The media is a lot like the weather: everyone complains about it, but few understand how it works.

Into the breach comes Newswatch Canada, inspired by U.S. Project Censored. Both groups tally significant news stories that have a compelling public interest but fail to merit much ink in the mainstream press; Newswatch Canada studies provide much of the background for this book.

While implying that media seem more independent in Canada than in our neighbour to the south, The Missing News nonetheless digs deep and comes up with some astounding “censored” stories of its own, including the fact that Canada spends less on peacekeeping than it makes in the international arms trade, and a story on how business-oriented public relations firms took over the environmental agenda in the mid-1990s.

Through tracking the coverage – or lack thereof – of these stories, the authors show the factors that determine what gets into the news, and what gets left on the editing room floor. The research examines attitudes and biases of journalists and editors, corporate concentration, the process of news gathering in an era of cost-cutting, and the effects of advertising on editorial content. We also learn how and why there is far more coverage of business issues than labour, little coverage of alternatives to neoliberal economics, and nary a nod toward concerns about how media concentration affects how we receive – or don’t – the product that has become our news.

The book carefully straddles the line between academic and popular writing, backing its conclusions with repeated explanations of research methodology, but still erring on the side of accessibility. While not likely to be bedside reading for Conrad Black, this work carries its assumptions well, and even readers new to the subject will likely be hungry for the next report from Newswatch Canada.