The most exciting news these past few months for me has been the recent release of the book CENSORED 2013: The Top Censored Stories and Media Analysis of 2011-12, the latest edition of a book that is published every year by Seven Stories Press in New York. The book is compiled and organized by the media watch/media literacy group Project Censored, based in northern California.

It’s exciting because I have contributed, for the first time, a new chapter to this book, titled “On the Road to Fukushima: The Unreported Story Behind Japan’s Nuclear-Media-Industrial Complex”. My chapter concerns the broad issue of news media censorship in Japan and the Fukushima nuclear accident of March 2011.

We all know the about the “military-industrial complex” in the United States and elsewhere: that close partnership between the sectors of military and industry that is responsible for the constant state of warfare that the U.S. finds itself in. I came up with the phrase “nuclear-media-industrial complex” to best describe that close relationship in Japan between the sectors of nuclear power, the media and industry in general. They are more closely linked than most of us know.

Using online newspaper archives, old printed editions of magazines, some out-of-print books and various other sources, I set out to retrace and summarize the forgotten history behind nuclear power and the news media in Japan that helped pave the way for the nuclear accident at Fukushima.

I focus in the chapter on the crucial role that Japan’s most powerful media mogul, the late Matsutaro Shoriki (former head of the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper and NTV television network) played in securing nuclear power in Japan. I also cover the role of the Japanese “kisha (reporters’) club” system that acts as a self-censoring filter for much of the truth behind the political and corporate “centers of power” that the public in Japan is never informed about.

If you haven’t already read my chapter in the new CENSORED 2013 book, then I guarantee that you’re in for a few surprises. I encourage you to order your copy of the book today and find out more than you ever wanted to know about Fukushima and media censorship. By buying your copy of the book, you will also be supporting the important work of monitoring the news media in the U.S. and other countries that Project Censored has been doing for more than 30 years.

And from me personally: Thank you to all the folks at Project Censored and Seven Stories Press who put so much of their time and effort, year after year, to continuing fighting the good fight against media censorship in society. We will never know the truth if we don’t pursue it and fight for it.