David Cromwell

David Cromwell (born 1962) is a Scottish media campaigner and oceanographer, who is a co-editor (with David Edwards) of the Media Lens website.

Born in Glasgow, his mother was a practising Catholic^[1] while his father was an activist and communist sympathiser.^[2] Cromwell spent his formative years in Barrhead and, mostly, Cumbernauld.^[3] 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 postdoctoral research at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

Returning to Europe, he joined Shell International for five years^[2] 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, leaving Shell in 1993.^[4] At that time, he was appointed to a research position in the institution now known as the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, United Kingdom, but left in 2010 to work full-time on Media Lens.

Founded in 2001 by Cromwell and David Edwards, Media Lens is a media analysis website which monitors the broadcast and the print media in the UK,^[5] 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 draw on the 'Propaganda Model' of media control advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky.^[6]

In 2006, Oliver Kamm challenged Cromwell's dependence on American historian Howard Zinn, and both men's knowledge of source material relevant to America's atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, asserting that this was "a subject wholly outwith Cromwell's competence".^[7] David Cromwell wrote a rebuttal of Kamm's piece on the issue in January 2008.^[8]

He has written two books with Edwards. The earliest of these 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 in Britain enable 'state-corporate'^[9] power to pursue destructive aims at home and abroad. A later book, Newspeak in the 21st Century, taking a similar approach, appeared in 2009. Cromwell has also contributed to the ZNet website.^[10]

Cromwell is the author of Private Planet (Charlbury: Jon Carpenter Publishing, 2001) and Why Are We The Good Guys? Reclaiming Your Mind From The Delusions Of Propaganda^[11] (September 2012, Alresford: Zero Books, ISBN 978-1780993652). John Pilger has said "Every member of the public and every journalist with an ounce of scepticism about authority should read [Cromwell's] outstanding book."^[12] In a review of the book Ian Sinclair, writing for the Morning Star, described Cromwell as "one of the most incisive and humane radical writers working today".^[13]

Together with historian Mark Levene,^[14] Cromwell founded the Crisis Forum,^[15] in 2002.^[16] According to Paul Robert Bartrop, Steven Leonard Jacobs, It is a "consciousness-raising body that believes humankind is in serious trouble due to an economic and political system that is destroying its ability to sustain its existence."^[14] Cromwell and Levene have edited a collection of essays, Surviving Climate Change: The Struggle to Avert Global Catastrophe, which was published by Pluto Press in, 2007.^[17]

References

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"