The Tobacco Taboo
Censorship of Adverse Facts on Tobacco

The tobacco hazard is not new. However, exposure of the hazard, citing it, saying to take action against it (as authors for a century have noted), is generally viewed with disfavor. The tobacco hazard is a taboo subject: don't mention it! Tobacco pushers have sued people who have mentioned or detailed the tobacco hazard, targeting of children, or other tobacco facts! Yes, they have, as you'll see here.

So, let's be brave, dare the pushers! Let's fight the 'tobacco taboo.' Let's mention it. In detail! Let's start with the chemistry facts, and offer links to related sites. Many links! Many related sites! Let's burst the 'tobacco taboo.' Indeed, “as much publicity as possible should be given to the results of careful observation and scientific study”—a quote from a 1915 exposé.

Tobacco is filled with toxic chemicals. Our ancestors, contrary to myth, were educated people, better educated on basic science fact than millions nowadays. They, by 1836, yes, 1836, knew what tobacco poison was, and what it could do--something most people now have no idea of!! They knew by 1836
"that thousands and tens of thousands die of diseases of the lungs generally brought on by tobacco smoking. . . . How is it possible to be otherwise? Tobacco is a poison. A man will die of an infusion of tobacco as of a shot through the head." —Samuel Green, New England Almanack and Farmer's Friend (1836).

Americans took heed. Result: Declining U.S. tobacco use, reported by Dr. J. B. Neil, 1 The Lancet (#1740) p 23 (3 Jan 1857). Prior to mass media advertising, non-smoking was "common" in the U.S., says Prof. John Hinds, The Use of Tobacco (Nashville, Tenn: Cumberland Presbyterian Publishing House, 1882), p. 10.

Naturally the tobacco lobby did not like this. The tobacco lobby did not want the fact ("Tobacco is a poison") widely known. As a result of the tobacco lobby desire to censor such facts, there is near total censorship of tobacco news. Ask yourself, how much information have you seen or heard in the media (print and broadcast) on these tobacco subjects?

WHAT DOCTORS AND THE MEDIA
KNOW ABOUT TOBACCO
BUT THE MEDIA TOO OFT WON'T REPORT
Abortion AIDS Alcoholism Alzheimer's
Birth Defects Crime Deforestation Divorce
Drugs Fires Heart Disease Lung Cancer
Mental Disorders Seat Belt Non-Use SIDS Suicide

Have you learned from the media about the medical evidence on

  • the tobacco role in abortion?

  • smoking in mental disorder terms?

  • the tobacco role in crime

  • the already-existing law banning cigarettes?

  • the budget-busting effects?

    • No, of course not.
    WHAT THE MEDIA DOESN'T REPORT
    ABOUT THE LAW AND CIGARETTES
    Cigarette Ads: Illegal Dangerous Tobacco Genocide by Tobacco
    Iowa's 1897 Action Legal Definitions Michigan Law
    Murder by Tobacco Restraint of Trade Cases Right to Pure Air
    Smoking on the Job Issues
    Supreme Court Tobacco Cases Tennessee's 1897 Law

    The print and broadcast media's wide-spread censorship of tobacco-facts, to the extreme of printing of gross disinformation on cigarette effects and correlatives including but not limited to crime, has been cited since at least 1913, in sources including but not limited to the following:
    • Cora F. Stoddard, "The Publishers and Tobacco," 22 Sci Temp Journal 93-94 (1913);

    • Charles M. Fillmore, The Tobacco Taboo (Indianapolis: Meigs Pub Co, 1930), pp 88-89;

    • Frank L. Wood, M.D., What You Should Know About Tobacco (Wichita, KS: The Wichita Publishing Co, 1944), pp 32-33;

    • George Seldes, InFact Tobacco Exposés 1940-1950 and, e.g., Never Tire of Protesting, (New York: Lyle Stuart Inc, 1968), Chapters 7-10, pp 61-99. (Seldes also founded www.infact.org).

    Concern about the media is not new. The danger from unethical and disinformational media writings on tobacco issues was being cited long ago. See, e.g.,
    • Rev. Beriah Green, What Northen Men Can Do (1836), p 11 (in slavery context);

    • Rev. J. B. Wight, Tobacco: Its Use and Abuse (1889), p 218; and

    • Luther Burbank (1849-1926) (in a narrative on tobacco-caused deaths and related media disinformation). [See Example.]

    Media presstitutes regularly report on smokers alleging that smoking bans to enforce common law and constitutional rights somehow 'violate' 'their smoker rights.' (Presstitutes never cite specifically what those alleged 'smoker rights' are, of course!)

    Do you perceive how the media routinely repeat pusher and smoker mythology? repeat disinformation? have a relationship to smokers' views? For those, see Lennox Johnston, "Cure of Tobacco-Smoking," 263 The Lancet 480, 482 (6 Sep 1952), here, an excerpt of that article, and of his prior related article. For full text of this, or any reference herein-cited, contact your local library.

    A result of the media's massive censorship of tobacco information is: "Most smokers do not view themselves at increased risk of heart disease or cancer." John P. Ayanian, M.D., M.P.P., Paul J. Cleary, Ph.D., "Perceived Risks of Heart Disease and Cancer Among Cigarette Smokers," 281 J Am Med Ass'n (11) 1019-1021 (17 March 1999).

    Due to media disinformation, the public does not realize the #1 addiction source, notwithstanding that the U.S. Supreme Court cited tobacco, over four decades ago: "The first step toward addiction may be as innocent as a boy's puff on a cigarette in an alleyway," in Robinson v California, 370 US 660, 670; 82 S Ct 1417; 8 L Ed 2d 758 (1962).

    "The majority of smokers don't know the facts about what's in cigarettes and how these ingredients may harm them. Most smokers also don't realize there are no health benefits to filtered and low-tar cigarettes, nor do they understand nicotine medications such as patches," says Amanda Gardner of HealthDay, in "Survey reveals smokers' ignorance" (Cincinnati (OH) Enquirer, 13 Dec 2004), citing Dr. K. Michael Cummings, Chair, Dept of Health Behavior, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, N.Y., and his survey in Nicotine & Tobacco Research (December 2004).

    Data such as this is suppressed. In fact, "smokers never, even today, have sufficient information to make a decision about smoking," a quote from the 11 Jan 1999 testimony of Dr. Whelan.

    Elizabeth M. Whelan, Sc.D., M.P.H., President, American Council on Science and Health, is an expert who reports that, "Cigarette Makers Get Away With Murder," The Detroit News, p 4B [14 March 1993].) She has also written a number of books, including
    • Cigarettes: What the Warning Label Doesn't Tell You: The First Comprehensive Guide to the Health Consequences of Smoking (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1997) and

    • A Smoking Gun—How the Tobacco Industry Gets Away With Murder (Philadelphia: George F. Stickley, People's Health Library, 1984).

    But in court in January 1999, the judge refused to allow her to even mention the name of her book! Now that's censorship!

    “In 100 years' time the arguments of those promoting smoking, and smokers' freedom, will be seen to be as retrograde and foolish as the arguments of those who once sought to

  • postpone the abolition of slavery, or

  • delay the development of underground pipes for sewage
    (rather than continue to allow it to run in the streets).

    “Reason eventually prevailed and doubtless will do so also with smoking.

    “Promotion by tobacco companies may then be seen for what it is—the ‘pushing' of a dangerous drug.”—Beulah R. Bewley, “Smoking in Pregnancy,” 288 Brit Med J (#6415) 424-426 (11 Feb 1984).

    • When rarely (as normally "the press has suppressed or withheld the facts concerning tobacco toxicity from the American people"), something is published including the adverse mental effects, the material often goes unread as the tobacco taboo goes to the extreme of widespread refusal by the American public "even to read any book or article which refers to the harmfulness of tobacco . . . or in any other way exposes the evils of the drug," says Frank L. Wood, M.D., What You Should Know About Tobacco (Wichita, KS: The Wichita Publishing Co, 1944), pp 33 and 63.

    This state of en-masse denial arises from the fact that ". . . the immediate effect of smoking . . . is a lowering of the accuracy of finely coordinated reactions (including associative thought processes)."—John H. Kellogg, M.D., LL.D., F.A.C.S., Tobaccoism, or, How Tobacco Kills (Battle Creek, MI: The Modern Medicine Publishing Co, 1922), p 88.

