Rating: 
Summary: An award winner!!!
Review: This powerful work has been honored (July 14, 2003) by the National Press Club with the distinguished Rowse Award for the best book on press criticism.
Rating:
Summary: Corruption in the media
Review: We no longer have a free press. It seems that large corporations and our government have conspired to keep us ignorant of the truth. Fortunately there are a few brave souls like the journalist in this book, who still believe in the truth. Unfortunately the masses seem to prefer ignorance and are content with the garbage entertainment that our media produces.
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Summary: What must they think of us?
Review: What a book!!! Reading this book is like watching the movie "The Matrix": your whole reality will turn upside down! Except Neo is most of the journalists who contributed essays and the "agents" would be played by government agencies and big corporate advertisers. While I work in the news and had a hunch that things were not as they seemed, I had no idea to what extent! I mean, it's one thing to see the hypocrisy in saying that we're bombing Kosovo to protect innocent civilians then do nothing when it comes to Rwanda or East Timor (can you say "oil"?). That's the obvious hypocrisy. But this book gets into things I never would have guessed needed covering up, like TWA Flight 800, the CIA's involvement in peddling drugs to the people who pay its salaries (us!!), Monsanto's creepy underhandedness with the press and playing that rubber-band of an agency we know as the FDA. Even if you disagree in conspiracy theories, this book is good for the thinker. Why not at least give it a read and ask yourself "what if"?
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Summary: Good to know the media is on our side!
Review: Yes, if you read this book you can tell that review title was dripping with sarcasm. This book gives accounts of how the government and the corporations kept certain "BIG" stories from appearing in the news are flat out discrediting them through shotty corporate owned journalism. A recommend read for news junkies.
Rating: 
Summary: Who do you trust?
Review: `Into the Buzzsaw' is a book that purports to expose an underlying phenomenon of censorship in the media - censorship of stories which question the government or large and prominent corporations. It is composed of contributions from a number of journalists (some former journalists) describing stories that they were involved in which went `into the buzzsaw' - which met with such resistance from those corporations or the government that they were not allowed to be fully reported, or reported at all. The stories range from recent to relatively old, including the use of hormones to increase milk production, an expose of the Du Pont family, the U.S. government's behind the scenes involvement in the international drug trade, the case of Vietnam-veteran and accused turncoat Bobby Garwood, the TWA flight 800 disaster and more. I found `Into the Buzzsaw' troubling, but not for the reasons you might think. The primary source of uneasy tension I felt while reading the book sprouted because I just wasn't sure whether I could believe the assertions of the various contributors or how far I could trust their veracity. It's not an easy question to wrestle with, and there is no solution between the covers of the book. In his book `Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion', Robert Cialdini shows how we take our cues about credibility from symbols of authority and that we look for reinforcement of our opinion from others who believe the same as we. Such a system gives a high level of credibility (though not an unimpeachable one) to major papers such as the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. It also leads us to add weight the opinions and statements of people who hold elected office or some other government position - an official imprimatur of authority. It does not, however, lend itself automatically to a high level of credibility for a book put together by a loose band of journalists and other media figures who buck the conventional wisdom - (another source of anonymous authority - who decides what that wisdom is and where do they hold the convention?). Further difficulty arose from the fact that a few of the contributors appear to have an axe to grind. Vindictiveness can come through in writing, and when it occurs, it can lead the reader to the credible alternative theory that the author is slanting facts to support a pre-determined, biased conclusion. This undercuts the argument that these authors are attempting to make. Also, in one or two instances, there appeared to be significant questions about the situations that were not explored fully enough to rule out alternate explanations for the events described. Finally, in reading this book I also began to have questions about the limits journalistic expertise when it comes to various subject matters. There were one or two times when I didn't trust the reporter to know enough about the subject to be able to draw correct conclusions from the limited evidence they presented, particularly in the 2nd chapter regarding bovine hormones. That said, this is an important book and well worth reading. Most of the authors are credible and appear to be primarily concerned with shedding light on the workings of the modern media, not with promoting their bias. You don't have to believe everything that the individual contributors assert to understand and recognize the validity of the primary point - that there is an underlying form of censorship (including self-censorship) that acts to protect powerful interests. There are innumerable examples independent of this book that show how such organizations, in a position of influence, use that influence to shape or suppress, distort or obfuscate coverage of their activities. Watergate and Travelgate come to mind for starters. This book does a good job of breaking down the credibility lent by cues of authority and reinforcing the healthy and appropriate skepticism that should accompany assertions by `official sources'. Had I proofed this book before publication, I would have advised a few of the authors to tone down their writing - to make it more serious. I'm no fan of plodding writing and I enjoy a good Dave Barry column as much as anyone - but loose language is sometimes inappropriate when your credibility is at issue. Nevertheless it is an entertaining read and will make you think, in more ways than one, about an issue that is at stake in any healthy democracy - who do we trust to give us our information? I gave it 4 stars to reflect the tension I felt in reading `Into the Buzzsaw', but if the subject of the media, government, bias and censorship at all interests you, this is an excellent book to read.
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