David Cromwell

David Cromwell (born 1962, Glasgow) 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.^[1]

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"^[2]. 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".^[3]

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.

References

1. ^ Stated objective of Media Lens
2. ^ Oliver Kamm "Srebrenica, Trnopolje and the Deniers", TimesOnline, 30 November 2009
3. ^ George Monbiot "Left and libertarian right cohabit in the weird world of the genocide belittlers", The Guardian, 13 June 2011. See as a response Edwards and Cromwell "A 'Malign Intellectual Subculture' - George Monbiot Smears Chomsky, Herman, Peterson, Pilger And Media Lens", Media Lens, 2 August 2011

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"

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Name	Cromwell, David
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Date of birth	1962
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