    "Smokers show the same attitude to tobacco as addicts to their drug, and their judgment is therefore biased in giving an opinion of its effect on them."—Lennox Johnston, "Tobacco Smoking and Nicotine," 243 The Lancet 742 (19 Dec 1942). For example, smokers showed "marked denial of concern . . . about any dangers associated with tobacco."—Peter H. Knapp, M.D., et al, 119 Am J Psychiatry (#10) 966-972 (April 1963) [Details]. Tobacco pushers and their media accessories count on, take advantage of, manipulate, this massive state of widespread denial or reality, refusal to recognize medical and scientific facts.

    For example, by the late 1930's, doctors ascertained significant data on smoking and heart disease.
    "The works of Dr. [Raymond] Pearl and of Drs. English, Willus and Berkson at the Mayo Foundation have been epochal in their significance, showing that coronary disease of the heart is six times as prevalent among heavy smokers as among nonsmokers and that the mortality rate among heavy smokers between the ages of thirty and fifty is approximately twice as high as that of nonsmokers. Dr. Pearl's report and graph in reference to the comparative death rates of smokers and nonsmokers were published in Science magazine on March 4, 1938, and the report of the Mayo medical scientists was published in The Journal of the American Medical Association on October 19, 1940," says Frank L. Wood, M.D., What You Should Know About Tobacco (Wichita, KS: The Wichita Publishing Co, 1944), p 33.

    Dr. Wood reported that with almost no exceptions, the media suppressed, censored and refused to report that life-saving data.

    Dr. Wood deemed this mass refusal of reporting to be a "malicious dereliction of duty," and that the "natural and probable consequence" of this censorship would be millions of deaths, people "who will go on smoking indefinitely, oblivious of the danger to their health and their very lives to which are" being subjected. Dr. Wood correctly saw that "through the influence of money and the tobacco companies, the press has suppressed or withheld the facts concerning tobacco toxicity from the American people." Wood, supra, p 33.

    The book by Larry C. White, Merchants of Death (New York: William Morrow Beech Tree Books, 1988), Chapter 6, "Advertising Addiction," pages 116-142, provides more information on this malicious pro-tobacco media censorship:

    "There is nothing new about the kid-gloves treatment meted out by the media to the cigarette industry and the story of smoking and disease," p 134. "The data . . . . show that magazines that accept cigarette ads are less likely than magazines that don't accept them to report on the hazards of smoking. A few editors have stated publicly that they don't want to offend their tobacco advertisers," White, supra, p 139.

    "Cigarette advertising exerts an irresistible influence on many editors. The story of smoking and health is grossly underreported [due to] self-censorship imposed by editors who are fearful of offending cigarette advertisers. The presence of cigarette advertising seems to exert a 'chilliing effect' on the free flow of information about smoking and health," White, supra, p 139.

    "Indeed, it can cost a lot of money to be outspoken. Newsweek's June 6, 1983, issue, which included a long article on the nonsmokers' rights movement, carried no cigarette ads. When the cigarette companies learned of plans for the story, they asked that their ads be removed. The magazine may have lost as much as $1 million in advertising for publishing that story," White, supra, p 139.

    "Cigarette money doesn't just inhibit editors from printing articles about smoking, it also creates a barrier to antismoking advertisements. Dr. Kenneth Warner wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine (February 7, 1985) [about] difficulties in placing ads for antismoking clinics," White, supra, pp 139-140.

    "Self-censorship and toadying to the cigarette companies extend beyond magazines . . . . Barry Ackerly, owner of a radio and four television stations and, even more important, of one of the largest billboard companies in the country, proved his loyalty to tobacco in 1986. He sent out a memo to all his operations telling them to reject public service announcements of the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society . . . . " White, supra, p 141.

    The media resorts to outright lying, which by anybody else could be deemed criminal fraud. For example, in one article, "the author said that reduction in smoking . . . does not reduce the risk of heart disease, which, he said, is caused mainly by stress," p 135.
    "Stress" is a code-word used under tobacco lobby influence, i.e., it is a mythical concept! on the order of saying that the "flat earth" caused the person to fall off the edge!! Never happened, never will!

    The making of false or misleading statements by the media was well-described thus by Elizabeth M. Whelan, Sc.D., M.P.H., of the American Council on Science and Health,

    “a classic case of disinformation. It is like representing yourself as an auto safety expert and writing a [paper] on 'how to reduce your risks of death and injury on the road' and purposely avoiding any reference to seatbelts and the risks of drunk driving, instead focusing in depth on the desirability of getting your windshield wipers changed frequently.” See Larry C. White, Merchants of Death (New York: William Morrow Beech Tree Books, 1988), Chapter 6, "Advertising Addiction," p 141.

    Note that “an expert [or journalist] who supplies nothing but a bottom line [a conclusion as journalists typically do] supplies nothing of value to the judicial process [truth]. . . . [you] would not accept from . . . students or those who submit papers to [a professional] journal an essay containing neither facts nor reasons; why should a court [the public] rely on the sort of exposition the scholar would not tolerate in his professional life?” asks the case of Mid-State Fertilizer Co v Exchange National Bank, 877 F2d 1333, 1339 (CA 7, 1989). Yet, maliciously, media types, journalists, “press-prostitutes,” routinely disseminate only “conclusory” material, carefully omitting pertinent facts, for the purpose of presenting a distorted and skewed viewpoint.

    The term “merchants of death” is accurate.

    “Even more pernicious than the propaganda of the tobacco companies in favor of their products has been the power of these companies over the press and the news. The publishers and their editors know that if they publish anything that is suggestive of the great harmfulness of tobacco to health, the tobacco companies may cancel their valuable advertising contracts, and, consequently, news of the most vital importance to the public is sometimes withheld or suppressed." See Frank L. Wood, M.D., What You Should Know About Tobacco (Wichita, KS: The Wichita Publishing Co, 1944), p 32. "Examples of this malicious dereliction of duty . . . are not hard to find,” p 33.

    “You cannot hope to bribe or twist,
    thank God! the British journalist.
    But, seeing what the man will do
    unbribed, there's no occasion to.”
      —Humbert Wolfe (1930)
            (1886-1940)

    Said one TV news "senior producer, Ted Kavanau, 'I'll make you [the reporter] famous on the air. Just remember, if it bleeds, it leads,'" says long-time journalist Peter Arnett, Live from the Battlefield: From Vietnam to Baghad: 35 Years in the World's War Zones (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), Part III: 1974-1990, "In the Trenches with CNN," page 324.

    The media deteriorate and degrade public awareness by having a perverse definition of the word “news.” The media defines “news” as sensational events constituting “deviations from . . . norms” instead of “events of importance to sizeable numbers of viewers [readers/listeners].”—Byron Shafer and Richard Larson, "Did TV Create the 'Social Issue'?," Columbia Journalism Review (September/October 1972), p. 11 at 16.

    Note the term “press prostitute” concerning such media types, by George Seldes, Witness to a Century (New York: Ballantine Books, 1987), pp. 331, 347, and 397. Note the phrase, “crooked and prostituted journalist,” p 347. Seldes also said of one such, that “he had sold himself . . . for money,” p 399. Sadly, the term “press prostitute” is a “now disused term,” says p 331. (An alternate term is "media-whore" or "presstitute.")

    "In editorial offices everyone knew that the Hearst chain, the Scripps-Howard chain and   397the Chicago Tribune of that time were regarded as the worst in the country," says Seldes, supra, pp 396-397.

    At the beginning of the twentieth century, "Pittsburgh newspapers could be bribed with a two dollar-a-day advertisement—incidentally the same price streetwalkers and inmates of houses of prostitution charged," says Seldes, supra, p 418. In 1987, prices have gone up! One of the "sacred cows" is "the advertising of cigarettes—a matter of about two billion dollars a year, one of the greatest causes of death from cancer, emphysema, heart failure and other diseases, which could be ended by state laws or an act of Congress," p 418.

