Censored 2014 (26 page)

^8.
Jeffery Toobin, “Edward Snowden Is No Hero,”
New Yorker,
June 10, 2013,
http://www.newy-orker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/06/edward-snowden-nsa-leaker-is-no-hero.html
.

^9.
Rainey Reitman, “Day One of the Manning Trial: How Public Will This Court Martial Be?”
Huffington Post,
June 4, 2013,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rainey-reitman/
; and James Bamford, “Manning Judge Rules Against RSN, Media Access,”
Reader Supported News,
June 13, 2012,
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/317-65/17913-focus-manning-judge-rules-against-rsn-media-access
.

^10.
Matt Taibbi, “As Bradley Manning Trial Begins, Press Predictably Misses the Point,”
Rolling Stone,
June 6, 2013,
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/as-bradley-manning-trial-begins-press-predictably-misses-the-point-20130605
. See also story #1 in ch. 1 of this volume.

^11.
Ibid.

^12.
One notable exception, it could be argued, is Denver Nicks, “Bradley Manning and Our Real Secrecy Problem,”
Time,
June 5, 2013,
http://ideas.time.com/2013/06/05/viewpoint-our-real-secrecy-problem/#ixzz2VNWKyjq8
. Taibbi attacked Nicks's article in his article criticizing the corporate press, though it seems Nicks and Taibbi agree that the Manning case is about excessive government secrecy at the very least. However, a week later, the publication in question,
Time,
ran a cover story equating whistleblowers with spies. Taibbi's overall claim seems to stand up at least in terms of corporate media missing the point, and showing their bias, even if Nicks's piece had a different angle. See Kevin Gosztola,
“Time
Magazine Equates Whistleblow-ers with Spies in Cover Story on Snowden, Manning & Swartz,”
FireDogLake,
June 13, 2013,
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/06/13/time-magazine-equates-whistleblowers-with-spies-in-cover-story-on-snowden-manning-swartz/
.

^13.
Gosztola, “TIME Magazine Equates Whistleblowers with Spies.” See also story #1 in ch. 1 of this volume, as well as Brian Covert, “Censored News Cluster: Whistleblowers and Gag Laws.”

^14.
Iain Thompson, “Anger Grows over the Death of Aaron Swartz,”
Register,
January 13, 2013,
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/13/anger_death_aaron_swartz
.

^15.
See Andy Lee Roth, “Censored News Cluster: Iceland, the Power of Peaceful Revolution, and the Commons,” and Brian Covert, “Censored News Cluster: Whistleblowers and Gag Laws,” in ch. 1 of this volume.

^16.
Matt Taibbi, “Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever,”
Rolling Stone,
April 25, 2013,
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/everything-is-rigged-the-biggest-finan-cial-scandal-yet-20130425
.

^17.
Ibid.

^18.
Matt Taibbi, “Everything is Rigged, Vol. 9,713: This Time, It's Currencies,”
Rolling Stone, Taib-blog,
June 13, 2013,
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/everything-is-rigged-vol-9-713-this-time-its-currencies-20130613
.

^19.
Samantha Wyatt, “Fox News Spent 4 Hours Covering IRS Hearing, 14 Minutes On Military Sexual Assault Hearing,” Media Matters, June 5, 2013,
http://mediamatters.org/research/2013/06/05/fox-news-spent-4-hours-covering-irs-hearing-14/194353
.

Mickey Huff, Michael Kolbe, Nolan Higdon, Sam Park, Jennifer
Eiden, and Kimberly Soiero

—Walter Mosley
¹

Thirty years ago, Project Censored founder, Dr. Carl Jensen, coined the term Junk Food News. Jensen referred to the increased coverage of utter inanity as serious news as Junk Food, like Twinkies for the brain. Around that same time, New York University media ecologist Neil Postman published a seminal work—
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Pub-
lic Discourse in the Age of Show Business.
²
In the book, Postman perhaps unwittingly yet presciently warned about what has grown to become our current bread and circus sideshow, made-for-reality TV faux news culture—comprised of deleterious distractions and distortions that produce dazed, disgruntled, and dismayed civic dilettantes in delirious denial about key issues of our time, about where we are heading as a society, and the eventual decline of American civilization.
³

Since the 1980s, Project Censored has covered the growing and now normalized trend of Junk Food News, which Jensen began analyzing after news editors took umbrage at his critiques of the failures and possible censorship concerns related to the so-called “mainstream” press dating back to 1976. They claimed his cries of censorship were too harsh, that they had to use news judgment when deciding what to report.

