Propaganda Blitz · How the Corporate Media Distort Reality

We are all too familiar with the havoc the twenty-four-hour news cycle can wreak on political campaigns. Feeding on a haze of half-facts and a fog of moral outrage, the corporate media is able to inflict maximum damage almost instantaneously. As David Edwards and David Cromwell show, these propaganda blitzes also have transnational outcomes, distorting the war reporting coming out of both right-wing and liberal media outlets.

Propaganda Blitz shows the damning effect of spin in UK media, not just in right-wing newspapers like the Sun, Times, Daily Mail, and the Express, but also in trusted liberal outlets like the BBC and the Guardian. The book uncovers a storm of top-down campaigns behind war reporting from Iraq, Syria, and Palestine, as well as the media’s destruction of the credibility of figures on the left, including Jeremy Corbyn, Russell Brand, and Hugo Chavez. Exposing propagandists at the top levels of the BBC, as well as their reporting on the Scottish Independence referendum, the dismantling of the National Health Service, and looming climate chaos, Propaganda Blitz shows how the corporate media hide the real issues from the public view, often completely reversing the truth. Outlining a new model for anti-business media activism, the authors make an impassioned plea for a return to objective journalism.

“To devastating effect, Propaganda Blitz compiles the

evidence that the ‘mainstream media’ betrays us, its readers, not just

because most of it is owned by right-wing billionaires but because even

‘liberal’ oases are not what they seem. ... As Propaganda Blitz proves, the liberal media is our enemy, not our ally.” —Jonathan Cook, winner of the 2011 Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for JournalismDavid Edwards and David Cromwell are cofounders of Media Lens and coauthors of NEWSPEAK in the 21st Century and Guardians of Power: The Myth of the Liberal Media, both also published by Pluto Press.