    A Congressional investigation by the “La Follette Commission” found this example of how the media are corrupted: “the National Association of Manufacturers, once investigated and exposed for bribing members of the House and Senate to pass anti-labor and anti-union legislation, had changed its tactics and now sought to corrupt public opinion in the United States via the press: everything from comic strips to editorials was supplied free to newpapers, daily and weekly, and a majority of the small publications—some five thousand of them—accepted and published this propaganda,” p 371. Seldes cited La Follette Commission documentation, “No. 6, Part 6. See especially pages 159, 162 and 163,” p 371.

    "Senator Sherman Minton of Indiana, later a Supreme Court justice . . . suggested that when editors and publishers are found guilty of publishing falsehoods deliberately they should be punished [like other perjurers] with imprisonment. . . . President [Franklin D.] Roosevelt said . . . that if this were done the federal penitentiaries would not be able to house all the prisoners," Part XI, Chapter 51, p 386.

    "Protection against government is now not enough to guarantee that a man who has something to say shall have a chance to say it. The owners and managers of the press determine which person, which facts, which version of the facts, and which ideas shall reach the public."--Commission On Freedom Of The Press.

    Senator Richard F. Pettigrew (R-S.D.) (1848 - 1926), The Course of Empire: An Official Record (New York: Boni & Livwright, 1920) (cited inter alia the immoral U.S. media that "sell their editorial columns for cash")

    "If you think there is freedom of the press in the United States, I tell you there is no freedom of the press. . . . They come out with the cheap shot. The press should be ashamed of itself. They should come to both sides of the issue and hear both sides and let the American people make up their minds."--Bill Moyers.

    "Without an unfettered press, without liberty of speech, all of the outward forms and structures of free institutions are a sham, a pretense -- the sheerest mockery. If the press is not free; if speech is not independent and untrammeled; if the mind is shackled or made impotent through fear, it makes no difference under what form of government you live, you are a subject and not a citizen."--Senator William E. Borah.

    "I deplore . . . the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed and the malignity, the vulgarity, and mendacious spirit of those who write for them. . . . These ordures are rapidly depraving the public taste and lessening its relish for sound food. As vehicles of information and a curb on our funtionaries, they have rendered themselves useless by forfeiting all title to belief. . . . This has, in a great degree, been produced by the violence and malignity of party spirit."--Thomas Jefferson to Walter Jones.

    "The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers. . . . [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper."--Thomas Jefferson to G. K. van Hogendorp, Oct. 13, 1785. ME 5:181, Papers 8:632.

    "The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth."--Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956).

    "It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper."-- Rod Serling.

    But even a prominent journalist would fail to serve as an "aggressive and independent watchdog" (FAIR, 19 June 2008).

    "Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. It is far better that you fear the media, for they will steal your HONOR. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse."--Mark Twain. (The movie "Thank You for Smoking" (2005) has the journalist who slept with her source as doing so "for the mortgage.")

    What one special interest can do, another can do!

    Author George Orwell had experience with disinformation, and describes it in his book Homage to Catalonia (1952):
  • he learned due to personally finding fictional events in the “news,” “to read the . . . news in the papers with a more disbelieving eye.” (Chapter IV, p. 44)
  • citing “where the Press is more centralized and the public more easily deceived than elsewhere” (Chapter V, p 50)
  • “press . . . spurious and dishonest” (Chapter V, p 65)
  • “the newspapers began stirring up hatred” (Chapter X, p 135)
  • “I watched him [a professional propagandist working] with some interest, for it was the first time that I had seen a person whose profession was telling lies—unless one counts journalists” (Chapter X, p 140)
  • “I do not suppose I . . . exaggerate if I said that nine-tenths of it is untruthful. Nearly all the newspaper accounts published at the time were manufactured by journalists at a distance, and were not only inaccurate in their facts but intentionally misleading . . . I saw and heard quite enough [personally] to be able to contradict many of the lies that have been circulated” (Chapter X, p 149)
  • He observed journalists reverse facts, commit “reversal of roles” of attacker vs victim, reversing sequences of events, when reality “was the other way about,” as journalists' falsifications even included “effect preceding cause” (Chapter XI, pp 163, 168, 169).

    • Orwell also said, "The process [of mass-media deception] has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt. . . . To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably necessary."--in the book Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).

    As Orwell alludes to, the media distort international news.

    “The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make a criminal look like he's the victim and make the victim look like he's the criminal. This is the press, an irresponsible press. If you aren't careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”--Malcolm X.

    Tim Wise, in "Coloring Crime: Race, Violence and Media Manipulation" (1 June 2006), says, "the news media . . . perpetuates racial stereotypes." (The media maliciously avoid citing the tobacco-crime connection, preferring to target blacks for blame.)

    And, “journalists (and whistle-blowers) who tell the truth in America are more likely to be pummeled than rewarded, whereas those who lie for powerful interest groups live high on the hog. . . . In America, money, not truth, has the power. . . . Taking on these vested interests is most often a career-ending event. . . . When government and special interests finance education and research, and the media is concentrated in a few large corporations dependent on government broadcast licenses, there is not much room left for truth.”--Paul Craig Roberts, Ph.D., "Can Truth Retain Its Independence?" (ICH, 30 May 2008). See also Alisa Miller, "Why we know less than ever about the world."

    And see Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator" (Video).

    On crime cases, the media show no sense, insisting on giving away police secrets thus to obstruct finding perpetrators. Says Sheriff David Reichart, Chasing the Devil: My Twenty-Year Quest to Capture the Green River Killer (New York: Little, Brown & Co, 2004), p 162, "I wondered why it was so hard for the press to respect what we were doing and understand the effort we were making." To hide one crime scene in-process of being investigated, he and colleagues were forced to tie "ropes to some trees and then drape the tarps [tarpaulins] over them. In a matter of minutes, the gravesite [crime scene] was hidden from the prying eyes of the TV cameras. The reporters complained . . . we [were forced to this] used our bodies to block the view for the remainder of the search."

    Newspapers may even censor temperature and weather news, says Upton Sinclair, Profits of Religion, § 3.16 (1917).

    See also
  • John Swinton, "On the independence of the press (c. 1880) ("There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it . . . We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.")

  • Upton Sinclair, The Brass Check (1919) (Review: “My opinion, not confidential, is that it is the damndest, meanest monopoly on the face of the earth—the wet-nurse for all other monopolies. It lies by day, it lies by night, and it lies for the very lust of lying. Its news-gatherers, I sincerely believe, only obey orders.” And: “Sinclair criticizes newspapers as ultra-conservative and supporting the political and economic powers that be, or as sensational tabloids practicing yellow journalism. In both cases, their purpose is to promote the business interests of the paper's owners, the owner's bankers, and/or the paper's advertisers. This is accomplished in several ways; among them: The publishers tell the editors what can and cannot be printed. Journalists routinely invent stories. To stimulate circulation, newspapers sensationalize trivial stories and destroy lives and reputations. Errors and slanders are never retracted, or the retraction is buried in the paper months later.” See also his example of newspaper assertion of a 39-40 year old man as age 73!)

  • Michael Parenti, Ph.D., Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment (Boston, New York: Bedford/St. Martin's Press, 1991) (To the powers that be: "Popular ignorance is not without its functions. Those at the top prefer that people know little about history's potentially troublesome lessons," Chapter 4, p 58. Re televsion, "televiewing hurts academic performance, lowers reading levels, erodes linguistic powers, diminishes ability to handle abstract symbols, and shortens the attention span of the young," Chapter 10, p 164.
    TV's constant image changes are "thereby conditioning the mind to an endless flicker of changing pictures rather than developing its ability to give protracted attention to one thing. Television is not the medium for coveying sophisticated [complex, abstract] ideas or developing . . . cognitive habiits and intellectual discipline. . . . Rather, it encourages passivity in the viewer and a kind of unthinking receptivity to quick images [a] mind-pulverizing curriculum," pp 164-165.

    Accordingly, "the media are filled with themes and images that are decidedly political," Chapter 11, p 177. "Reading was [in the nineteenth century] a form of both recreation and learning. . . . the media's baneful effects on public discourse are today readily apparent [in the 21st century]. One need only compare the [seven-hour] Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1854, in which [abstract, legalese, and historical] ideas and arguments were given prolonged and complex treatment, with the televised presidential debates of today in which well-coached, image-conscious candidates are given two minutes to respond to contextless questions presented by journalists who specialize in superfical presentations," p 179. "By eating up our leisure time, fragmenting our attention, and keeping us from reading, the entertainment media retard our capacity and willingness to handle complicated ideas and engage in serious discourse [without having to] outshout each other in order to finish a sentence," p 179.

