by Mickey Huff
“Project Censored continues to be an invaluable resource in exposing and highlighting shocking stories that are routinely minimized or ignored by the corporate media. The vital nature of this work is underscored by this year’s NSA leaks. The world needs more brave whistle blowers and independent journalists in the service of reclaiming democracy and challenging the abuse of power. Project Censored stands out for its commitment to such work.”—Deepa Kumar, author of Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire and associate professor of Media Studies and Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers University
“Project Censored interrogates the present in the same way that Oliver Stone and I tried to interrogate the past in our Untold History of the United States. It not only shines a penetrating light on the American Empire and all its deadly, destructive, and deceitful actions, it does so at a time when the Obama administration is mounting a fierce effort to silence truth-tellers and whistleblowers. Project Censored provides the kind of fearless and honest journalism we so desperately need in these dangerous times.”—Peter Kuznick, professor of history, American University, and coauthor, with Oliver Stone, of The Untold History of the United States
“At a time when the need for independent journalism and for media outlets unaffiliated with and untainted by the government and corporate sponsors is greater than ever, Project Censored has created a context for reporting the complete truths in all matters that matter. . . . It is therefore left to us to find sources for information we can trust. . . . It is in this task that we are fortunate to have an ally like Project Censored.”—Dahr Jamail
“Activist groups like Project Censored . . . are helping to build the media democracy movement. We have to challenge the powers that be and rebuild media from the bottom up.”—Amy Goodman
“Project Censored is one of the organizations that we should listen to, to be assured that our newspapers and our broadcasting outlets are practicing thorough and ethical journalism.”—Walter Cronkite
“[Censored] should be affixed to the bulletin boards in every newsroom in America. And, perhaps read aloud to a few publishers and television executives.”—Ralph Nader
“[Censored] offers devastating evidence of the dumbing-down of mainstream news in America. . . . Required reading for broadcasters, journalists, and well-informed citizens.”—Los Angeles Times
“One of the most significant media research projects in the country.”—I. F. Stone
“A terrific resource, especially for its directory of alternative media and organizations. . . . Recommended for media collections.” —Library Journal
“[Project Censored’s] efforts to continue globalizing their reporting network could not be more timely or necessary.”—Kristina Borjesson
“A distant early warning system for society’s problems.”—American Journalism Review
“Project Censored goes where the media conformist angels fear to tread. . . . It’s the kind of journalism we need.”—Norman Solomon
“Project Censored shines a spotlight on news that an informed public must have . . . a vital contribution to our democratic process.” —Rhoda H. Karpatkin, president, Consumer’s Union
“Hot news, cold truths, utterly uncensored.”—Greg Palast
“Buy it, read it, act on it. Our future depends on the knowledge this collection of suppressed stories allows us.”—San Diego Review
“Those who read and support Project Censored are in the know.”
—Cynthia McKinney
Copyright © 2013 by Mickey Huff and Andy Lee Roth
Foreword © 2013 by Sarah van Gelder
A Seven Stories Press First Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means,
including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording or other
wise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Seven Stories Press
140 Watts Street
New York, NY 10013
www.sevenstories.com
ISBN 978-1-60980-494-7 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-60980-495-4(electronic)
ISSN 1074-5998
Book design by Jon Gilbert
Contents
FOREWORD: Solutions in a Time of Climate Meltdown:
The Most Censored (and Indispensible) Story by Sarah van Gelder
INTRODUCTION by Andy Lee Roth and Mickey Huff
SECTION I: CENSORED NEWS AND MEDIA ANALYSIS
INTRODUCTION
NOTE ON RESEARCH AND EVALUATION OF CENSORED NEWS STORIES
CHAPTER 1: Top 25 Censored Stories from 2012–13 and Censored News Clusters
The Top 25
Top 25 Story Summaries, compiled by Andy Lee Roth
1. Bradley Manning and the Failure of Corporate Media
2. Richest Global 1 Percent Hide Trillions in Tax Havens
3. Trans-Pacific Partnership Threatens a Regime of Corporate Global Governance
4. Obama’s War on Whistleblowers
5. Hate Groups and Antigovernment Groups on Rise across US
6. Billionaires’ Rising Wealth Intensifies Poverty and Inequality
7. Merchants of Death and Nuclear Weapons
8. Bank Interests Inflate Global Prices by 35 to 40 Percent
9. Icelanders Vote to Include Commons in Their Constitution
10. A “Culture of Cruelty” along Mexico–US Border
11. Bush Blocked Iran Nuclear Deal
12. The US Has Left Iraq with an Epidemic of Cancers and Birth Defects
13. A Fifth of Americans Go Hungry
14. Wireless Technology a Looming Health Crisis
15. Food Riots: The New Normal?
16. Journalism Under Attack Around the Globe
17. The Creative Commons Celebrates Ten Years of Sharing and Cultural Creation
18. Fracking Our Food Supply
19. The Power of Peaceful Revolution in Iceland
20. Israel Counted Minimum Calorie Needs in Gaza Blockade
21. Monsanto and India’s “Suicide Economy”
22. Pennsylvania Law Gags Doctors to Protect Big Oil’s “Proprietary Secrets”
23. Transaction Tax Helps Civilize Wall Street and Lower the National Debt
24. Widespread GMO Contamination: Did Monsanto Plant GMOs Before USDA Approval?
25. Israel Gave Birth Control to Ethiopian Immigrants Without Their Consent
Censored News Clusters
Whistleblowers and Gag Laws by Brian Covert
Plutocracy, Poverty, and Prosperity by James F. Tracy
Human Rights and Civil Liberties by Susan Rahman and Donna Nassor
Technologies and Ecologies of War by Targol Mesbah and Zara Zimbardo
Health and the Environment by Susan Rahman and Liliana Valdez-Madera
Iceland, the Power of Peaceful Revolution, and the Commons by Andy Lee Roth
CHAPTER 2: Déjà vu: what Happened to previous Censored Stories?
by Mickey Huff and Nolan Higdon with Andrew O’Connor-Watts,
Jen Eiden, Allen Kew, Emmie Ruhland, Aaron Hudson, Rex Yang,
Sam Park, Amitai Cohen, Michael Kolbe, and Matthew Carhart
CHAPTER 3: Can’t Touch This: Junk Food News and News Abuse
by Mickey Huff, Michael Kolbe, Nolan Higdon, Sam Park,
Jennifer Eiden, and Kimberly Soiero
CHAPTER 4: Media Democracy in Action: Free Press and
Free Speech Advocates that Make a Difference
compiled by Mickey Huff, with contributions by Daniel Ellsberg, On
Civil Courage; Josh Wolf, Journalism that Matters; William Creely,
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education; Christopher M. Finan,
&n
bsp; American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression; Acacia O’Connor,
National Coalition Against Censorship and Kids’ Right to Read; Tony Diaz,
Librotraficante; Beau Hodai, DBA Press; Sunsara Taylor, Stop Patriarchy;
John Collins, The Weave; and Ken Walden, What the World Could Be
SECTION II: CRITICAL THINKING, MEDIA LITERACY, AND
NARRATIVES OF POWER
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 5: Digging Deeper: Politico-Corporate Media Manipulation,
Critical Thinking, and Democracy
by Elliot D. Cohen
CHAPTER 6: Diffusing Conspiracy Panics: On the Public Use of Reason in the Twenty-First Century Truth Emergency
by James F. Tracy
CHAPTER 7: Censorship That Dares Not Speak its Name: The Strange Silencing of Liberal America
by John Pilger
CHAPTER 8: Screening the Homeland: How Hollywood Fantasy
Mediates State Fascism in the US of Empire
by Rob Williams
SECTION III: CASE STUDIES OF “UNHISTORY” IN THE
MAKING—AND HOW TO BUILD A BETTER FUTURE
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 9: Exposing The Financial Core of the Transnational Capitalist Class
by Peter Phillips and Brady Osborne
CHAPTER 10: Apple Exposed: The Untold Story of Globalization
by Nicki Lisa Cole and Tara Krishna
CHAPTER 11: The “New” American Imperialism in Africa: Secret Sahara Wars and AFRICOM
by Brian Martin Murphy
CHAPTER 12: The Sixth Mass Extinction
by Julie Andrzejewski and John C. Alessio
CHAPTER 13: The New Story: Why We Need One and How to Create It
by Michael Nagler
Acknowledgments and Judges
Report From The Media Freedom Foundation President
by Peter Phillips
How To Support Project Censored
No News Is Good News
by Marcia Annenberg, cover artist
About The Editors
Index
We dedicate Censored 2014 to truth-tellers, past and present,
who speak fearlessly to defend the commons of knowledge and
the freedoms of the people. Your example inspires our work
and gives purpose to our shared future.
There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels . . . upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.
MARIO SAVIO
University of California–Berkeley
December 2, 1964
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF
HUMAN RIGHTS, ARTICLE 19
United Nations General Assembly
adopted 1948
In Memoriam
BRIAN MARTIN MURPHY
July 14, 1948–June 14, 2013
Intrepid journalist, cherished colleague, inspiring teacher,
fearless truth-teller
As a Canadian journalist covering the wars in southern Africa for Inter Press Service during the 1980s, I saw Project Censored was one of the few media outlets in the US consistently featuring coverage of those underreported wars. I paid attention.
When I was working with the filmmaking company Media Education Foundation, part of a national initiative defining and promoting media literacy, the publication of Project Censored’s annual book was one of our reference points.
When I joined the faculty of the Department of Communication Studies at Niagara University, we decided to completely redesign the program as a degree in Communicating for Social Justice. In ten years, that redesign has become a model for many other communication departments.
