You Are Being Lied to : The Disinformation Guide to Media Distortion, Historical Whitewashes and Cultural Myths

If you can overlook the occasional leaps of logic & Mother-Jones-Utne-Reader-style scandalization, this is an interesting read. One persistant lapse is faulting "them" (dominant media, righties, less than extreme lefties, etc.) for vague or missing docmentation & research while offering up similarly unproven, nonestablished "facts" instead. This break from homogenized media is most rewarding, however, when you realize how few of these stories actually saw any daylight. Whether you favor NPR, Rush, both, or none at all, this book captivates.

I know this won't be much of a review, but I don't want to spoil the contents of this book with some dravel about "this cool part" and "that cool article" .. Suffice it to say I got this book for my birthday two days ago and haven't put the book down yet. The book has articles that would interest a wide-ranging audience, and has the ability to keep you reading until you are exhausted.After reading ~100 pages, my mind was fatigued from the amount of work the authors were forcing it to perform .. Any book that makes you think this hard is worth 5 stars. ~g

Probably the most vital distinction to make between this book and anything that has preceded it is the sheer breadth of topics covered. That alone makes it hard to categorize the book - part media criticism, part political science, part activist rhetoric, and on and on. There are articles, such as Howard Bloom's attack on Islam, that infuriated me. But there's always a balancing piece (in this case one by Ali Abunimah), often leaving one confused as to who to believe. Perhaps that's the point - even within this book there are conflicting views, requiring the reader to make choices and actually think about what he or she is reading. All in all, this is the best book I've come across for debunking accepted wisdoms and making you think for yourself. Oh, one more thing - it's HUGE and an amazing value!

This book is an excellent primer for teaching readers or viewers of any media the tools of critical thinking and is filled with contributions by such distinguished writers as Noam Chomsky and Richard Metzger. Although the book is filled with much interesting factual data, Russ Kick (the editor) in his introduction notes that it is much easier to tear down the sacred cows of society than it is to replace them with the absolute truth. For example, Howard Bloom in his second article falls into the very same trap regarding media reporting that he is trying to warn people against with a rather biased, misleading and one-sided presentation of the situation in the Middle-East. Despite the fact that what Bloom does choose to convey is truthful, what he omits is damning, and he is in complete error in suggesting that the overall perception created of Arabs by the media is that of the victim when in reality, with the exception of works by such writers as Chomsky and Fisk that have been the subject of negative campaigns, Arabs have been represented throughout media history as terrorists. And sometimes the authors admittedly only raise questions about beliefs without really disputing them (as in the article Is Jesus A Myth? which fails to really refute evidence of the historical figure). However, the vast majority of this book is well researched and supported, and serves a useful purpose even when it is only raising questions instead of presenting answers by fighting against the supression of truth. Thus while the article on evolution does not present a new and more accurate theory, it does show scientists as the frauds they are in supressing findings that raise questions about our current understanding of evolution instead of trying to reconcile the apparently harmful data in order to come up with a better understanding of the process as per proper scientific method.The first article, by Howard Bloom, is an excellent summary of social psychology studies regarding the forces of conformity and how they can blind people from even obvious, indisputable truths (I got to personally witness recreations of some of these experiments as a psychology student). The second section of articles then shows how the media can and does, both deliberately (through purposeful disinformation) and through error (usually from laziness, incomplete reporting or lack of knowledge by the reporter on the subject matter), misreport the truth. One example is the FBI citing a humour article warning of a number of made-up computer viruses (e.g. the Clinton virus, which destroys itself when it can't decide which of two files to infect) as if it were about real viruses, and said FBI report then being used as source material in newspaper and university articles exaggerating the threat of computer viruses, and by computer security companies with a financial interest in exaggerating the problem.Following this series of articles illustrating how common misconceptions can arise both innocen

You Are Being Lied To: The Disinformation Guide To Media Distortion, Historical Whitewashes And Cultural Myths is an iconoclastic, 399-page expose of some of our most cherished cultural, political, social, and institutionally cherished errors of fact. Here revealed is the often times startling truth about our most commonly held mistaken beliefs ranging from errors of science (the "Big Bang" is not an airtight fact); to religion (there is no hidden code in the Bible); to national security (hackers do not pose a grave threat to the nation and most terrorists are not Middle Eastern); to medicine (Alcoholics Anonymous is far from being as effective as popular opinion supposes); to the environment (thousands of species have not become extinct because of deforestation). This amazing, candid, and documented compilation of essays offer a number of experts on a vast spectrum of issues ranging from Noam Chomsky on news as propaganda and media as big business to Greenpeace cofounder Patrick Moore on environmental myths. You Are Being Lied To is enthusiastically recommended reading for students of history, politics, popular culture, media, education, science, environmental studies, and virtually all the major social issues of the day.