  • Michael Parenti, Ph.D., Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media, 2d ed. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993) And see also Lecture Video on point.

  • James Fallows, Breaking The News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy (14 January 1997) (they "reduce [issues] to so many shouting heads [and] increasingly [they] treats issues as complex as health-care reform and foreign policy as exercises in political gamesmanship.")

  • What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News, by Brooklyn College English Prof. Eric Alterman (Basic Books, 2003) (P 27 cites evidence that media owners in fact control news operations)

  • John Nichols and Prof. Robert W. McChesney, Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy (3 November 2005) (they "excoriate the media for failure to hold politicians accountable for their words and deeds, thereby failing in their responsibility to protect American democracy")

  • Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (27 December 2005) ("groundbreaking polemic about the corrosive effects of television on our politics and public discourse . . . what happens when politics, journalism, education, and even religion become subject to the demands of entertainment")

  • “The Fear Is In The Room: Inside Our Unbrave Media World,” by Danny Schechter (8 April 2006)

  • “How The American Tobacco Industry Employs PR Scum To Continue Its Murderous Assault On Human Lives,” by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, 22 - 29 November 1995. This article is an excerpt from their book, Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry (Common Courage Press, 1995). (The "PR scum" aided and abetted by media presstitutes disinform the public.)

  • Prof. Pamela E. Pennock, Ph.D., Advertising Sin and Sickness: The Politics of Alcohol and Tobacco Marketing, 1950-1990 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois Univ. Press, 2007) (Summary; Review in Addiction, Vol 102 # 9 p 1507, Sept 2007)

  • Greg Palast, “U.S. Media Have Lost The Will To Dig Deep: A Changed News Culture Has Let Several Important Investigative Stories Slip Through the Cracks” (The Los Angeles Times, 27 April 2007)

  • Ralph Nader, "Auctioning Journalistic Integrity" (12 May 2007), says “The media has been taken over in the past by larger media, by industrial companies like General Electric, by entertainment companies like Disney. Now it is being taken over by tax-avoiding speculators whose monetized mind sweeps aside the fiduciary duties of journalism that is supposed to nurture a trust so important that our founding fathers made it the only business protected by the First Amendment.”

  • The President’s Cancer Panel (16 August 2007) says: “Media portrayals of smoking as a pleasurable, attractive, and normal adult activity are enormously powerful influences on young people’s attitudes about smoking and the likelihood that they will use tobacco. Therefore, the media have a significant moral responsibility to not promote the use of deadly tobacco products, and can have a far reaching influence in actively discouraging tobacco use.”     It recommends:   “Cease including images of smoking in movies, television, music videos, video games, and other visual media with child, adolescent, and young adult audiences.”

  • Paul Craig Roberts, Ph.D., "Offshoring Interests and Economic Dogmas Are Destroying the US Dollar" (13 December 2007) ("The US media has no investigative capability and serves up the lies that serve short-term corporate and political interests. If it were not for the Internet that provides Americans with access to foreign news sources, Americans would live in a world of perfect disinformation.")

  • "Orac," a practicing surgeon, opposes "the journalistic tendency to 'tell both sides' even when there is no scientific support at all to one of the sides" (7 January 2009). Journalists essentially treat blatant lies as on a par with researched truth (e.g., treat flat-earthism claims as equally valid as researched geology).

  • Paul Craig Roberts, Ph.D., "The Difficulty of Being an Informed American" (8 January 2009) ("The function of the 'mainstream media' is to sell products and to brainwash the audience for the government and interest groups. By subscribing to it, Americans support their own brainwashing.")

  • Charles P. Pierce, Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free (explains how talk radio, cable news shows and, too often, less dubious sectors of the media have built the promulgation of foolishness into a growth business)

  • Sonoma State University Sociology Prof. Peter Phillips, Ph.D., and Rebecca Bowe, "Project Censored: The top 10 stories not brought to you by mainstream news media in 2009: What did you miss this year? Here's a look" (23 December 2009)

  • John Nichols and Prof. Robert W. McChesney, The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution that Will Begin the World Again (5 January 2010)

  • "Shadows of Liberty: The Media Monopoly in American Journalism" (UK, 2012) (Presents "the phenomenal true story of today's disintegrating freedoms within the U.S. media, and government, that they don't want you to see. The film takes an intrepid journey through the darker corridors of the American media landscape, where global media conglomerates exercise extraordinary political, social, and economic power. The overwhelming collective power of these firms raises troubling questions about democracy. Highly revealing interviews, actuality, and archive material, tell insider accounts of a broken media system, where journalists are prevented from pursuing controversial news stories, people are censored for speaking out against abuses of government power, and individual lives are shattered as the arena for public expression has been turned into a private profit zone. Will the Internet remain free, or be controlled by a handful of powerful, monopolistic corporations? The media crisis is at the core of today's most troubling issues. With Danny Glover, Julian Assange, Dan Rather, Amy Goodman, David Simon, Dick Gregory, Daniel Ellsberg, Chris Hedges and many others." "Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U. S. media."--Noam Chomsky).

  • In contrast, see "Iceland Set to Become a Press Freedom Haven" (19 August 2010) ("the country aims to become a safe haven for journalists and whistleblowers from around the globe by creating the world's most far-reaching freedom of information legislation. The project is being developed with the help of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. It flies in the face of a growing tendency of governments trying to stifle a barrage of secret and sometimes embarrassing information made readily available by the internet. On 16 June a unanimous parliament voted in favour of the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, a resolution aimed at protecting investigative journalists and their sources. 'We took all the best laws from around the world and pulled them together, just like tax havens do, in order to create freedom of information and expression, a transparency haven,' Birgitta Jonsdottir, the member of parliament behind the initiative, said. . . Ms Jonsdottir was shocked to witness the attempts at censorship in her country, which had long been held up as a model democracy. In the most resounding example, a court injunction in August 2009 forced Icelandic public broadcaster RUV to back down at the last minute from transmitting a report on one of the country's three largest banks that all collapsed less than a year earlier, pushing Iceland to the verge of bankruptcy. Instead of its report on the Kaupthing bank's loanbook, RUV broadcast images from whistleblower site WikiLeaks, which had published the incriminating documents, in an attempt to draw attention to the limits being put on freedom of expression in Iceland. . . The aspiring 'island of transparency' aims to strengthen source protection, encourage whistleblowers to leak information, and help counter so-called 'libel tourism', which consists in dragging journalists before foreign courts in countries with laws that best suit the prosecution.")
    •  

    Media Censorship of Tobacco's Link To Crime

    For background, read L. A. Bero, S. A. Glantz, and D. Rennie, “Publication Bias and Public Health Policy on Environmental Tobacco Smoke,” 272 J Am Med Ass'n (#2) 133-136 (13 July 1994).

    By 1836, it was already well-established "that thousands and tens of thousands die of diseases of the lungs generally brought on by tobacco smoking. . . . How is it possible to be otherwise? Tobacco is a poison. A man will die of an infusion of tobacco as of a shot through the head." —Samuel Green, New England Almanack and Farmer's Friend (1836).

    But there was worse known about tobacco effects. And that was, the tobacco-crime link.

    The tobacco link to crime is a fact known since the 1830's! Yet the media don't cite it. Instead, the media intentionally prints disinformation, linking crime to non-causes, media violence, guns, etc. The harm that results to the public cannot be deemed other than intentional.

    The media is filled with unreconstructed Confederates. Remember the Confederates? They were disproportionately tobacco farmers. They were the people who made war on the United States in 1861-1865. They murdered hundreds of thousands of our people, then our President Abraham Lincoln.

    After America won the war, the Confederates, disproportionately tobacco farmers, resolved on massive revenge against America, by adding coumarin, for rat poison, to tobacco. And they massively infilitrated and dominate the media, to prevent meaningful data on tobacco effects being reported.

