Media Lens - Reception

Reception

Media Lens has occasional received positive responses from the mainstream media. Peter Barron, former editor of the BBC's Newsnight, commented in 2005 on Media Lens lobbies over the programme's content. He added: "In fact I rather like them. David Cromwell and David Edwards, who run the site, are unfailingly polite, their points are well-argued and sometimes they're plain right."

John Pilger believes Media Lens has "had such an extraordinary influence since" their work began "that, without their meticulous and humane analysis, the full gravity of the debacles of Iraq and Afghanistan might have been consigned to bad journalism's first draft of bad history". Media Lens though are critical of dissenting voices, like Pilger, who appear in the mainstream media. While considering the Australian-born journalist John Pilger as a "huge inspiration", they argue Pilger's "work is used to strengthen the propaganda system‘s false claims of honesty and openness", an opinion Pilger shares.

The journalist Peter Wilby ("their basic critique is correct"), who occasionally commissioned them while he was editor of the New Statesman lamented in a review of their book Guardians of Power (2006) that: "The Davids are virtually unknown; as leftist critics, they are marginalised." Writing about the same work Pilger commented: "Not a single national newspaper reviewed the most important book about journalism I can remember", including the left-wing Morning Star, although the newspaper did review their second book in 2009.

On 12 December 2007, Edwards and Cromwell were awarded the Gandhi International Peace Award. The award was presented by Denis Halliday, former United Nations Humanitarian Co-ordinator in Iraq and himself a recipient of the award in 2003.