David Edwards (journalist)

David Edwards (journalist)

David Edwards (born 1962) is a British political writer who specializes in the analysis of corporate media. He is co-editor of the Media Lens website.

Born in Maidstone, Kent, Edwards is a Leicester University Politics graduate. After working in sales and marketing management for several large corporations, he became profoundly dissatisfied with the corporate working environment. In 1991 he left the business world completely, and began his writing career, earning most of his income as a teacher of English.

After his 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), 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. Edwards has also drawn on his practice of Buddhism in his writings.

With David Cromwell, Edwards is the co-editor of Media Lens, a website devoted to correcting what they perceive as bias in the British mass media. The Media Lens' editors have collaborated on two books, Guardians of Power: The Myth of the Liberal Media (2006) and Newspeak in the 21st Century (2009).