At every step, Project Censored’s work has been an example of the fearless truth-telling to which all social-justice advocates and students of journalism should be exposed. Today, Project Censored is integrated into our curriculum, with at least one course a year doing research to contribute to the list of contenders for the Top 25 underreported stories. Our students’ successes are a testament to Project Censored’s value as a media literacy teaching tool, introducing a whole new generation to what real press freedom looks like.
—Brian Martin Murphy
July 30, 2012
FOREWORD
Solutions in a Time of Climate Meltdown
The Most Censored (and Indispensible) Story
Sarah van Gelder
The most censored story of our lifetime is hiding in plain sight. We humans are disrupting the climate of the planet to the point at which the world our children and grandchildren will inhabit may be unrecognizable.
The risk we are taking is not something discussed in polite company, much less in the corporate press. Instead of covering the many facets of this impending crisis and the options for mobilizing a response, the corporate press has largely served up a diet of distortion and distraction. Even the progressive media has a mixed record on covering the climate crisis.
Yet stories that explore the depth of—and solutions to—the climate crisis are essential to any prospect that we will respond at the scale needed.
After years of record-breaking fires, droughts, heat waves, and storms, public opinion is beginning to move toward greater comprehension, although still at a rate that is dangerously slow. While 97 percent of peer-reviewed scientific studies conclude that the Earth is warming because of human influences,1 just 42 percent of the general public believes the world is warming because of human activity.2 And though journalists cover at length the stories of particular wildfires, droughts, megastorms, floods, and other events exacerbated by the shifting climate, until recently, the corporate media have neglected to explore something that scientists are warning about and that many people perceive with their own senses: that these are not isolated incidents, but signs of a long-term and accelerating disruption in climate stability.
The hard truth is that scientists predict a temperature rise of six degrees Celsius by the end of the century, unless we take action. This level of heating will hobble agriculture, deplete water supplies, and move shorelines. It will make many areas uninhabitable and cause famine, widespread extinctions, and massive movements of climate refugees. And it will be largely irreversible for centuries thereafter.3
WHAT CORPORATE POWER MEANS
Why have we been unable to take action in the face of a threat larger and more long-lasting than terrorism?4 The climate crisis highlights a systemic flaw in human society today: the power of large corporations over our economy, governance, and way of life overwhelms other forces in our public and private lives.
Corporations dealing in fossil fuel are among the biggest and most powerful on the planet. Together with other large corporations, as well as the think tanks and lobbyists they fund, they have undermined efforts to reach international climate agreements, and to get government action on renewable energy and energy efficiency, smart transportation options, and other policies that could counter the threat of climate disruption. With a focus on making the most money possible for shareholders and executives, the fate of human and other life on the planet just doesn’t show up on the quarterly balance sheet. With billions of dollars in profits and a Supreme Court friendly to the power of big corporations, their influence on government goes largely unchecked.
An economy that concentrates wealth and power more each year, while undermining our world’s capacity to support life, especially goes unquestioned when the media is owned by big corporatio
ns that rely on corporate advertising.
We also have a cultural flaw. Influenced by billions of dollars of advertising, popular culture has come to equate having lots of stuff with success and happiness. Those at the top can accumulate with abandon and without considering the implications for the future. Meanwhile, people in the 99 percent increasingly struggle just to get by. Other values that are just as much a part of the founding cul-ture of the United States—frugality, community, neighbor-helping-neighbor, contribution to the whole—have been pushed aside by the advertising-driven impulse to buy. The production and eventual disposal of all that stuff exacts a price on the finite resources and energy capacities of the planet, and the bill is coming due.
CLIMATE COVERAGE: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY
Facing the dire reality of a destabilized climate is not easy, and some of the country’s most influential media don’t even try. The Wall Street Journal’s notoriously right-wing opinion section published a column on May 9, 2013, titled “In Defense of Carbon Dioxide.”5 The piece celebrates rising levels of carbon dioxide as a boon to plant life. Columbia Journalism Review columnist Ryan Chittum, who is a former Wall Street Journal writer himself, called it “shameful even by the dismal standards of that page.”6
According to a January 2013 Media Matters report, not a single climate scientist appeared as a guest on the influential Sunday morning television talk shows, nor were any climate scientists quoted, over the previous four years.7 Most of those invited to speak on global warming were either media figures or politicians, but, among the politicians, not a single one was a Democrat. Climate change deniers on the shows went unchallenged. The nightly news shows had somewhat more coverage, and most of that was driven by extreme weather events, according to the report. But this coverage, too, was biased: 60 percent of the politicians on the air were Republicans.
Most journalists want to be perceived as objective, and so for years much of the climate reporting included an ersatz balance: climate de-niers were given equal time even though they were a tiny fraction of the scientific community; the fact that many were funded by the fossil fuel lobby was rarely mentioned. The New York Times is among those that now explicitly reject this he-said-she-said approach.8