Posted by The Editors on December 3, 2007, 6:10 pm
Link: http://www.medialens.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=9082#9082
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Media Lens went to London yesterday to accept the Gandhi Foundation International Peace Award for 2007. To our surprise, it was presented by Denis Halliday, a previous recipient. John Pilger was also there and joined us in the panel discussion afterwards.
Thanks to the Gandhi Foundation for a warmly-hosted event. And thanks too to all our supporters.
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December 2, 2007
Media Lens - Compassionate Dissent in an Age of Illusions
It’s a real honour to accept the 2007 Gandhi Foundation International Peace Award. It seems amazing to us that an idea which developed over a couple of pints in the Giddy Bridge pub in Southampton has led to us being considered in the same company as Denis Halliday, for example, who accepted this award in January 2003.
My co-editor David Edwards interviewed Denis Halliday, the former United Nations humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, in May 2000. Halliday explained how US-UK sanctions on Iraq were responsible for what he described as a “genocide.” The sanctions directly contributed to the deaths of around one and a half million Iraqis. That dreadful death toll includes half a million children under the age of five. Halliday exposed the deceit behind British and American claims that the Iraqi government had been stockpiling food and withholding medicines from its stricken people.
David wrote up the interview and, in the weeks that followed, he sent it to every liberal newspaper in England, Ireland and Scotland. Nothing like it had ever been published before. But the article was dismissed out of hand because "Halliday is old hat”; or because "the question and answer format is not right for us"; or because "what is needed is for the government position to change first"; or because "we have already covered that subject" in an article before - once!
The indifference and cynicism were astonishing. It gave a snapshot of a media system utterly lost to cynicism and servility to power, even in response to a completely credible claim that our government was responsible for nothing less than genocide.
This was one of many experiences with the media that we both had that led to the creation of Media Lens in July 2001.
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