David Edwards (born 1962) is a British media campaigner who is co-editor of the Media Lens website with David Cromwell. Edwards specialises in the analysis of mainstream, or corporate, mass media, which are normally considered impartial or liberal, an interpretation both men believe is disputable.
Born in Maidstone, Kent, Edwards was raised in the village of Bearsted, and spent summers in Sweden, his mother's country of origin. He sees this as influencing his attitudes to modern living.[1] After graduating from Leicester University with a Politics degree he worked in sales and marketingmanagement for several large corporations, but became profoundly dissatisfied with the corporate working environment. According to Edwards, while working at British Telecom in the late 1980s, his employment there became untenable after he attempted to set up a "green initiatives" project.[1] In 1991, feeling he was "not fully alive",[2] he left the business world completely to begin his writing career, taking the advice of Joseph Campbell, the American mythologist, to "follow your bliss",[3] Edwards earned most of his income at this time by teaching English as a foreign language.[1]
After his early articles were published on human rights and environmental issues by independent magazines and journals (such as Z Magazine), Edwards wrote his first book, Free to be Human, (Green Books, 1995),[4] which later appeared in the United States as Burning All Illusions: a Guide to Personal and Political Freedom (South End Press, 1996). It relies on Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky's propaganda model, as well as on the writings of Erich Fromm. Edwards advanced the thesis that corporate structural factors conspire to make the mass media give a picture of the world that goes beyond the political indoctrination postulated by Herman and Chomsky, to encompass almost all aspects of personal life, by constantly promoting the values of blind consumerism.[5]
Edwards has also drawn on his practice of Buddhism in his writings.[6] Edwards, writing for the New York-based Tricycle: The Buddhist Review in 2005, commented: "The antidotes to systemic greed, I am convinced, are political movements motivated by unconditional compassion for suffering. This compassion needs to be rooted in genuinely profound and authentic sources—the kind provided today by the best Buddhist teachers and organisations."[7]
Edwards, David (1998) The Compassionate Revolution: Radical Politics and Buddhism, Dartington: Green Books
Edwards, David (2000) Free to Be Human: Intellectual Self-defence in an Age of Illusions, Dartington: Green Books (published in America as Burning all Illusions)
Edwards, David (2005) Guardians of Power: The Myth of the Liberal Media, London: Pluto Press
Edwards, David (2009) Newspeak in the 21st Century, London: Pluto Press
Edwards, David (2010) "Normalising the unthinkable: The media's role in mass killing", in Peace Journalism, War and Conflict Resolution, ed. Richard Lance Keeble, John Tulloch, Florian Zollman, New York: Peter Lang
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media is a 1988 book by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. It argues that the mass communication media of the U.S. "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion", by means of the propaganda model of communication. The title refers to consent of the governed, and derives from the phrase "the manufacture of consent" used by Walter Lippmann in Public Opinion (1922). The book was honored with the Orwell Award.
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is a Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona and an Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and is the author of more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, and politics. Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism.
Soka Gakkai is a Japanese Buddhist religious movement based on the teachings of the 13th-century Japanese priest Nichiren as taught by its first three presidents Tsunesaburō Makiguchi, Jōsei Toda, and Daisaku Ikeda. It is the largest of the Japanese new religions and claims the largest membership among Nichiren Buddhist groups. The organization bases its teachings on Nichiren's interpretation of the Lotus Sutra and places chanting Nam Myōhō Renge Kyō at the center of devotional practice. The organization promotes its goals as supporting "peace, culture, and education".
Colonel Henry Steel Olcott was an American military officer, journalist, lawyer, Freemason and the co-founder and first president of the Theosophical Society.
The propaganda model is a conceptual model in political economy advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky to explain how propaganda and systemic biases function in corporate mass media. The model seeks to explain how populations are manipulated and how consent for economic, social, and political policies, both foreign and domestic, is "manufactured" in the public mind due to this propaganda. The theory posits that the way in which corporate media is structured creates an inherent conflict of interest and therefore acts as propaganda for anti-democratic elements.
