Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

"You Are Being Lied To" is a conspiracy theorists dream come true, and an interesting cross-section of modern American progressive thought. Featuring essays by Noam Chomsky, David McGowan, and others, YABLT offers a mix of the intellectual and the borderline loony, and although most essays are well-cited, some of them rely on the same kinds of information manipulation this book is supposed to debunk.

There are several essays on how the media is and has been used as a tool to control information. There isn't much here new for anyone with a passing knowledge of Brave New World, and most of what is here is a repeat of Neal Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death." There is an essay on the Bush family's connection to the Nazis (although it should be noted that there is a much better essay on the connection of American BUSINESS to fascist Europe) and Gore's awful environmental record. Drugs are demystified, the Drug Wars bemoaned, the OKC bombing analyzed, Jesus questioned, and Columbus bashed. All in all, a good helping of far leftist thought.

The book's fault is that many of the essays, as previously mentioned, ignore large logical holes and other pertinent information to make their point. The Jesus essay is insipid, more the stuff of a whiner than a real Biblical or religious scholar; the OKC essay blatantly ignores several facts in favor of hyperbole; and the Columbus essay has been done before. Of note are the "Apt Pupils" article, an excellent piece on the alienation of those who do not conform to antiquated ideas of normalcy in the American school system. Also of note is "Who's Who in Hell," an excellent list of the different humanists/atheists/agnostics/Unitarians and non-Christians who have made an impact in both European and American history.

There's enough good stuff here to justify a purchase, but it's a buyer-beware scenario. One must not let his or her research end with this book - it's a starting point, not a finishing point for many of the issues discussed here. Don't think that just because some of these conspiracy theorists are bucking the mainstream ideas of events and concepts means that they are automatically correct; some of the bibliographies couldn't stand up to serious scientific or scholarly scrutiny, although many can. Also watch for logical flaws, because they abound. If you are interested in this book, by all means check out "From the Smoking Gun" and Postman's great "Amusing Ourselves to Death."

Grade: C+

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 innocently and more insidiously, are chapters dealing with more specific instances of disinformation and misinformation and attacks on common misconceptions.

This is one of the best books of this nature I have ever read. Must reading.

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!

If you agree with everything in this tome (362 pages plus appendices), then you must truly believe that "consistencey is the hobgoblin of small minds." You must also be schizophrenic.

Russ Kick has collected a wide range of authors on a varied selection of topics who are willing to question the "official story" - from media, textbooks, governments and religions - and (at least from their perspective) set the record straight. He includes such authors as Noam Chomsky, Sydney Shanberg and Patrick Moore on such topics as media bias, drug policy, religion, social issues and scientific heresy. The one serious drawback (admitted by Kick at the outset) is an overabundance of views from the left side of the political spectrum.

Of particular interest is the proposed methodology of examining the media presented by Chomsky (though I draw a different conclusion) and Howard Zinn's admonition that you must always consider the point of view of the author of any account before accepting it at face value. [Ironically, it is ESSENTIAL that you apply the same standard to Zinn's work. And his failure to apply that standard to de las Casas' text (the Dominicans had every reason to make the Spanish look as bad as possible) borders on irresponsible.] Everyone (!) has an agenda (including the authors represented here and, yeah, even me) and you are less likely to be deceived if you remember that.

Solid pieces that are well defended (often with extensive source material), such as "Toad Licking Blues", "The Bible Code", and "Sometimes Lying Means Only Telling a Small Part of the Truth" share space with "magical thinking" (buttressed by more "magical thinking") such as "Will the Real Human Being Please Stand Up?".

Articles that really do force you to reasses what you've heard such as "Environmentalism for the Twenty-First Century", "Reassessing OKC" and "NutraFear and NutraLoathing in Augusta, Georgia" share space with vitriolic attack pieces such as "AA Lies" and "The Truth About Jesus".

And interesting and informative articles such as "Poppycock", "Humans Have Already Been Cloned" and "What I Didn't Know About the Communist Conspiracy" can be found alongside those that are merely provocative ("The Female Hard-on") or present a great deal of info that doesn't support the stated premise ("The Unconscious Roots of the Drug War").