Jensen thought that was a fair response. Therefore, during the early 1980s, he focused more on what the news media
were
covering, rather than what they may have been left out or censored. What he discovered was that the major news media were in fact systematically failing to report important stories to the public, not because they didn't have time, but because they exercised poor news judgment. They chose infotainment. This is especially the case on TV (to which well over half of Americans still turn for news, as we'll note in a moment). The fixation on the inane and titillating over the relevant and substantive has grown to dominate news coverage so much so, that this entire volume could be an expanded version of this chapter— chock-full of example after example.

These problems have not completely escaped public notice. The American public seems to be aware there is a problem with the news, but to mixed degrees. A recent Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism's study,
State of the News Media 2013,
sheds some light on the news media landscape.
⁴
On one hand, the number of Americans who do not trust the major news sources, especially on TV, has risen.
⁵
Interestingly, at the same time, these same news outlets, especially on cable, are broadcasting more and more opinion journalism, not straight, factual reporting. MSNBC leads the way with an astonishing 85 percent of its airtime filled with opinion programming, with Fox and CNN trailing, but CNN was the only network of the three to have slightly more news reporting than opinion (54 to
46percent). These studies suggest a possible factor in why nearly one-third of American news consumers are tuning out—they are not getting the quality of hard news in the quantity they once did.
⁶

With a slightly different focus, another study by Public Policy Polling (PPP) found that among American voters, “there's only one source more Americans trust than distrust: PBS,” in which 52 percent reported their trust.
⁷
This included all major TV network and cable news outlets. Furthermore, another Pew poll from 2011 found that “fully 66% say news stories often are inaccurate, 77% think that news organizations tend to favor one side, and 80% say news organizations are often influenced by powerful people and organizations.”
⁸
Despite these figures, well over half of Americans still listed TV news as their main news source, and most claimed that while they distrusted news sources in general, the ones that
they
chose to view were somehow more accurate, exempt from their related broader criticism (as pointed out in the PPP study above).
⁹

That said, it should be hard to ignore the link between Junk Food News and News Abuse and the erosion of public trust in news media. Our purpose is not to dwell on this problem, but to call attention to it in an intelligent and clever way, and to show readers not only how corporate news media are entertaining rather than informing us, but also how corporate media could be devoting time to covering issues published by independent news sources. In other words, the very type of news story Project Censored highlights in its Top 25 each year could be reported instead of the faux news of celebrity births and deaths, fad dances, and the outcomes of popular shows like
American Idol
or
The Voice.
We can be well informed by our news, or we can be well entertained. The choice is ours. We should choose wisely.

JUNK FOOD NEWS
¹⁰

When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is
redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public
conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become
an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation
finds itselj at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.

—Neil Postman,
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse
in the Age of Show Business
1985)

Junk Food News: The Next Generation

The arrival of celebrity babies once again led the corporate media to hand out imaginary cigars for the superfluous entertainment class. Kim Kardashian, Drew Barrymore, Kate Middleton, and Snooki added to the cacophony of inane and useless information by bearing the next generation of junk food news spawn. However, none gained more media attention than the future heir to the Royal throne. CBS News,
The Huffington Post,
and Fox News devoted their energies to speculating over possible baby names, even consulting baby naming “experts.” Internet traffic after news of the royal pregnancy crashed the royal couple's website.
¹¹
The Junk Food News media frenzy even tragically led to the suicide of a nurse after shock jocks Mel Greig and Michael Christian of 2Day FM, masquerading as Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles, tricked her into divulging Kate Middleton's treatment for morning sickness.
¹²