    When you see that smiling media face, beware: That smile is often malicious, sadistic, and conceals a clenched fist, by perhaps a Confederate who has a vehement hatred for you and your family, and wants you to suffer and die horribly in agony.

    Pre-Civil War Pro-Slavery Censorship
    Tobacco planters had large role in slavery. In that capacity came about substantial experience committing censorship. They censored anti-slavery utterances before the Civil War! This censorship is recorded by
  • Prof. Dwight L. Dumond (Prof., History, Univ of Mich), Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America (NY: W. W. Norton & Co, 1961)
  • Prof. Clement Eaton, The Freedom-of-Thought Struggle in the Old South (Duke Univ Press, 1940, and New York: Harper & Row, 1964)
  • James Birney, Bulwarks of American Slavery, 3rd ed. (Newburyport: Charles Whipple Pub, 1842), p 46
  • Lewis Tappan, Address (1843), pp 38-41, with background on murders at pp 22-35
  • Rev. William Goodell, Slavery and Anti-Slavery (New York: William Harned Pub, 1852), p 149
  • Harriet Beecher Stowe, Key (Boston: John P. Jewett & Co, 1853), pp 228 (murdering an anti-slavery printing press importer, and 258-259 (falsifying the 1840 census)
  • Charles Sumner, Barbarism of Slavery (1860), pp 184-192, with background on rampant lawlessness at pp 180-184.
    Two centuries of tobacco farmer censorship experience! They know how to do it! And since murder is no longer an option!, sue the media when it does not 'suck up' enough!
    Genereally the media sucked up. See example cited by Rep. Charles H. Van Wyck, Despotism of Slavery (1860), p 436, supporting burning slaves at the stake, as an anti-abolitionist terrorism measure.
    Rev. George Cheever, Discourse on Divinely-Appointed Freedom (1856), p 5, said “in our own country [U.S.A.], there is a more gigantic, deadly, and iniquitous proscription [banning] of the truth, and conspiracy against it, and persecution on account of it, in one particular form, than in any other country.” He analogized, at p 14, such false writings to fraud with navigation data.
    Rev. Cheever, in God Against Slavery (1857), p 180, also predicted continuance of such censorship. See also their experience obtaining pre-emption laws. And see the classic pre-emption law, the Fugitive Slave Act.
    And see Larry Pinkney, “Keeping It Real — The US Mass Media: Tool of Disinformation And Control” (Black Commentator, 14 June 2007): “it is the debilitating and vile intent of the medium that is the actual ongoing powerful and crippling message . . . sometimes in overt form and at other times, insidiously subtle. The US mass media . . . is . . . akin to a virus that horribly weakens and debilitates the body. It is reminiscent of how true history reminds us that deadly disease-infested blankets were distributed by certain whites on this continent to Indigenous so-called 'Indian' people in the name of honor and helping them. Such is the reality of the US mass media, both past and present.”

    • Periodically, admittedly, you do see media stories purporting a concern for some particularly tragic crime victim, a prominent person, a sad divorce, a person the writer happened to know, etc. But be assured, the show of concern is feigned, is a scam, a sham, crocodile tears and crocodile tears only, obvious as the media writer includes no information such as that herein, no preventive information, and especially, no mention of the notion of banning cigarettes. Always remember, the media exist to sell papers — ONLY; the more crime, the more divorce, the more sensational, the more sad and whiny-voiced the lamentations, the better for sales!!! (And of course, never forget the neo-Confederates' underlying goal, more suffering by those hated Yankees!)

               The media often aid and abet the continuing neo-Confederate hatred. Take the example of crime, 90% of which is by smokers. Media pundits typically cite knowingly false claims, factors common to both smokers and non-smokers. Honest professionals know that studying different behavior/effects, one must look for and study the differences (causation process).

    A classic example of an exposé of the scam of citing a non-variable was published at the turn of the twentieth century. See the book by Charles Goring, M.D., The English Convict:: A Statistical Study (Darling and Son, Ltd, for H.M. Stationery Office, 1913). Goring was debunking mythology of that era, phony assertions about criminals purporting to explain causation, but which included factors common to non-criminals!! Such an error is obviously a "fatal flaw" in methodology! as competent honest researchers well know!

    But watch the media and certain politicians, you will see this scam perpetrated over and over again, even yet. The scammers are confident that most people will not recognize that the scam was detected, exposed, debunked as long ago as 1913.

              If you deem this finding from experience cynical, please verify; do as this webwriter has done. Contact the allegedly concerned media personality with the information herein, or even a mention that crime, divorce, etc., preventive data and law exists. You will be rebuffed.

    Too many in the media have the Confederate mentality, hatred of Yankees. Essentially no media writer/speaker meaningfully opposes, resists, fights, and exposes the tobacco taboo. (Contact them; raise the issue. If a media writer/speaker condescends to respond, and says your methodology was wrong, remember this, in 150 years, no Confederate media writer/speaker has ever found any meaningful approach on this subject acceptable. To such media-types, all approaches contrary to the tobacco taboo are wrong!! To them, anything scholarly on this is wrong! even to be mocked, scorned, lambasted!)

    Observe. This webmaster has!

    Oft such media, when challenged, use an ' ignorance defense'! They 'didn't know.' Be advised, they've rehearsed that story! got it on file for instant use! The 'didn't know' claim is just another weapon in their arsenal of hate/malice, just another part of their scam.

    That scam didn't work for Julius Streicher. Please stop, read that link. Note that Streicher was hanged at Nurnberg for the disinformation he had published. The Nurnberg Trial, now there's a precedent that needs more following!

               Don't say, the media prints occasional references to cigarette-crime studies. The key is, the media omit such data in the routine, day-by-day news. Something rarely mentioned has no meaningful impact on the public. This is so especially in view of the massive disinformation distracting attention onto other factors (methods, guns, alcohol, even trench coats!!) It cannot be over-emphasized; the data on the crime-causation process has existed for a century; the media disregard -- to instead focus on irrelevancies -- is malicious, intentional and culpable.

    “People like killers. And if one feels sympathy for the victims it's by way of thanking them for letting themselves be killed. —Eugene Ionesco” (Quoted by Jack Olsen, Give A Boy A Gun (New York: Delacorte Press, 1985), p 7.
    That book reports on a sensational crime case. The book had a lot of name-calling against the perpetrator, but cited not one, NOT ONE, reference to the 90% factor in crime. The media writer (media “people like killers”) thus made the point, the media write for their job security. PERIOD. Your safety, your being informed of the 90% factor, is a ZERO concern.
    Crime prevention is anti-job-security, a real killer to the media, the most dreaded killer, a job killer.

    As the experts cited at our anti-crime website have shown, the 90% factor in crime has remained constant, unchanged across all the variables, societal changes 1836 to present, including radio, movies, television, Internet, pornography, depictions of graphic violence, and all other alleged factors. (Such irrelevant factors/variables are cited typically by persons who have NOT studied the subject, and/or are malicious, and/or wish to make money off crime and the suffering of others, by their circulating sensationalist disinformation to the gullible).

               This cigarette-crime link's remarkable constancy 1830's - present confirms beyond the court standard of "reasonable doubt," i.e., beyond ALL doubt, that "the only," the exclusive, the sole 90% factor in crime is tobacco, ruling out all other alleged factors/variables. Statistics (and chemistry) ARE how doctors know this, have long known this, and more, as the analysis is of the same typical medical type done since at least the year 1537.

               In The Nurnberg Trial, 6 FRD 69, 161-163 (1946), prosecution included Julius Streicher, a Nazi propagandist who was convicted and hanged for his pro-death media words. Another in the media also executed was broadcaster William Joyce. The transcript and verdict were reprinted by J. W. Hall, M.A., B.C.L. (Oxon), Trial of William Joyce (London: William Hodge and Co, Ltd, Notable British Trials Series, 1946). So prosecutions for tobacco deaths should foreseeably also include aiders and abettors in the media. See our anti-genocide website. Streicher blamed a false cause for Germany's troubles, Jews. He was therefore, and correctly, hanged. The media blame false causes for what are instead tobacco-caused consequences. Should they receive a lesser penalty than Streicher?

