored by the National Science Foundation...
in Boulder
Boulder, Colorado
Boulder is the county seat and most populous city of Boulder County and the 11th most populous city in the U.S. state of Colorado. Boulder is located at the base of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains at an elevation of...
, Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
.
Returning to Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, he joined Shell International
Royal Dutch Shell
Royal Dutch Shell plc , commonly known as Shell, is a global oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the fifth-largest company in the world according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine and one of the six...
in 1989 as an exploration geophysicist. After five months of training in geology
Geology
Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...
, geophysics
Geophysics
Geophysics is the physics of the Earth and its environment in space; also the study of the Earth using quantitative physical methods. The term geophysics sometimes refers only to the geological applications: Earth's shape; its gravitational and magnetic fields; its internal structure and...
, and "management skills
Management
Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively...
", Cromwell was posted to Shell's exploration and production company in Assen
Assen
Assen is a municipality and a city in the north eastern Netherlands, capital of the province of Drenthe. It received city rights in 1809. Assen's main claim to fame is the TT Circuit Assen the motorcycle racing circuit, where on the last Saturday in June the Dutch TT is run...
, Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, while living in nearby Groningen. He left Shell in 1993 to take up a research position in the institution now known as the National Oceanography Centre
National Oceanography Centre
- The National Oceanography Centre :The National Oceanography Centre is a marine science research and technology institution based on two sites in Southampton and Liverpool, United Kingdom...
, Southampton
Southampton
Southampton is the largest city in the county of Hampshire on the south coast of England, and is situated south-west of London and north-west of Portsmouth. Southampton is a major port and the closest city to the New Forest...
, United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
.
Cromwell's articles and letters on human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
, the environment
Natural environment
The natural environment encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally on Earth or some region thereof. It is an environment that encompasses the interaction of all living species....
and grassroots
Grassroots
A grassroots movement is one driven by the politics of a community. The term implies that the creation of the movement and the group supporting it are natural and spontaneous, highlighting the differences between this and a movement that is orchestrated by traditional power structures...
activism have appeared in newspapers and magazines including The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
, Financial Times
Financial Times
The Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....
, The Scotsman
The Scotsman
The Scotsman is a British newspaper, published in Edinburgh.As of August 2011 it had an audited circulation of 38,423, down from about 100,000 in the 1980s....
, The Herald
The Herald (Glasgow)
The Herald is a broadsheet newspaper published Monday to Saturday in Glasgow, and available throughout Scotland. As of August 2011 it had an audited circulation of 47,226, giving it a lead over Scotland's other 'quality' national daily, The Scotsman, published in Edinburgh.The 1889 to 1906 editions...
and Z Magazine. In 2001, he co-founded Media Lens with David Edwards
David Edwards (journalist)
David Edwards is a British political writer who specializes in the analysis of corporate media. He is co-editor of the Media Lens website....
(author of Free To Be Human and The Compassionate Revolution) and webmaster Phil Chandler, later succeeded by Oliver Maw. Media Lens is a media analysis website which monitors the broadcast and the print media in the UK, attempting to show evidence of bias, distortions and omissions on such issues as climate change
Climate change
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...
, Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
and the "war on terror
War on Terror
The War on Terror is a term commonly applied to an international military campaign led by the United States and the United Kingdom with the support of other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as well as non-NATO countries...
". The founders of Media Lens acknowledge a debt to the 'Propaganda Model
Propaganda model
The propaganda model is a conceptual model in political economy advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky that states how propaganda, including systemic biases, function in mass media...
' of media control advanced by Cromwell's fellow ZNet contributors Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
and Edward S. Herman
Edward S. Herman
Edward S. Herman is an American economist and media analyst with a specialty in corporate and regulatory issues as well as political economy and the media. He is Professor Emeritus of Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He also teaches at Annenberg School for...
.
Journalists have strongly criticised Media Lens and Cromwell for comments on the Srebrenica massacre
Srebrenica massacre
The Srebrenica massacre, also known as the Srebrenica genocide, refers to the July 1995 killing, during the Bosnian War, of more than 8,000 Bosniaks , mainly men and boys, in and around the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by units of the Army of Republika Srpska under the command of...
and Rwandan Genocide
Rwandan Genocide
The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass murder of an estimated 800,000 people in the small East African nation of Rwanda. Over the course of approximately 100 days through mid-July, over 500,000 people were killed, according to a Human Rights Watch estimate...
. Oliver Kamm
Oliver Kamm
Oliver Kamm is a British writer and journalist. He wrote Anti-Totalitarianism: The Left-wing Case for a Neoconservative Foreign Policy , an advocacy of interventionism in foreign policy....
, leader writer for The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, has likened Media Lens to Holocaust deniers and described it as a "reliable conduit for denying genocide and whitewashing war crimes". George Monbiot
George Monbiot
George Joshua Richard Monbiot is an English writer, known for his environmental and political activism. He lives in Machynlleth, Wales, writes a weekly column for The Guardian, and is the author of a number of books, including Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain and Bring on the...
, columnist for The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, has accused Media Lens of "tak[ing] the unwarranted step of belittling the acts of genocide committed by opponents of the western powers".
Cromwell and Edwards have written two books, the first titled Guardians of Power: The Myth of the Liberal Media
Guardians of Power
Guardians of Power: The Myth of the Liberal Media , is a book by David Edwards and David Cromwell, editors of the British media analysis Media Lens website, published in 2006 by Pluto Press of London....
, was published by Pluto Press
Pluto Press
Pluto Press is a radical, progressive, independent publisher based in London. Pluto Press specialises in "progressive, critical perspectives in politics and the social sciences", and describes itself as "one of the world’s leading radical publishers". It has published authors such as Noam Chomsky,...
in 2006. The authors argue, with reference to numerous examples from press and broadcasting, that the mass media enable state
State (polity)
A state is an organized political community, living under a government. States may be sovereign and may enjoy a monopoly on the legal initiation of force and are not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state. Many states are federated states which participate in a federal union...
-corporate
Corporation
A corporation is created under the laws of a state as a separate legal entity that has privileges and liabilities that are distinct from those of its members. There are many different forms of corporations, most of which are used to conduct business. Early corporations were established by charter...
power to pursue destructive aims at home and abroad. It contains details of debates with editors and journalists from the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
, The Guardian, ITN, Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
, The Independent and others. A second book, Newspeak in the 21st Century, appeared in 2009.
External links
- MediaLens Media Lens website
- Private Planet Website relating to Cromwell's book Private Planet
- National Oceanography Centre Homepage with links to scholarly publications
- ZNet Author page
- David Cromwell discusses "Newspeak"