TRUE LIES

Making an extensive contribution to ongoing critiques of the media, Web-based Guerrilla News Network reporters Lappé and Marshall charge that the public is served by members of "a lazy and compliant news media" who often act as mere "glorified stenographers" to the government and corporate sources they rely on for information and answers. To back up their claims, the authors collect un- and under-reported news stories from the past few years, giving careful scrutiny to alternative versions of election fraud, conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11, the notion of American empire, Gulf War illness and military vaccinations, "crossover" voting (voting in two primary elections) and electronic voting machines. Perhaps the most compelling chapter deals with the U.S. military use of depleted uranium in armor-tipped weapons. Introduced in the first Gulf War and used again in the Balkans, the recent invasion of Iraq saw a renewed proliferation of these "radioactive kinetic penetrators." This time they were used in heavily populated areas now occupied by American forces as well as Iraqi civilians. Why, the authors ask, "has the mainstream American media paid so little attention to this literally radioactive issue?" Lappé and Marshall also critique the left-leaning organizations and activists for distortions in their dispatches. Their own presentation, which allows most of the stories to speak for themselves without heightened language, does manage to lead by example. Agent, Ian Kleinert of Literary Group International. (Oct. 5)