50 Things They Don't Want You to Know, by Jerome Hudson

Jerome Hudson, and editor for Breitbart.com, has been around the media world long enough to see that most media outlets have an agenda and a perspective, and if you try to report something outside of that agenda, well, the story might just get buried.  In 50 Things They Don't Want You to Know, Hudson takes 50 of these topics and provides the sources, statistics, and charts and graphs to arm the reader with corrective information and talking points.

You might just want to read the book straight through, like I did.  But because of the structure of the book, it's handy as a reference.  Maybe he should send copies to the "fact checkers" at newspapers and web sites, who tend to be very liberal and disingenuously favor left-wing perspectives.  Take any given chapter title, such as "From 2012 to 2016, More Black Women in New York City Had Abortions Than Gave Birth," "The U.S. Resettled More Refugees in 2018 That Any Other Nation," or "For Every $1 a Netflix Employee Donates to a Republican, $141 Gets Donated to Democrats," and contrast Hudson's information to what you might read in the mainstream media. 

You'd be correct to assume that Hudson is on the right, given his association with Breitbart, but he's not a shill for Trump.  He is interested in people hearing the whole story, not a media talking point.  It's also interesting to note that he is African-American.  Coming from a white writer, some of his positions regarding affirmative action, black crime, or welfare might be taken as racist, but as a black man from the South, his perspective has additional weight.  For instance, he writes "We are either an affirmative action America, where some among us are held to a lower standard based on skin color, or we are all equal under law, free to fail or succeed no matter what group we happen to be born into.  Both cannot be true."

On many topics, the media outright lies, or at least leaves out significant facts.  For instance, for all the media-induced panic over plastic in the ocean, leading to straw bans and children's protests, we never hear from the media that "About 90 percent of the planet's plastic pollution comes from a few rivers in Asia and Africa."  But instead of stories about banning plastics along those few rivers, they want us to be upset about straws in Starbucks. 

Keep Hudson's book handy next time you're reading a story in the New York Times or watching CNN.  If they are covering a topic that is related to one of Hudson's 50 chapters, arm yourself with the full truth, check Hudson's sources, and draw your own conclusions. 


Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!