David Cromwell
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Dr. 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 MediaLens.
Cromwell was born in Glasgow in 1962 and spent most of his formative years in Barrhead and Cumbernauld. He graduated in natural philosophy [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 in the north of The Netherlands, living in the university town of Groningen. He left Shell in 1993 to take up his present research position in the institution now known as the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, UK.
Cromwell's articles and letters on human rights, the environment and grassroots activism have appeared in many newspapers and magazines, such as 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 small independent watchdog which monitors the broadcast and the print media in the UK, particularly the "liberal" media, for evidence of bias, distortions and omissions on such issues as climate change, Iraq and the "war on terror". Free e-mailed media alerts encourage subscribers to write to journalists and editors to challenge their arguments.
Cromwell and Edwards have just completed the first Media Lens book, titled Guardians of Power: The Myth of the Liberal Media, published by Pluto Books in 2006. Guardians of Power describing how the liberal 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.
Cromwell currently lives in Southampton with his partner and two sons, making brief and irregular forays back to Scotland and Holland.
