Media

In mid-2003, the US military was ploughing steadily into Iraq, goaded on by a pro-war corporate media. Stateside, the federal government was ravaging civil rights in the name of national security, as reporters did their best to scare the population into complacency. And in the background, the economy was eroding the quality of life for families and communities across the country while wealthy elites accrued unprecedented fortunes and the daily headlines heralded a “recovery.” The failure of…

The theory of participatory economics (see our interview with Michael Albert in PN 2530) provides a framework for creating a new kind of workplace in present-day market economies. Unlike some facets of the parecon vision, which may seem lofty and futuristic, the workplace model can to a great extent be immediately implemented. I say this with confidence because I have done it.

For four years, I, along with several coworkers, laboured in a parecon-based workplace to produce a daily,…

When the idea of the Rebellious Media Conference first bubbled up a year ago, there were two things that we really wanted to achieve with the event. We wanted to inspire people with excellent examples of radical media – the extraordinary achievements of The NewStandard were a prime example (see articles on this page). We also wanted to get a much wider circle of people (activists, journalists and others) engaging seriously with the Chomsky-Herman Propaganda Model of the media. (There are…

The paper reports from the first meeting of War Resisters' International after the Second World War (10 January 1947)

The Hitler question

One of the challenges still regularly thrown at pacifists today is the “But what about the Second World War?” question. This might be thought to have been even harder to deal with at the time. But James Avery Joyce rose to the challenge on the front page of PN on 26 September 1941.

“At this…

On 29 April, while the mainstream media was distracted by royal goings-on, around 60 left-wing Facebook sites were removed from the web. The sites were mainly anti-cuts groups including Anti-Cuts Across Wigan, Arts Against Cuts, Bristol Ukuncut, Chesterfield Stopthecuts, Leeds City College Against Fees and Cuts and Notts-Uncut Part-of UKUncut. Student, SWP and anarchist groups were also hit.

Someone had used the fact that these groups had wrongly set up “profiles” (meant to be for…

The deaths of Western war photographers Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros in Misrata in Libya on 20 April sparked considerable reflection in the British press. Many voices were raised saluting the courage – and recognising the social importance – of front-line photo-journalists, who take extraordinary risks in order to connect the global public with the reality of war.

Few have done more in this regard than Tim Hetherington, the videographer and co-director of Restrepo (2010) a worm’…

The event planned for October formerly known as “the Radical Media Conference” has been forced to change its name after being subjected to legal threats by an international PR and production company calling itself “Radical Media”. There will be a protest against this corporate bullying on 3 May.

On 5 April, as the conference organising group began pulling together suggestions for workshops, Peace News (which initiated the event) was surprised to receive an email from Joan Aceste,…

Evidence that the death toll in Iraq may have been grossly underestimated and documents revealing that Israel approved, in principle, “a policy of deliberate reduction” for basic goods in the Gaza Strip, have both been rated “X” in recent mainstream media coverage.

In the wake of Wikileaks’ 22 October publication of nearly 400,000 secret US military logs, the mainstream media briefly returned to the issue of the post-invasion civilian death toll in Iraq. In particular, much…

Thirty years ago this October, the first issue of the Newsletter of the National No-Nukes Prison Support Collective (later renamed the Nuclear Resister) reported on just one anti-nuclear civil disobedience action – that of the Plowshares Eight.

On 9 September 1980, eight US activists made their way into a General Electric factory in Pennsylvania, where they hammered and poured blood on nuclear missile nose-cones. This action inspired a global movement, and scores of similar acts…

38 Degrees started in May 2009, named after the angle at which an avalanche occurs. It’s modelled after other international social-avalanche attempts such as MoveOn.org in the US, the Australian GetUp.org.au, and worldwide Avaaz.org. Recently it’s gained attention for its work (with others) on voting reform in the UK.

38 Degrees is a non-partisan people mobiliser: mostly by using technology (online petitions, emails to MPs and corporate executives) and sometimes through more…

The Catholic Worker is a paper. It’s a house of hospitality for homeless people. It’s a communal farm. It’s a soup kitchen. It’s a movement. It’s radical, pacifist, anarchist, and Catholic. It’s 77 years old as of May Day 2010.

Dorothy Day meant to start a labour paper to announce to the unemployed of the Depression era that the Catholic church has a body of social teaching capable of re-shaping society along the lines of justice and peace. Little did she know what she was in…

Over the 4 July weekend, Nuclear Resister magazine (30 years old) and Nukewatch (31 years old) will be celebrating their anniversaries with a “Resistance for a nuclear-free future” conference and action in Tennessee.
www.bit.ly/peacenews253

A recent alleged massacre by US-led forces in Afghanistan has been greeted with near-total silence on the part of the British press.

On 31 December, The Times’ Jerome Starkey reported allegations that ten civilians – including seven children – had been killed during a night-raid on the village of Ghazi Kang. According to the local headmaster – who provided Starkey with their names and school registration numbers – the children, whose ages ranged from 11 to 17, were…

Since setting up the Media Lens website (www.medialens.org) in 2002, David Edwards and David Cromwell have been publishing regular media alerts “correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media”, encouraging readers to write directly to individual journalists to take them to task.

Largely made up of edited versions of these alerts, Newspeak in the 21st Century’s central thesis is that there is “a profound, consistent bias favouring…

Hicham Yezza, a Nottingham university peace activist, was convicted in February on immigration charges - which he is appealing. (See PN 2499-500 for the original smears against him.) Hich spoke to PN after being released from prison in mid-August.

PN What happened after you were given your sentence of nine months in prison?
HY I was led away to a cell downstairs where my details were taken and I had a few minutes to thank my solicitors for the work they did.
I was then…