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Show Book review . I Information War'-Vietnam s coverJ by BILL WILSON Entertainment Writer "The Information War" by Dale Minor T-09544 Tower Public Pub-lic Affairs Book 250pp S.95 Hawthorn Haw-thorn Books, Inc. Hardcover edition. "Don't believe every tiling that you read in the paper" is an old cliche that we have all heard. "The Information War" by Dale Minor explains why there is some validity to that old cliche. The term "information war was coined in Vietnam to describe I casters would emphasize the good tilings. In describing the controversy contro-versy tli at followed a poem reading over station WBAI, Mr. Minor made a statement which put the whole book in perspective for me. He wrote, "The incident indicated, indi-cated, as had Chicago, the extreme ex-treme vulnerability of the First Admendment in the highly emotional emo-tional atmosphere of political and racial polarization. It has been said that people usually get the kind of government that they deserve. A corollary to this observation obser-vation would certainly be that in a democracy people will retain only those rights and freedoms they are willing to grant others-however distasteful and Sh . hk Ky suggestel temperance towai and toward tl,e , Prs, protected' 1 Admendment as, the democratic R 'ndicate a m wth die tcnsiw : democracy itself; As citizens e hysteria and emot ' will increase the t ' ' tensions or we a stand what is . Information -1 adds greatly to a,' of the media. U the conflict of reporters ana government officials each trying to do his job. The book deals at length witli Vietnam in proving how the government regu ates, distorts, censors, manipulates, (chose any one according to your persuasion- it all amounts to the same tiling) information, but the scope of the book is much larger because Mr. Minor deals with the broader issues of government regulation, self-regulation, responsibilities respon-sibilities and limitations of the news media. As a correspondent for Pacifica Radio he has covered Vietnam, Selma, Washington, D. C. and Chicago, observing not only the officials, but fellow reporters re-porters at work. From the blurb on the front cover of the book I expected a polemical expose' of government censorship and an indictment of the corporate media for using the profit motive. I was disappointed in my expectations, but not in the book. Dale Minor is an objective and reasonable writer who backs up his statements with facts that he has gained through his experiences. ex-periences. While he does spend a major portion on Vietnam, the meat of the book comes in his discussion about the myths that the public holds about the press. With Agnew as the cheerleader, the public has reached a point where many believe that all the problems of the world would disappear if only our newsbroad- |
