Media Lens & Cook: the actuality of media control

Media Lens have just published Part 2 of Intellectual cleansing, a brilliant Alert featuring Jonathan Cook's personalised account of how media censorship and control actually works in daily practice. It's a fine collaboration between ML and Cook, deserving wide exposure.

In detailing his own experiences moving 'up' through the local and national press, Cook provides a set of highly educational insights on the many unstated processes of personnel selection, editorial filtering and the kind of imbued "values" expected of aspirant journalists, all serving to keep the liberal press a safe repository of business-friendly ideas and interests.

It should be required reading for all 'professional journalists', media students and those in search of explanations they suspect are not forthcoming from the Guardian, BBC and other 'vanguard' media outlets.

Cook is also to be commended in this piece for his vital revelations on press bias, editorial censorship and elite lobbying over the Palestine-Israel conflict. Again, it's invaluable material for anyone trying to understand why the Palestinian case has been marginalised for so long.

John