Reviewed by John K. Wilson

Those who wonder why America’s media system is the way it is must read Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press (Prometheus Books, 2002), edited by Kristina Borjesson. While the contributions are uneven, and sometimes rambling, a few chapters alone are worth reading the book. Jane Akre, Greg Palast, April Oliver, Gary Webb, Carl Jensen, and Robert McChesney offer a powerful insight into the controlling mechanisms of the media.

In any instrument of power like the media, control works in three ways: first, by selecting the right people to hire; two, by imposing rules such as “objectivity” on their work; three, by firing and blacklisting those who do not obey. Into the Buzzsaw focuses on the third instrument of power.

The “buzzsaw” is Borjesson’s word for what happens to journalists who follow the story rather than following the rules. They find their careers cut up and turned to dust. Jane Akre, along with Steve Wilson, tried to report at a Florida Fox TV station about the health hazards of rBGH, a genetically engineered hormone used to increase milk production across the country. After Monsanto lobbied Fox officials to censor the broadcast, Akre and Wilson were fired for refusing to go along with corporate censorship. Greg Palast was never given a chance to work in the American mainstream media. Instead, he’s an expatriate in England, reporting for the BBC and breaking some of the biggest stories around the world, including Florida’s presidential elections scandal.

April Oliver was fired by CNN after a key witness recanted his story about war crimes by American troops during the Korean War. Although her story was never proven false, veterans groups exerted sufficient pressure on CNN to dismiss her, and she has been blackballed by the journalism profession.
Gary Webb similarly was forced out of a job at the San Jose Mercury News when he should have been given a Pulitzer Prize. Webb’s expose of CIA/Contra links to the early stages of the crack epidemic was thoroughly trashed by colleagues in the press, even though they failed to discredit any part of his story.

Borjesson’s “buzzsaw” was the crash of TWA Flight 800. When she aggressively investigated the possibility that the plane was accidentally shot down with a missile during a nearby US military exercise, Borjesson found herself forced out of CBS news. Borjesson notes that in 2001, when Jack Cashill made a documentary about this theory, he found himself blocked from the mainstream media; “responsible journalism” dictated that he couldn’t appear without someone denying his view, and all the official sources refused to appear with him. However, the media did allow these government officials to appear alone, because they were a “legitimate news guest.”

Today, these buzzsawed journalists must find work on the fringes of the alternative media, or outside the media altogether. Conservatives who complain about the (slightly) liberal views of the average journalist can’t explain a book like Into the Buzzsaw, which shows how a system of corporate control handcuffs mainstream journalists at every turn. While the whining of right-wingers like Bernard Goldberg fills the best-seller lists, the far more real bias of the buzzsaw controls the media in America.