20 YEARS OF CENSORED NEWS, by Carl Jensen

1997. Rating: 8

If you ask most editors why they don't end up running a particular story, they will tell you in one form or another that they don't consider the piece "newsworthy." This book makes it bluntly clear that the definition of newsworthy can vary widely when dealing with the mainstream media.

20 Years of Censored News is a must-read, eye-opening chronicle of major stories that the news media mostly missed, for one reason or another, between the late 1970's and 1995. Juxtaposed against the top 10 mainstream stories for each year, each censored news item is given a detailed description as well as a follow-up. The book is refreshingly wide-ranging, moving deftly from the Trilateral Commission to economic and environmental stories, from Panama to the Gulf War to Somalia. It also takes a head-on look at groups like the National Security Agency that are steadily eroding what little personal privacy we have left.

My only problem with the books is that there is a definite pro-left wing bias once you hit the 1990's (or more specifically, the Clinton administration). Whereas the book justifiably takes Reagan and Bush to task for behind-the-scenes actvities that should have made the nightly news but didn't, suddenly after 1993 activities that Clinton was involved in (or wasn't, but should have been) are usually perpetrated instead by "the government."

For example, in the censored story about our true role in Somalia (driven primarily by American involvement with oil wells in that country), Bush is mentioned by name several times during the book's discussion about our initial entry into that country. But our re-entry during the mid-1990's abruptly becomes the work of "the government," as if Clinton had nothing to do with our renewed military action there. Other statements are simply misleading, such as reprinting Clinton's 1993 criticism of SDI ("Star Wars") and adding that he wanted to concentrate on a ground-based missile defense system in case of nuclear attack. The book makes no mention that in reality, Clinton spent the first six years of his administration fighting our having any kind of missile defense, until his seemingly abrupt 180 degree shift in 1999 that transformed him into a very vocal proponent.

In all fairness to the book, however, Clinton doesn't get off scot-free. Rather, even though Clinton is not mentioned specifically as participating directly in any of the censored events, ranging from environmental wreckage to governmental invasion of privacy, neither does he show up in trying to prevent any of them. One finishes the book with the solid feeling that all branches of our government, and both our major political parties, have a lot to account for.

Ultimately, though, whatever the book's flaws may be, and whether biased intentionally or not, 20 Years of Censored News is a book that must be read by anyone who cares what is going on in the country and the rest of the world around them. In every chapter it drives home how the mainstream media is under the control of a handful of large corporations that regularly decide what we will and will not see, and how much more is going on in the world than we realize. The book only covers up to 1995--but other "sequels" have, fortunately, appeared that bring us up to date. With any luck they'll keep on coming, and not just be a printed voice in the wilderness.

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