The Second Untold Stories

Posted on October 11, 2006
Filed Under For Argument's Sake |

Yesterday I said there were stories we prefer not to tell ourselves, or rather there are stories that we as a medium of communication have not told.

My guess is most journalists could come up with a list of ten. Here’s my second five.

6. Mercury in your mouth. The research points incontrovertibly to mercury based amalgam fillings being an extreme health hazard over time, yet, for the sake of balance we keep letting the dentistry organisations have their say - reassuring us there is no danger. We’ve let people down on this one.

7. The House UnAmerican Activities Committee that persecuted liberals in the 1950s was more dangerous in the 1940s but we never hear about that or how it attacked Roosevelt’s inner-cabinet at the end of WWII. George Clooney should be told.

8. Cancer is like a payola for the research industry. The constant revelations about breakthrough science and breakthrough treatments are generally oversold but the media lets it happen, indeed we collude in it, creating hope where little exists, contributing to the distortion of research spending, acting like a PR machine.

9. The story nestled away in the New York courts of how big tobacco may have created its own black markets and contraband runs into Europe is one of those smoking gun stories nobody wants to look at. But it’s also an indictment of the European authorities - why use the US courts?

10. The DOHA round of world trade talks - essentially an attempt to bring the service indsutries into the global comeptitive market - was drummed up by American and British insurers, as well as software vendors. But leave aside the software people, the payoff for the financial services is the ability to tap into the pension markets of developing countries - one hope for meeting the massive obligations in this part of the world. The discussions between the US and British High Level groups were published onthe web four years ago but nobody followed it up.

So those are my ten. I imagine every journalist and blogger could come up with more.

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