Censored 2012 (5 page)

Phillips is president of Media Freedom Foundation, the nonprofit corporation that supports Project Censored and the following websites:

Project Censored:
www.projectcensored.org

Daily News:
www.censorednews.org

Validated News and Research:
www.mediafreedominternational.org

Daily Censored Blog:
www.dailycensored.com

Daily News in Spanish:
www.proyectocensurado.org

Fair Share of the Common Heritage:
www.fairsharecommonheritage.org

1
. Concha Mateo, “Spanish 15M Goes Out of Puerta del Sol: An Ethical Revolution Spread its Wings,”
Daily Censored
, June 9, 2011,
http://dailycensored.com/2011/06/09/spanish-15m-goes-out-of-puerta-del-sol-an-ethical-revolution-spread-its-wings/
.

by Peter Phillips, Mickey Huff, Elliot D. Cohen, Dean Walker, Andy Lee Roth, Elaine Wellin, Kristen Seraphin, Joel Evans-Fudem, Amy Ortiz, Kenn Burrows, and Tom Atlee, with additional research and editing by Trish Boreta, Bill Gibbons, Craig Cekala, Melody J. Haislip, Nolan Higdon, and Casey Goonan

by Mickey Huff, director of Project Censored

Project Censored has compiled a list of stories absent from the United States establishment news media each year since 1976. The annual Top 25 Censored Stories have become our tagline as an organization, despite that we do much more in the field of media studies, communications,
journalism, and sociology. This year, we divide our top stories into categories, and analyze them in what we call Censored News Clusters, which relate closely with the additional contents of our media research. We added the Censored News Clusters, encompassing our top censored stories each year, because we couldn’t help but notice that simply ranking the stories did little to tie them all together, to illuminate topical patterns of censorship. That is, there are several topics, or clusters, that almost always have stories within them, and the numerical ranking of stories can act to obscure the connections among many of the stories. The top stories and their runners up over the years are all important, and they have all been underreported, if reported at all, by the seemingly ubiquitous corporate news media. We believe that analyzing the stories through Censored News Clusters, we can better understand the architecture of censorship in the US.

Project Censored founder Dr. Carl Jensen originally grouped the top stories topically though they were still enumerated and ranked by Project Censored researchers and judges. Dr. Peter Phillips, Jensen’s successor, commented on thematic groupings of stories, noting their reoccurrence. This year at Project Censored, we quite purposefully discuss and organize the top censored stories within topical categories to draw particular attention to the nature of censorship in the US press, highlighting the type of story likely to be underreported, distorted, or outright ignored. While we continue to have our Top 25 Stories ranked by Project Censored judges and college and university affiliates, we include related stories that were nominated this past year in topical clusters to show a pattern among the types of stories that are slighted by the corporate media, and take a look at why this is so.

Censorship, as defined by the Project, includes anything that interferes with the free flow of information in a society that purports to have a free press, and America has protections for such freedom in its Constitution (specifically under the First Amendment). When the free press fails to function factually in the public interest, it acts as a propaganda organ of the private sector owners and investors of big media, and even of their supposed government overseers.

It is important to consider, though, that censorship, by its very nature, is a form of propaganda—deceptive communication used to sway or influence public opinion to benefit a special interest, party, or
individual. Propaganda, and this type of censorship, is intentional by nature, and is oft the result of a plan hatched to achieve certain objectives to the gain of one party at the expense of another (see
Section II
of this volume). In essence, this is a conspiracy. We use this term fully aware that it has unfortunately become a buzzword for propagandistic attacks against any story that is outside the realm of conventional wisdom—in other words, out of bounds for consideration regardless of factual content. Such exclusion is also a clear violation of the freedom of expression and free press principles ensconced in the First Amendment.

In short, the decision by media institutions to run—or to not run—a particular news story, or to include—or to exclude—a certain view, based on anything other than the desire to report the full truth, is censorship and functions as a form of propaganda. Censorship includes many techniques, such as framing, slighting of content, and appealing to emotion over logic, among other tactics of media manipulation, including what is referred to as spin.
¹
These methods are used to create matter-of-fact conspiracies to manipulate or withhold information. These are not the “conspiracy theories” as used in the pejorative, comprised of wild speculation or paranoia. And if wild speculation dominates a particular message, when unsupported theories present themselves as solid truths rather than as possibilities requiring further investigation, sober challenges based on all the known facts should be put forth to tame them in free debate—not dismissively ignore or attack them a priori. Simply put, censorship of any kind must be confronted and dismantled.

The great playwright George Bernard Shaw once wrote, “All great truths begin as blasphemies.” If we cannot get past the stage at which controversial stories are merely blasphemies, we may never arrive at the truth of many important matters. To lump all potentially conspiratorial topics together does a disservice to free speech, as factual conspiracies (proven to have censored information about wrongdoings) have a long past. This type of labeling acts to censor further investigation. This labeling comes from a place of fear—fear of the facts and to where they may lead. A free press cannot tolerate such restrictive forms of communication and must resist them at all turns, lest that system fall into disrepute with the public and fail at its constitutionally
protected mission of keeping the electorate informed. The corporate media have failed in this task. These problems of censorship and the use of propaganda also have long-proven pasts. We need to act in concert to overcome these dual demons for democracy, purge ourselves of the plagues of fear and secrecy, and truly come out into the light of knowledge and hope.
²

We would do well to recall and ponder the four freedoms enunciated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt seventy years ago. On January 6, 1941, Roosevelt addressed the US Congress in the context of a world on the verge of serious crisis, on how America should move forward:

Those words have become both apt and prescient. But we cannot face schemes of world domination abroad without also examining them right here at home, especially when those ambitions emanate from our very own leaders and government—indeed from our own empire—which is, to be sure, everywhere in the world. Future days
are here now, in 2011, and we still have much work to do to fulfill the promise of Roosevelt’s four freedoms; we cannot wait for that distant millennium as it has already arrived. One way to face our current challenges is by seriously adopting these four freedoms. By considering free speech and expression, by providing the public with honest, fact-based information that is accurately reported by the free press, perhaps we shall overcome the many challenges we face.

In the end, we must lift the veil that censors and propagandists create for democracy to thrive. Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.” The only way our republic will have a viable future is through the creation, protection, and public support of an uncensored press. In that spirit, Project Censored presents the top censored stories and Censored News Clusters for 2010–2011, in an effort to make better known these significant yet underreported stories. The Clusters include: