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Reviewing Project Censored's Latest Top 25 Censored Stories - by Stephen Lendman
For 33 years, Sonoma State University's (SSU) Project Censored (PC) has engaged in pioneering research on, and advocacy for, First Amendment issues. Founded by Carl Jensen in 1976, it's now headed by Professor Ben Frymer. On July 1, he took over from Professor Peter Phillips who stepped down after 13 years of distinguished service as Director.
PC works cooperatively "with numerous independent (US) media groups," primarily to train SSU students "in media research and First Amendment issues and the advocacy for, and protection of, free press rights in the United States."
For over three decades, it's "trained over 1,500 students in investigative research" and continues doing it through "a partnership of faculty, students, and the community," cooperatively engaged in "research on important national news stories that are underreported, ignored, misrepresented, or censored by the US corporate media."
Each year, it ranks the top 25 and publishes them in its yearbook, "Censored: Media Democracy in Action." The latest "Censored 2010: The Top 25 Censored Stories of 2008 - 09" just out is the subject of this review. The book may now be purchased locally, online, and most easily at projectcensored.org/store.
The current edition is larger than even, and includes the year's honorable mention choices as well as additional chapters covered below.
In the preface, Peter Phillips and former Associate Director Mickey Huff highlight Censored 2010's theme in explaining the corporate media's emphasis on commercialism, the "inane", the "irrelevant," and their willful suppression of real news and information on vital issues.
Their betrayal of the public trust reveals them to be "a gossip rag or screed sheet, a veritable three-ring circus sideshow of spectacle and distraction," and a "dying system" relying on disinformation, faux reporting over real journalism, and the main threat to democracy in America that can't flourish without a free and open media able to supply everyone with real news and information.
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