Media Lens is a British media analysis website established in 2001 by David Cromwell and David Edwards. Cromwell and Edwards are the site's editors and only regular contributors. Their aim is to scrutinise and question the mainstream media's coverage of significant events and issues and to draw attention to what they consider "the systemic failure of the corporate media to report the world honestly and accurately".
David Cromwell is a British media campaigner and oceanographer. With David Edwards, he is a co-editor of the Media Lens website.
Edward Samuel Herman was an American economist, media scholar and social critic. Herman is known for his media criticism, in particular the propaganda model hypothesis he developed with Noam Chomsky, a frequent co-writer. He held an appointment as Professor Emeritus of finance at the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania and a media analyst with a specialty in corporate and regulatory issues as well as political economy. He also taught at Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
Engaged Buddhism, also known as socially engaged Buddhism, refers to a Buddhist social movement that emerged in Asia in the 20th century, composed of Buddhists who are seeking ways to apply the Buddhist ethics, insights acquired from meditation practice, and the teachings of the Buddhist dharma to contemporary situations of social, political, environmental and economic suffering, and injustice. Finding its roots in Vietnam through the Thiền Buddhist teacher Thích Nhất Hạnh, Engaged Buddhism was popularised by the Indian jurist, politician, and social reformer B. R. Ambedkar who inspired the Dalit Buddhist movement in the 1950s, and has since grown by spreading to the Indian subcontinent and the West.
Tricycle: The Buddhist Review is an independent, nonsectarian Buddhist quarterly that publishes Buddhist teachings, practices, and critique. Based in New York City, the magazine has been recognized for its willingness to challenge established ideas within Buddhist communities and beyond.
The term American Buddhism can be used to describe all Buddhist groups within the United States, including Asian-American Buddhists born into the faith, who comprise the largest percentage of Buddhists in the country.
Sandy Boucher is an American writer, Buddhist, and feminist. She lives in Oakland, California.
Martine Batchelor, a former Jogye Buddhist nun, is the author of several books on Buddhism currently residing in France. She and her husband, Stephen Batchelor, work mostly in the United Kingdom and occasionally in the United States. In addition to writing books, she leads meditation groups with her husband that incorporate aspects of Zen, vipassanā, and Tibetan Buddhism. Batchelor also blogs frequently for the U.S.-based Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. She studied Jogye Zen Buddhism for ten years at Songgwangsa with her former teacher Master Kusan Sunim, being ordained as a nun in 1975. Batchelor served as Kusan's interpreter on speaking tours of the United States and Europe from 1981 to 1985, the year she left monastic life, married Stephen Batchelor, and returned to Europe. There she became a member of Sharpham North Community and served as a guiding teacher at Gaia House, both of which are based in Devon, England. She has also led a Buddhist studies program at Sharpham College in Totnes, Devon. MB speaks English, Korean, and French and can read Chinese characters.
David Robert Loy is an American scholar, author and authorized teacher in the Sanbo Zen lineage of Japanese Zen Buddhism.
Thubten Chodron, born Cheryl Greene, is an American Tibetan Buddhist nun, author, teacher, and the founder and abbess of Sravasti Abbey, the only Tibetan Buddhist training monastery for Western nuns and monks in the United States. Chodron is a central figure in the reinstatement of the Bhikshuni ordination of women. She is a student of the 14th Dalai Lama, Tsenzhab Serkong Rinpoche, Lama Thubten Yeshe, Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, and other Tibetan masters. She has published many books on Buddhist philosophy and meditation, and is co-authoring with the Dalai Lama a multi-volume series of teachings on the Buddhist path, The Library of Wisdom and Compassion.
In Buddhism, sentient beings are beings with consciousness, sentience, or in some contexts life itself.
Guardians of Power: The Myth of the Liberal Media (ISBN 9780745324838) is a book by David Edwards and David Cromwell, editors of the British media analysis Media Lens website, published in 2006 by Pluto Press of London.
The Gandhi Foundation is a United Kingdom-based voluntary organisation which seeks to further the work of Mahatma Gandhi through a variety of educational events and activities.
This is a list of writings published by the American author Noam Chomsky.
Why Are We The Good Guys?: Reclaiming Your Mind from the Delusions of Propaganda is a 2012 book by British media campaigner and author David Cromwell, co-editor of the Media Lens website.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
