Peter Phillips & Project Censored: Censored 1997: The Year's Top 25 Censored News Stories

Most educated people don't believe for one second that they get the news in its complete and unadulterated form. But most of those people don't try to find out what it is they're missing. Now Project Censored, a First Amendment rights advocacy group, makes it easy for you to find out with this handy guide. It's good, hard reporting; read how NASA burned up a few pounds of plutonium in the atmosphere, or how the U.S. Army used radioactive uranium ammunition in the Gulf War, and you'll feel like you're getting a handle on current events. More than just a laundry list of suppressed news, Censored '97 also has chapters on censorship in general and how it's brought about in our society, sources of alternative news, and reprints of top articles on censored subjects. It's a valuable resource for anyone who wants to be truly well-informed—and it even has witty cartoons by Tom Tomorrow—but it's not without faults. Censored '97 is published by a large group of people from the American Left, a demographic with a history of smugness that tends to repel even those who are in agreement, and this smugness tends to permeate the book. More importantly, the chapter on "junk news" stories and media is only nine pages long. Censorship is pure evil and should be addressed, but in a time when the medium is as important as the message, print and broadcast news-candy should be attacked more savagely and more often. The publication that finally finds a user-friendly way to skewer empty journalism like USA Today will be a work of genius indeed.