               Streicher, in Germany, was "in the very land of smokers!" as stated in the book by Meta Lander, The Tobacco Problem, 6th ed. (Boston: Lee and Shepard Pub, 1885), p 308. Streicher should have been honest, and blamed smoking for the problems it was causing, not allying himself with smokers Hitler, Jodl, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Eichmann, etc. Writer/publisher Streicher got criminal liability, and well deservedly so.

               In addition, there is civil liability of the media. When writings, books, newspaper ads, commercials, etc., aid and abet the killings, the publishers and advertisers are liable, as nothing in freedom of the press allows aiding and abetting murder and genocide, pursuant to case law such as Paladin Enterprises, Inc v Rice, 128 F3d 233 (CA 4, 1997) cert den 523 US 1074; 118 S Ct 1515; 140 L Ed 2d 668 (1998).

    Modern Examples of The Tobacco Taboo In Action
        Pursuant to the "tobacco taboo," two area police officers, Larry Nevers and Walter Budzyn, never enforced the cigarette control law (ban on the gateway drug delivery agent--cigarettes), only laws against post-gateway drugs, e.g., cocaine. This misplaced approach turned fatal. They went to jail for years. For details, click here.     Thereafter, area law professor Ralph Slovenko wrote Psychiatry and Criminal Culpability (New York, John Wiley, 1995). Nathaniel S. Lehrman, M.D., reviewed it, "Book Review," 333 N Eng J Med (18) 1226-1227 (2 Nov 1995). Both author and reviewer discuss crime without regard to the 90% factor. A "natural and probable consequence" of the continued "tobacco taboo" is continued crime.

               In contrast to those materials, other writings purport to be advice to the public at large on crime prevention. Such materials are often written in response to public outcry about crimes, especially by children, school shootings, and the like. It is particularly immoral and reprehensible when the authors play upon their own reputation as purportedly sincere "concerned" people, but such purported advice books do not even include reference to the long and well-established cigarette-crime link.

              Remember what Dr. Whelan, supra, called

    "a classic case of disinformation. It is like representing yourself as an auto safety expert and writing a [paper] on 'how to reduce your risks of death and injury on the road' and purposely avoiding any reference to seatbelts and the risks of drunk driving, instead focusing in depth on the desirability of getting your windshield wipers changed frequently."

               In other words, an honest, moral, competent author will tell you the big factors, the 90% factors, with the far greater emphasis than any other aspect. With that in mind, here is a way to test the integrity of a crime prevention book / report / article author, of a book you might be thinking of in this respect. Look in the index for the words where the subject should be, e.g., "cigarettes," "smoking," "tobacco." If NONE are in the index, put the book or report down. If it is purporting in any way to cover crime prevention, or prisoners, it is a scam, a sham. And if you merely thought that the book / report could be used for that purpose, STOP.

    Examples of Books/Reports On Which To
    Practice The "Index Honesty Test"
        Gilligan, James, M.D., Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic (New York: Vintage Books, 1996)
        Pollack, William, Ph.D., Real Boys: Rescuing Our Boys From The Myths of Boyhood (New York: Henry Holt and Co, 1998)
        Garbarino, James, Ph.D., Lost Boys: Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them (New York: The Free Press, 1999)
        Ditton, Paula M., BJS Statistician, "Mental Health and Treatment of Inmates and Probationers" (Bureau of Justice Statistics, NCJ 174463 (July 1999)

               Please, if you have not already done so, read the website on crime prevention. You will see numerous references there. With those facts in mind, you can be ultra suspicious of any book that purports to this effect, let's quote from a real book cover,

    "In the first book to help parents truly understand youth violence and stop it before it explodes, national expert Dr. James Garbarino reveals how to identify children who are at risk and offers proven methods to prevent aggressive behavior."
               If you "truly" believe his is the "first book" on the crime prevention subject, you are in danger of being on the sucker list of every scam artist around! Call your local police immediately, you need protection and help! Or call your psychiatrist, you need treatment for your extreme suggestibility and gullibility! Or both!

    Example of An Early Book Linking
    Smoking and Behaviors Including Crime
       George Trask, Letters on Tobacco, for American Lads; or, Uncle Toby's Anti-Tobacco Advice To His Nephew Billy Bruce (Fitchburg, Mass: Trask Pub, 1860)

               Trask in 1860 reprinted data already known by the 1830's!! So you can be suspicious of any book or report that purports that data about smoking and mental disorder prevalence among prisoners is something new. Not since the 1830's it isn't new!!

               Please return to the top of this page, immediately, and read the various sites listed, or at least those on crime, birth defects, mental disorder, and Alzheimer's, so you'll be aware of the cigarette role in those matters.

    In 1977, the Surgeon General's colleagues said that if the public knew smoking's severe mental effects, making it not a habit but worse ( a mental disorder), that fact becoming publicly known (instead of censored as it is) would have a major impact on the public's perception of smokers ("a profound effect upon the reputation of this behavior")! See the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), book, Research on Smoking Behavior, Research Monograph 17, Publication ADM 78-581, p 5 (December 1977), quoting Murray E. Jarvik, M.D., Ph.D.

    Ed. Note: On tobacco-caused addiction, brain damage, and mental disorder, be aware that tobacco pushers seek to censor the medical truth about this. For background on pusher efforts to censor this type data, see, e.g., M. D. Neuman, A. Bitton and S. A. Glantz, "Tobacco industry influence on the definition of tobacco related disorders by the American Psychiatric Association," 14 Tobacco Control 328-337 (Sept 2005). See also our tobacco censorship exposé site.
    Reputation-impairing action had been recommended by Dr. Herbert H. Tidswell in 1912. Due to pusher hostility and intent, aided and abetted by media censorship, note the decades of inaction, decades approaching a century.
    You will not learn from the censored media about tobacco use in mental disorder terms.

  • For example, you will not learn from the media about the Dept of Health and Human Services' reference book, the International Classification of Disease, ICD-9-CM (September 1980), p 233, Item 305.1, "Tobacco Use Disorder" (T.U.D.), nor its 6th edition (2004), p 245, nor the ICD-10, pp 8 (F17.), 55 (F17.0) and 61 (F17.3), referencing pp 48 (F1x.0), 49, and 58 (F1x.3), despite these references being authoritative and widely being used by the medical profession as a whole. (See www.medicalbillingandcodingcertification.net to reference complete WHO ICD-10 data.)

  • You will not learn from the media about the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), despite their being authoritative and widely being used by the psychiatric profession. Note the DSM-III (1980), pp 159 and 160, and 176, 177, and 178, subsequently the DSM-III-R (1987), pp 150 and 151, and 181 and 182, the DSM-IV (4th ed.) (1994), the DSM-IV-TR (2000), pp 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, and 269.

  • You will not learn from the media that federal courts in Nat'l Org. for Reform of Marijuana Laws v Bell, 488 F Supp 123, 138 (D DC, 11 Feb 1980) (referencing tobacco as a drug) and Caprin v Harris, 511 F Supp 589, 590 n 3 (D ND NY, 8 April 1981) (referencing the DSM-III), have referenced tobacco smoking behavior in mental disorder terms. In the latter case, a federal district court dealing with a smoker with the symptom of "refusal to cease smoking" took judicial notice of the International Classification of Disease, 9th rev., and its listing of "tobacco use disorder" in the mental disorders section, and of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) and its listing of "tobacco dependence." The court noted that, "There is considerable support in recent medical literature for the proposition that smoking under some circumstances is a 'disease' similar to 'alcoholism.'"

    • "The greatest friends of tobacco are advertising, ignorance and lies. The greatest and ablest enemies of tobacco are education, knowledge and truth." "With few exceptions the so-called free press of America refuses to publish the facts about the harm of tobacco. Their biggest advertisers are cigaret manufacturers."—Dr. Jesse M. Gehman, Author, Smoke over America (Paterson, NJ: Roycrofters, 1943).

    Tara Parker-Pope, Cigarettes: Anatomy of an Industry from Seed to Smoke (New Press, Feb 2001) reports pusher "strategy of cover-up and misinformation to suppress many of the findings that link smoking and disease. She discusses anti-smoking [activists] back to the 1600s . . . in the early 1900s nonsmokers [complaining] about secondhand smoke."—George Cohen, 'Book Review,' Booklist, p 1092 (15 Feb 2001).

    "I think that in the absence of a responsible national media, the blogs play an important role in trying to shed light on various issues, including the bona fides of so-called White House correspondents as well as tackling questions overlooked or ignored by the national journalists. I also believe that the nature of the profession has changed to the detriment of good investigative journalism. No longer is there a quest for the truth so much as there is this apparent need to present both sides of an issue even if one is nothing but lies and distortions. Giving the same value to fiction as to fact in the interest of so-called fairness is to mislead the American people and the press has become party to that."—Ambassador Joseph Wilson (Wednesday 9 February 2005).

    Pusher policy seems to follow this principle, “The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made.”—Groucho Marx (1890-1977).

    Pro-tobacco forces have gone so far as to sue the media to try to prevent them from saying even the little that they do say!! This type of attempted intimidation has a further "chilling effect" on the media (as if the widespread "universal malice" is not enough!!). Examples of cases include but are not limited to the following:
    • Robinson v American Broadcasting Cos, 328 F Supp 421 (ED Ky, 1970) aff'd 441 F2d 1396 (CA 6, 1971),

    • Brown & Williamson Tobacco Co v Jacobson, 713 F2d 262 (CA 7, Ill, 14 July 1983); 644 F Supp 1240 (ND Ill, 7 Aug 1986) aff'd 827 F2d 1119 (CA 7, Ill, 12 Aug 1987) cert den 485 US 993; 108 S Ct 1302; 99 L Ed 2d 512 (4 April 1988); and

    • Californians for Scientific Integrity v Regents of University of California, 81 Cal App 4th 1270; 97 Cal Rptr 2d 501 (6 July 2000) cert den (3 Oct 2000) (a tobacco taboo censorship case objecting to research exposing tobacco effects and processes).

    Note key words from Robinson v American Broadcasting Companies, 441 F2d 1396, 1399 (CA 6, Ky, 30 April 1971), the censorship case pursuant to the tobacco taboo. Tobacco growers sought to ban information on tobacco smoking hazards. This would mean that effective anti-tobacco words would not be allowed, only lay words 'encouraging' people such as yuouths to not smoke!

    In rejecting the censorship request and ruling "no," the Sixth Circuit said that "although it was constitutional to require that anti-smoking commercials be broadcast, it does not follow that an injunction prohibiting the broadcast of the same commercials would likewise be constitutionally permissible."

    This decision affirmed the lower court decision, 328 F Supp 421, 422, 424-426 (D ED Ky, 1 June 1970). That U.S. District Court had rejected Tobacco growers' demand for restrictions on freedom of speech against smoking. The case involved

    "growers of burley tobacco [who] complain [of words] which announce, directly, or by innuendo, that the smoking of cigarettes will kill those persons who smoke them . . . . cigarette advertising . . . has been directed to young persons . . . [no] medical or scientific body undertaking a Systematic review of the evidence has reached conclusions opposed to those of the Surgeon General's. . . ."

    "The doctrine of clean hands requires this Court . . . to avert further injury to the public, by the continued retardation and erosion of public awareness of the hazards of smoking . . . the mere fact that information is available, or even that it is actually heard or read, does not mean that it is effectively understood.

    "A man [or child] who hears a hundred 'yeses' [from pushers saying smoking is ok] for each 'no,' [the rare words 'encouraging' the child to not smoke] when the actual odds lie heavily the other way, cannot be realistically deemed adequately informed."

    "Any time the uncleanness of . . . hands . . . comes to the attention of the Court . . . the Court is required to act sua sponte . . . on account of the public interest . . . for the advancement of right and natural justice."

    Since the slavery era, tobacco farmers have had vast experience attacking those who oppose them, since well before the Civil War!

    Sometimes the government itself attempts to conceal data on tobacco issues. In the case of Robert A.Burka v HHS, Case No. 95-5058 (CA DC, 2 July 1996), the researcher had to sue the government due to the government's refusal to provide intervention data on preventing smoking.

    Tobacco companies attempted to conceal from potential litigants their now-released secret documents, but fortunately were refused total censorship, in, e.g.,
    • Cipollone v Liggett Group, Inc, 113 FRD 86; 7 FR Serv 3d 982 (D NJ, 12 Nov 1986), mand den 822 F2d 335; 7 FR Serv 3d 1438 (CA 3, NJ, 8 June 1987), cert den 484 US 976; 108 S Ct 487; 98 L Ed 2d 485 (7 Dec 1987);

    • American Tobacco Co v Evans, 508 So 2d 1057; 2 USPQ2d 1866; 75 ALR4th 997; 36 ALR5th 541, 564 (Mississippi, 29 April 1987);

    • Castano v American Tobacco Co, 896 F Supp 590 (ED Louisiana, 27 July 1995); and

    • Sackman v Liggett Group, Inc, 167 FRD 9 (ED NY, 25 May 1996) (citing the crime-fraud exception, with respect to release of secret tobacco documents).

    See also the case of Public Citizen v Liggett Group, Inc, 858 F2d 775; 15 Media Law Rev 2129; 12 FR Serv 3d 1099 (CA 1, Mass, 28 Sep 1988) cert den 488 US 1030; 109 S Ct 838; 102 L Ed 2d 970 (17 Jan 1989), which supported some public access to litigation-pertinent tobacco company documents, despite the phony "trade secret" arguments.

    See also Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp v Merrell Williams, Henry Waxman, et al, Case No. 94-5171, 314 US App DC 85; 62 F3d 408 (15 Aug 1995), a lawsuit arising from whistleblower-provided documents to Congress. This set of circumstances helped lead to a chink in the tobacco taboo, eventually even the coumarin exposé by Dr. Jeffrey Wigand.

    In Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp v Wigand, 913 F Supp 530 (WD Ky, 24 Nov 1996), there was litigation concerning Dr. Jeffrey Wigand, the famous exposer of coumarin in tobacco, a fact long kept secret from the public (essentially only doctors knew) due to the tobacco taboo.

    Such censorship long prevented banning cigarettes and their displays. Now as people are becoming somewhat more aware, some minimal bans are coming about. See for example, "Cigarette displays to be banned in English stores" (30 June 2010). "We cannot ignore the targeting of young people through these displays," England's chief medical officer Sally Davies said in a statement, adding the can't-miss-it advertising encourages teens "to start smoking at an age when they are less able to make an informed choice."

    Please understand that tobacco pushers, in essence, out-of-uniform Confederate soldiers (as evident from the exposé on coumarin), still revengefully killing Yankees as to them the Civil War is not over (merely changed weapons), use the "trade secret" allegation as a scam. To Confederates, tobacco is a war weapon with which to kill "d--n Yankees." War weapons being used in what is in essence, deadly combat, are not a "trade secret"; defending troops (and obviously the civilians being unlawfully slaughtered in violation of the laws of war) are entitled to know any and all aspects and to expose the truth across-the-board without any court obstructionism whatsoever. And deaths from such traitorous enemy combat action are clear murder issues, so courts limiting recovery by refusing redress to the murder victims, except pursuant to the narrow "product liability" doctrines, are clearly aiding and abetting the neo-Confederate enemy combat activity, causing a tobacco holocaust.

    There is better precedent, to treat harmful, pro-death words as themselves "violence." This view does not “subscribe to the oft-repeated contention and argument that the use of the word 'violence' . . . is limited always to physical contact or injury. A blackjack applied to [one person's] skull may in the long run be less serious than . . . misleading signs, false statements and publicity . . . and insidious propaganda. The scalp wound may be healed through the surgeon's art.” Esco Operating Corp v Kaplan, 144 Misc 646, 650; 258 NYS 303, 309 (1932). Pro-tobacco words = "violence," leading to mass intended deaths unhealable by any surgeon.

    The DOJ Racketeering Case
    Against Tobacco Companies
    Exposing A Protracted
    Pattern of Fraudulent Concealment
    Advice to DOJ
    DoJ Lawsuit
    DoJ Appendix
    DoJ Press Release
    Law Writer Analysis
    Health Group Analysis

    The Wonderful Nurnberg Precedent
    For Dealing With Media Types
    Who Refuse To Print The Truth,
    The Whole Truth, and
    Nothing But the Truth

    See also our sites on
  • legal definitions,
  • murder,
  • genocide and
  • extradition.