Some positions will make you laugh; some will make you shake your head in disbelief; but some will truly make you think - which is what ultimately makes this at least a worthwhile read.

If you are predisposed to buy the "corporate media" argument, then you might well give this work a fourth star.

This book is an excellent compilation of many interesting arguments that are often not heard in mainstream culture. It encourages critical thinking and fosters the ability to question much of what we hear everyday.

This book exposes (among many other things) the myth of religion (mostly about Christianity), the truth of US war crimes and the bloody foreign policy of the US, the cultural whitewashing in history textbooks, some myths of environmentalism, the child sexual abuse witch hunts, the distortions, fabrications, and suppression of the media, the power of large corporations and their subversive influence in the media , etc.

I found two (there probably are more) possible mistaken arguments in the book. One is the Nutrasweet scare - I believe that the threat of aspartame, while not yet certain, has been greatly exaggerated (not to say there might not be some threat however).

The other is the "Forbidden Archaeology" chapter - it seems to be very implausible and far-fetched, although I do not really know enough about it to question it.

Excellent book, with a few possible mistakes. Remember, this book encourages critical thinking - apply it not just to the mainstream media but this book also!

A strange but engrossing mix of articles and essays, "You are being lied to" covers a vast array of topics and subjects, from Columbine to the Big Bang, from Darwin to Jesus, from the environment to the drug war, and many more. According to the authors and editors, these are the facts and views that the mainstream press refuses to touch. Much of what is presented here flies in the face of convention or accepted beliefs, thus keeping in the best tradition of the alternative press. (Do bear in mind, however, that the authors of these articles are not completely innocent of pushing an agenda or personal point of view). Many familiar names are here: Noam Chomsky, Howard Bloom, Michael Horowitz, Jim Marrs, Judith Rich Harris, Howard Zinn. Most of the pieces here are clear and well-written, concise and informative. A few border on the bizarre, and I found Michael Cremo's "Forbidden Archaeology" to be a mere regurgitation of pseudoscientific fringe theories. The best essays, however, are worthy of repeated reading: Ali Abunimah's timely essay on terrorism points out that there are more terror groups operating in South America and Europe than in the Middle East, something I heard years ago from a trusted source--but I have yet to hear it in the mainstream media. Another good piece is Jim Martin's too-brief look at the horrors of communism--and that Joseph McCarthy may not have been far from the truth. Greg Bishop's "The Covert News Network" sheds light on some of the CIA's actions over the years; Sydney Schanberg calls John McCain's altruism towards POW/MIAs into question; Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon's "The Martin Luther King You Don't See on TV" shows how the civil rights leader has been sanitized over the years; and Barry Chamish exposes a possible (indeed, likely) conspiracy behind the murder of Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin, a theory that has already become to Israel what JFK has become to Americans.

The points of views presented are largely leftist and libertarian, though there are a few items of interest to moderates and conservatives, such as Russ Kicks' revealing expose on Al Gore, Patrick Moore's telling essay on the state of the environment, and Cletus Nelson's intriguing piece on the Oklahoma City Bombing, which gives light (and some credence) to many of the theories on the subject expounded by the far right. I do wish they had spent some ink exposing the extremes of political correctness or the increasing number of guru-based cults springing up in this country, and I would have liked more essays on pseudoscience and our crumbling educational system. Even if one disagrees with some of the opinions presented within this book (as I did), they still provide food for thought and debate (always good) and present a much-needed challenge to the mainstream media.

This literally gigantic book is a pretty useful collection of cases in which the authors think you've been misinformed (accidental) or disinformed (on purpose) by the so-called "mainstream" press. Most of the articles here, by a variety of authors, are from the Disinformation website. Part of the fun of this book is that you don't need to agree with everything here, or to even care. For example, why should you be shocked that 12-step rehab programs are partly based on religious help programs, even though some writer thinks you should be? The best articles in this book are free of polemics, don't try to get you riled up, and simply present the information in a levelheaded manner so you can reach your own conclusions. The best examples of this are "Drug War Mythology" and "The Bible Code." And while it certainly helps to be left-of-center politically to read this stuff, you'd be surprised how some of the articles here give open-minded (and basically centrist) opinions, while compiling evidence against some of the Left's favorite causes. For example, "'A World That Hates Gays'" (meant to be an ironic title) is very critical of the gay rights movement, and "Environmentalism for the 21st Century" points out many flaws in Greenpeace and the most popular current environmentalist strategies.

Unfortunately, this book must be penalized for severe inconsistency. For every two levelheaded and thought-provoking articles, there is one written by the worst types of muckrakers, bleeding heart crybabies, hypersensitive PC-ers, and conspiracy theorists who accuse first then (fail to) prove later. Bad examples are "The Truth About Jesus" and "Forbidden Archeology," which commit the error of concluding that the lack of evidence to support a competing theory automatically invalidates that theory, and hence proves the writer's theory by default. Neither of these articles comes anywhere close. There are several articles in this book which are nothing but laundry lists of so-called conspiracies that the writer tells you to worry about without offering proof ("You Can't Win" among others), and several are just blatant promotions for books being sold on the Disinfo website ("Who's Who in Hell" among others). The absolute low point in this book is the atrocious "AA Lies" in which writer Charles Bufe falls all over himself trying to debunk Alcoholics Anonymous, and to convince you that you should care, but merely proves that he's a muckraker trying to get some sort of personal revenge on AA. Or at least to promote non-AA treatment options that he probably has a stake in. Talk about conspiracies! These sub-par articles point to a need for greater editorial control, and badly damage this book that would be much stronger without them.

But in the end, even with many good articles and a smaller number of bad ones, this book suffers from a fundamental flaw. It's just a list that offers no solutions. Before reading this book, I already knew that the mainstream was holding back key information on a variety of issues. Now I have some more specific examples. But what am I going to do about it? Is there a way to change this unfortunate situation other than buying a book from the alternative press instead of the mainstream? Guess what - they're making money just like the enemy.

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

I can only comment on one article contained in this book. Under 'The Social Fabrication,' "A World That Hates Gays: Is There Really a Gay Teen Suicide Epidemic?" by Philip Jenkins on pgs 176-186.

Jenkins makes the argument that Gay teen suicides are being exaggerated. His source? Two news articles. "Political science," The New Yorker, May 3rd 1993 by David Shaffer and "Gay suicide studies flawed," Denver Post, April 9th 2000 by Al Knight. These are the only two sources in the endnotes that actually challenge the Gay suicide studies, all other citations in the endnotes (which is an "impressive" long list) refer to other statements made that are not directly related to the subject. Shaffer's research was based on flawed methodology and was seen by some other youth suicide experts as being of very poor quality. Shaffer completely ignores the central contribution made by
the 1989 Task Force Report on Youth Suicide and misuses the Guttmacher Institute study to "prove" that homosexuals only make up a mere 1% of the population. As for Knight, he shrugs off the fact that the Massachusetts study was funded by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. He also failed to note that the CDC-P survey results in Vermont (by the Vermont Health Department), were similar. These surveys are known as Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance, YRBS. Both of these surveys produce numbers of "attempted suicides." Thousands of students are surveyed in each state every two years. New York state's YRBS encompasses 100 randomally selected school districts throughout the state. New York state does *not* include a question regarding "sexual orientation" or "sexual behavior." Therefore, there isn't any data breakdown for homosexual and non-homosexual, as is the case in Massachusetts and Vermont.

Most youth suicide experts have always avoided and ignored the homosexual factor. One of the, if not the, foremost Gay youth suicide experts is Pierre Tremblay. For correct information on this problem, and critique of Shaffer's research, search for "Pierre Tremblay" (*with* apostrophes) and the word suicide at Google. As for the percentage of homosexuals in the population search for the exact phrase "Percentage of Lesbians and Gays" (*with* apostrophes).

If this article is off, what other articles in this book are as well? Jenkins and Kick both should have thoroughly checked the sources and their critiques for the aforementioned article before publishing.

Guaranteed satisfaction for readers of all political persuasions! Skewers a broad spectrum of sacred cows, political and economic fat cats, and cultural myths. Intelligently written, convincingly argued, and extremely entertaining. Great bedside reading!