Indian essayist and activist Arundhati Roy said in her book An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire (2004, Cambridge, MA: South End Press) that, "We need to know the difference between what we know and what we are told...between what is concealed and what is revealed...and between the real world and the virtual world," (p. 96). In Exception to the Rulers Amy Goodman helps us to do just that by exposing the power elite's unholy alliance with corporate media and making the case for independent media of which she is a major proponent and practitioner in her role as host of Democracy Now.
The Exception to the Rulers is divided into 18 chapters and an introduction entitled "The Silenced Majority," in which Goodman describes the responsibility of a journalist as "going to where the silence is: giving voice to the forgotten, forsaken, and beaten down by the powerful." She provides rich analysis and chilling illustrations of big government's collaboration with media conglomerates to deceive the public and create sanitizing images and information - "weapons of mass deception" - about the war in Iraq. Goodman makes a strong case for the need for alternative sources of information to counter a handful of major corporations that are raising our children through their stranglehold on the media.
Recently at North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center, the children's mental health agency where I work, we surveyed over 1000 high school students across Long Island, NY. A vast majority said that television was their number one source of news and information and an almost equal number said that it was a most reliable source. Yet, over half said that they do not trust the government to do the right thing most of the time and see politicians as the group that they least admire. The survey results offer a window on the influence of television absent a deep understanding of who decides what airs in what manner and for what reasons.
Goodman illustrates one deceptive strategy that she calls the "classic disinformation two-step." In this case it was used to justify the decision to wage war on Iraq. Here is how she describes it on pages 138-139: "The White House leaks a lie to the New York Times, the newspaper publishes it as an expose, then the White House conveniently masquerades behind the credibility of the Times..." On September 8, 2002, NY Times reporters Michael Gordon and Judith Miller reported, "Iraq stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and had embarked on a worldwide search for material to make an atomic bomb." The day that the Times ran the story Vice President Cheney went on the TV talk circuit and said that "Iraq purchased aluminum tubes to make enriched uranium" and then attributed the story to the Times. Soon thereafter President Bush referred to this as a "first sign of a smoking gun."
The Exception to the Rulers is an eye-opener. It offers a journalistic window that we are not accustomed to day-to-day. I recommend that you read this book. You may disagree with its analyses of domestic and world events. You may think that it is nothing more than some crackpot conspiracy theory. But, I think it will be hard to walk away from this book without a greater understanding of the need to have alternative sources of information to counter what we are spoon fed on a daily basis by corporate media.
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Top reviews from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States on March 20, 2006
Exposes Oily Politicians, War Profiteers and the Media that keeps the lid on what harm they do to us and our nation.
Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2018Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2005
Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2004
Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2004
Top reviews from other countries
Mark A. Pearce
Amy Goodman is a global treasure!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 19, 2015
