You Are Being Lied ToThe Disinformation
Guide to Media Distortion, Historical Whitewashes and Cultural Myths
www.disinfo.com/site/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=32
edited by Russ Kick * published by Disinformation Books
400 pp * ISBN 0966410076
Articles:
Heading: The Truth Shall Get You Sales Source: Project
Eyeball (
The
first print run of 6,000 copies is ''just about gone'', and a second printing
of 4,000 is due this month.
Exposes on government and big-corporation cover-ups are dominating the
best-seller charts these days. Our reporter finds out why readers are so hungry
for the truth.
IN THE 1997
James Bond instalment, Tomorrow Never Dies, media barons and information
conglomerates replaced Cold War Russian spies and power-crazy nuclear warlords
as the bad guys.
007 went up
against a Rupert Murdoch-type media mogul, who wanted to start World War III so
that he could acquire broadcasting rights in
These
sinister ideas of media domination and corporations growing big enough to
control economies have filtered right through to the publishing industry. The
vogue these days is for books that claim to give the inside truth on the
shenanigans of big businesses and governments.
A look at
the best-seller charts this week reveals two books that claim to uncover the
lies being fed to the public by government agencies and industries.
Fast Food
Nation and Body Of Secrets are firmly ensconced, back
to back, on the New York Times non-fiction best-seller list.
Fast Food
Nation by Eric Schlosser (Houghton & Mifflin, $39.99 from Borders) is an
in-depth investigation into the massive amount of power wielded by the
fast-food industry.
Using
statistics and concrete examples, conscientiously dug up from buried documents
and secret memos, Schlosser's book is enough to make those who quaff copious
amounts of soda and burgers to think twice about what they're putting into
their bodies.
James Bramford's Body Of Secrets
(Doubleday, $51.50 from Borders) blows the lid off the US National Security
Agency, delving deeper into the territory uncovered in Bramford's
1982 best-seller, The Puzzle Palace.
The book's
shocking revelations include President Eisenhower forcing his Cabinet officers
to hide his involvement in the 1960 U2 crisis while under oath, and plans for
secret acts of terrorism against their own country during the Kennedy years, so
that the American public would support the war against Cuba.
In
According
to Quek Lingxiang, retail
executive at Books Kinokuniya, IBM And
The Holocaust and Fast Food Nation, two books with controversial subject
matters, have been selling well.
The store
brought in initially 50 copies of each title, and has been replenishing stocks
regularly, with shipments of 10 to 20 books every week or two.
According
to Gary Baddeley, publisher of You're Being Lied To
(Disinformation, US$15.95, available from www.disinfo.com in both print and
e-book), the first print run of 6,000 copies is ''just about gone'', and a
second printing of 4,000 is due this month. The book is an anthology of
articles by the likes of American dissident Noam
Chomsky, which aims to cast doubt, if not throw light, on the myths perpetuated
in the mainstream media.
The people
behind both the website and book are understandably sceptical of the media:
Launched in 1996, disinfo.com got its plug pulled just three weeks later, when
the major media company funding it decided that backing the alternative news
website's criticism of mass media being under the influence of government and
big business was like shooting itself in the foot.
Russ Kick,
editor of You're Being Lied To, said: ''It's no secret that mistrust of
authority is growing, at least in the
''They seem
to be marketing them more aggressively, pushing them harder.''
One such
book is IBM And The Holocaust, Edwin Black's expose of
the Nazi's use of IBM punch-card technology to manage slave inventories and
concentration camps.
Publisher
Crown's decision to embargo the contents of the book led to the hype machine
going into overdrive, and translated into magnificent sales for the 100,000
copies printed.
Responding
to a suggestion that the appeal of exposes is similar to that of dirt-digging
''unauthorised'' biographies, slaking reader's thirst for scandal, Kick said:
''The crucial difference, though, is that dirt-digging biographies expose
personal details - sexual adventures and addictions, for example - that really
only affect the subject of the bio and those closest to him or her.
''Investigative
journalism exposes misdeeds that affect large groups of people, sometimes an
entire country or, in the case of things like nuclear weapons, the world.''
Another
expose that has gotten good reviews are ''fearless investigative reporters''
Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber's
Trust Us, We're Experts (Tarcher
and Putnam, $48.69 at Kinokuniya).
Subtitled
''How Industry Manipulates Science And Gambles With
Your Future'', the book uncovers and chronicles how public relations firms and
media companies can be bought to give favourable testimonials on behalf of big
business.
Perhaps,
the interest in investigative-reporting books boils down to the new
millennium's attitude of harnessing the power of information.
With the
Internet, people are demanding that information should be easily available, and
that the authorities should be transparent in their workings.
Augustine
Pang, lecturer at NTU's
What he
wanted to know was whether the information within such books is really
accurate.
''They are
relying on materials that have just been released, on information recently made
available. Today, everybody can contribute to this information flow, and
everybody wants to be an author.
''The
question is whether it is good information or bad.''
Good or
bad, people's need for commercial and political truth will
continue to make these books popular.
Heading: Humans Have
Already Been ClonedSource: Wireless Flash
News Service (
Despite
the experiment, many scientists still insist humans have never been cloned --
something Kick thinks is harmful to the public.
According
to "disinformation" expert Russ Kick, editor of the new book "You Are Being Lied
To" (Disinformation Books), a company called Advanced Cell
Technology created a human clone in 1995.
The
research firm deposited human cells into a cow's egg that had been stripped of
all genetic material -- but the resulting human embryo was destroyed before it
could reach full development.
Despite the
experiment, many scientists still insist humans have never been cloned --
something Kick thinks is harmful to the public.
He says
although a human child hasn't been born from a cloned embryo yet, it's
important that people realize the technology exists and it's
possible humans are being covertly cloned right now.
Interviews:
Heading: 'People Should Question Everything'Source: Project Eyeball (
It
bothers me when I see or read a news story that I know is either false or lying
by omission - millions of people seeing the same story are going to believe it
completely.
Our reporter gets some truths out of Russ Kick, editor of You're Being
Lied To.
What
irks you the most about the modern media?
It bothers
me when I see or read a news story that I know is either false or lying by
omission - millions of people seeing the same story are going to believe it
completely.
Another
thing is that the huge amount of resources at the disposal of
the mainstream media are often wasted on reporting fluff or recycled
press releases.
Do you
think a book like You're Being Lied To will be
effective in getting people not to trust everything they read?
I'm sure
it'll be effective to some degree. One reader e-mailed me, saying that he had
just heard a story on MSNBC about some grave, new threat from hackers, but he
was sceptical because he'd read how the government, corporations and the media
create hacker scare stories.
Why
should we believe what's said in You're Being Lied To?
People
should question everything, including my book.
Any
backlash yet from the corporations and government bodies written about in the
book?
Not yet.
The book has been out for less than two months, so it's still early.
What was
it like working with big names such as American dissident Noam
Chomsky?
I was
surprised at how readily the most well-known contributors agreed to be in the
book.
I thought
many of them might not bother with a new publishing house that only pays a very
small amount, but the fact that they did shows how principled they are.
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Disinformation Company Ltd.