    • The Censored March 2000 Anti-Cigarette Ads

    Paying the Price: How Special Interests
    Block Common Sense Solutions
    And see the summary of the book Into the Buzzsaw at the informative website www.WantToKnow.info, for more media censorship data.
    See also David Denby, "The Current Cinema: Tobacco and Drugs: 'Thank You for Smoking' and 'Brick,'” The New Yorker (3 April 2006)

    See how others, Nazis and East Germans, propagandized; contrast their tactics with those of tobacco pushers! See Prof. Randall Bytwerk, Nazi and East German Propaganda Guide Page" (2004)
    U.S. journalists follow the party line like Soviet journalists did. See Nikolai Lanine and Media Lens, "Invasion - A Comparison of Soviet and Western Media Performance" (20 November 2007)
    "Take any of the major media outlets, apply for a reporter's job. One requirement: Only Israel supporters need apply. Then try to write with reason about the 911 attacks or the Israel lying and world killings or how America did numerous black flag operations and killed millions or try to write about . . . . You'd last one day on the job and with a sore ass out the door. It is well known, the owners and editors give the talking points and wooo to anyone that goes off course," says "George" (23 Nov 2007), commenting on Gozawheena Bergacker's article, "Spreading Democracy (22 Nov 2006).
    Note that while "George's" allegations relate to a particular issue, and show a particular perspective, the principles he cites about media manipulations are valid regardless of issue, valid across-the-board, whenever manipulations resulting in deaths occurs Compare with the pro-tobacco party line, as enforced by publishers and editors for so long. Defy that, and a journalist is out!

    Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), in Vicious Pleasures (London: Mathieson, 1896), pp 36-91 (Alcohol and Tobacco) linked Europe's war preparations to its leaders being drugged by tobacco and alcohol.
    It is known that the German Kaisers were smokers.
    In the 1914-1918 World War, Germany invaded Belgium (despite a neutrality treaty). Germany rapidly conquered Belgium, then much of France, all the way to Paris, in the first month of the war. Conquests, advances, more conquests, more advances (Liege, Brussels, Lorraine, Ardennes, Charleroi, Mons, etc.), had rapidly followed in succession.
    Would you have learned this—the series of German victories early in the war—from the media?!
    No, of course not. The media reported nearly the opposite!
    "The fighting had been presented to the British public—as to the French—as a series of German defeats [emphasis added] in which the enemy unaccountably moved from Belgium to France and appeared each day on the map at places farther forward."—Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August (New York: Dell Paperback, 1962), Chap. 20, p 432.
    Ask yourself: Can you trust the media not to deceive?!
    For additional analyses, see, e.g.,
  • Sheila Samples, "Chimps In A Zoo Cage" (12 Feb 2007) ("The U.S. media is beneath contempt, and can never redeem itself for the damage it has wrought on this republic by its . . . relinquishing all pretences of honesty, values and integrity.")
  • Paul Craig Roberts, Ph.D.,"Conservatism isn’t what it used to be" (17 September 2007) ("Today the US media serves as propaganda ministry for the government’s wars and police state. . . . A country that has no voices independent of powerful interests is a country in which freedom is dead.")
  • Danny Schechter, Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception: How the Media Failed to Cover the War on Iraq (Prometheus Books, October 2003) and DVD Weapons of Mass Deception: How the Media Failed to Cover the War on Iraq (17 June 2004) (These references present "a glaring spotlight onto the true situation regarding the early 21st century deployment of military forces in Iraq. . . . Schechter spent countless hours documenting the media coverage of the war, initially publishing his ideas on www.mediachannel.org and subsequently writing a book entitled Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception. The next logical step was to make a movie, so Schechter picked up a camera, and focused a lens full of scrutiny onto the media's portrayal of the war. Drawing on footage from Iraq to look at the disparity in presentation of the war compared to the actual events as they unfolded, Schechter weaves a masterful blanket of facts and figures, leading viewers to question the "facts" that have been presented to them through the major news agencies. Bold, brash, and informative, Weapons of Mass Deception is one man's crusade against the wrongdoings he believes the American media is foisting upon the general public.)
  • David Walsh, "US Prosecuted Nazi Propagandists as War Criminals: The Nuremberg Tribunal and the Role of the Media," WSWS (16 April 2003) (Note that while Walsh has a particular issue in mind, and a particular perspective, the principles he cites about media manipulations are valid across-the-board, whenever manipulations resulting in deaths occurs.)
  • Danny Schechter, The More You Watch, the Less You Know (Seven Stories Press, 1 Dec 1998) ("An examination of the state of the print and broadcast media today, written by a former television reporter and network producer for PBS, CNN, and ABC, who now directs independent television documentaries. Schecter maintains that network pressures over the last 30 years have lowered the production standards within the news industry, resulting in superficial, biased, and even inaccurate reporting.")
  • Robert Greenwald with Prof. Robert McChesney, Outfoxed - Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism (2004) (Fox's shouting-down-panelists-approach used by Bill O'Reilly reminds of the shouting-down-witnesses approach used by Nazi Roland Freisler, see, e.g., Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (2005), re"White Rose" members circulating anti-Nazi leaflets on campus. Fox distortion behavior also reminds of the Volkischer Beobachter, whose editor, Julius Streicher, was hanged for his distortions and lying at Nuremberg.) (Incidentally, self-professed Catholic O'Reilly's economic views are contrary to Catholicism and Christian Economics.)
  • Media Matters, "LEFT BEHIND: The Skewed Representation of Religion in Major News Media" (May 2007) (Media types distort across-the-board, including on religion). (Review).
    Journalists are no doubt censored and harassed by governments. See e.g.,
  • "Journalists besieged over Iraq, terror news" by Charles J. Hanley (Associated Press, 2 July 2006).
  • Glenn Greenwald, "Is Michael Mukasey Prioritizing the Harassment and Imprisonment of Journalists?" ("Salon.com, 3 February 2008). ("It seems rather clearly to signify the intent of his Justice Department to more aggressively pursue reporters who disclose information embarrassing to the President. . . . Mukasey has quickly demonstrated that he has no interest in investigating and pursuing lawbreaking by high government officials, but now, he (or at least the DOJ he leads) seems to be demonstrating something even worse: a burgeoning interest in investigating and pursuing those who expose such governmental lawbreaking and turning those whistleblowers and investigative journalists into criminals.")
    But some government prosecutions of journalists are indeed legitimate, see U.S., German, and Rwandan examples.
    For other media issues, see www.tvnewslies.org/news/#media.
    Readers are advised that it is generally pointless to attempt to speak to the media for the purpose of educating them. Journalists generally have their minds made up in advance, do not want to be confused by the facts, have a grossly over-inflated attitude of their self-importance tantamount to delusions of grandeur, and may have anosognosia. They will thus foreseeably resent and deem as insulting any education effort you may attempt, and/or any comments you may make as to their low competence, education, and/or integrity level.
    Your attempt to educate some presstitute is simply the proverbial casting of pearls before swine.
    Never forget The New York Times scandal whereby the reporter fabricated events. The media have no hiring standards of integrity, i.e., are perfectly willing to hire the mentally ill, e.g., smokers, then with a crocodile tears type fake reaction, profess "concern" when some mentally ill hiree journalist displays typical foreseeable insanity symptoms! Media management's pretense of "concern" is well-rehearsed. The real truth is, media intend to keep hiring mentally ill applicants, e.g., smokers, notwithstanding the vast evidence against doing so.
    "Since Washington and Jefferson, in fact ever since [Alexis] de Tocqueville wrote his well-known [1835] book on America, American mores have been deeply altered. . . . the intellectual and moral standards of the nation have [seriously] lowered, principally in political circles. Men who enjoyed some authority on account of their knowledge, their moral character or their fortune, slowly withdrew from public life, disgusted with electoral struggles, repulsed by venality, and frightened by a violent, passionate press," says Lt. Col. Camille Ferri-Pisani, Lettres sur les États-Unis d'Amérique (1862) transl. by Prof. Georges J. Joyaux (1959).

    • Examples of Tabooists: Still Fighting
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