Censored News Stories Highlighted by Academic Research Group

Censure for media failures - speaks for itself:

By Peter Phillips

Media Accountability Day, October 1, is the annual release of the
news stories that were not covered by the corporate-mainstream media
in the US. The list, just announced by Project Censored at Sonoma
State University in California, includes the twenty-five most
important uncovered news stories of the year selected by over 200
academics.

Stories about the Iraq occupation lead the list. Unreported in the US
corporate media is how over one million Iraqis have met violent
deaths resulting from the 2003 US led invasion. According to a study
conducted by the British polling group Opinion Research Business the
human toll exceeded 900,000 as of August 2007. In addition, a United
Nations Refugee Agency study found that five million Iraqis had been
displaced by violence in their country.

Also ignored by mainstream media was the report of how three hundred
Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans came forward in March of 2008 to
recount the brutal impact of the ongoing occupations. The Winter
Soldier hearings in Silver Spring, Maryland, organized by Iraq
Veterans Against the War, presented multiple testimonies by veterans
who witnessed or participated in atrocities against Iraqis or Afghans.
Independent media reported that the United States Federal Reserve
shipped $12 billion in US currency to Iraq at the beginning of the
war of which at least $9 billion went missing, but this story never
saw the light of day in the US mainstream.

Additionally, many anti-war activists will be surprised to learn that
President Bush has signed two executive orders that would allow the
US Treasury Department to seize the property of any person perceived
to, directly or indirectly, pose a threat to US operations in the
Middle East.



Also not reported in the US news is how the leaders of Canada, the
US, and Mexico have been secretly meeting to expand the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to form a militarized tri-
national Homeland Security force and how more than 23,000
representatives of US private industry are working with the FBI and
the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to collect information on
fellow Americans.

Coverage of how massive new US-backed military funding threatens
peace and democracy in Latin America and that NATO officials are
considering a first strike nuclear option was also missing from the
corporate press.

Unreported news also includes the stories that the Justice
Department believes it is legal for the president to secretly ignore
previous executive orders anytime he wants, and the FDA is complicit
in allowing drug companies to make false, unsubstantiated, and
misleading advertising claims.


Censored news stories also included why the No Child Left Behind
program is a huge success for corporate profits, but have had little
positive impact on public education. Children in juvenile detention
centers in the US face conditions that involve sexual and physical
abuse, and even death. And radioactive materials from nuclear weapons
production sites are being dumped into public landfills, and being
used as recycled metals.

Untold news includes CARE announcing last year that it was turning
down $45 million in food aid from the United States government
because the procedures the US demands for handling the food actually
increases starvation instead of relieving it.

Rounding out the Project Censored list is the news that the guest
worker program in the United States victimizes immigrant workers and
creates a new form of indentured servitude and that twenty-seven
million slaves exist in the world today.

Censorship is a harsh term, but the shocking fact is that the
corporate-mainstream media in the US was so busy entertaining us that
these and many other important news stories became lost in a news
system run amuck.


Peter Phillips is a professor of sociology at Sonoma State University
and director of Project Censored. Censored 2009 was released October
1, 2008 by Seven Stories Press. Daily independent news (http://
mediafreedom.pnn.com/5174-independent-news-sources) and a full on-
line review of the most censored stories are available at:
www.projectcensored.org

Censorship is a harsh term indeed, and an inappropriate one here, I feel. Is there any evidence of a suppression of reports, or is it merely that the media, for whatever reason, simply chose not to report these events?

It raises an interesting question about the opposite of censorship, forcing the media to take certain reports. It would be as bad as censorship, as it equally interferes with the freedom of the media. But you can see its merits when such important events as these go unnoticed.

It is difficult though to believe that the entire spectrum of the media choose to ignore such stories as the ORB survey on the Iraqi death toll. I can see why some would come to unsavoury conclusions. But there is no evidence of censorship that I know of.