While the corporate media focused on celebrity births, the alternative media outlet Common Dreams reported that civilian deaths connected to terrorism are on the rise. Their account is based upon the findings of the Global Terrorism Index (GTI), produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), located at the University of Maryland. In its attempt to analyze the economic and social dimen-sions of terrorism in countries, the GTI found that the areas where the United States military has most actively engaged terrorists have experienced an increase in terrorist activity and civilian deaths. Ac-cording to IEP founder and executive chairman Steve Killelea, “Iraq accounts for about a third of all terrorist deaths over the last decade, and Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan account for over 50 percent of fatalities.” Critics of the report argue that it contains a narrow definition of terrorism, and fails to include state-supported violence against civilians. The GTI report defines terrorism as the “threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a non-state actor to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation.”
¹³
However, linguist, political activist, and longtime critic of American foreign policy Noam Chomsky offered an alternative definition suggesting that the “wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism.”
¹⁴

This is certainly a far more newsworthy topic for discussion, one we as a free people ought to be having. Instead, we get celebrity birth reporting and related shenanigans around the clock, which literally are driving some people to death. That said, we likely won't see purveyors of such junk food news up on terrorism charges any time soon.

Daze of Plunder

The corporate media love a messy celebrity split. This past year, Katy Perry and Russell Brand, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony, Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez, Al and Tipper Gore, and Kris Humphries and Kim Kardashian, ended their relationships. After five years of marriage, actor Tom Cruise and actress Katie Holmes divorced. Celebrity reporters and gossip columnists flooded the media with an overabundance of rumors and speculation to explain the breakup.
¹⁵
Despite media speculation, Holmes did not publicly charge the couple's religion—Scientology— as the cause of the divorce. Nevertheless, the media invented a bevy of stories in relation to the Cruise-Holmes split spanning over seven months that included “Katie's Escape Plan,” Scientology's influence on the couple's child, the divorce settlement, or gossip over Cruise's latest romantic exploits.
Days of Thunder
star Cruise couldn't get a reprieve from the media storm.

While breakups dominated many corporate media headlines even outside of entertainment news programs, a story concerning the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), which impacts billions of consumers of financial products and taxpayers, went underreported. Among those bothering to cover the Libor scandal, instead of celebrity divorces, there is a consensus that the situation is the largest financial scandal of recent years. Libor refers to the interest rate for which international banks may borrow from one another. It has a direct effect upon the borrowing costs for a wide array of financial products, including home mortgages, car loans, credit cards, and student loans among others. Additionally, it sets prices on the derivative market, totaling over $750 trillion.
¹⁶

The scandal began when investigators discovered that banks were understating borrowing costs. This resulted in higher prices
for consumers and greater profits for banks. However, regulators at the Federal Reserve Bank and the Bank of England suspected the underreporting as early as 2007.
¹⁷
In the end, the British banking giant Barclays settled for $450 million in a plea bargain with British and American authorities for their manipulation of Libor rates and the resignations of top bank officials, including the chief executive of Barclays, Robert E. Diamond. In an effort to recover costs to the city due to Libor manipulation, Baltimore, Maryland, has filed a law suit against sixteen banks, including Charles Schwab, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland Group, HSBC, Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMor-gan Chase, UBS, and Deutsche Bank.
¹⁸

The corporate media presented some coverage via the Internet, but not much more at the time the scandal was really breaking (even though Bloomberg reported that Barclays announced LIBOR misstate-ments some four years earlier). Ben Dimiero and Rob Savillo of Media Matters for America reported that during the period between June 27 through July 12, 2012, television networks ABC, NBC, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC spent nearly ninety-one minutes reporting on the Tom-Kat divorce, while the Libor scandal received only a miniscule twelve minutes of coverage.
¹⁹
As Wall Street and Washington sloganeer that the banks are “too big to fail, too big to jail,” maybe we need some celebrity big bank breakups for financial scandals the magnitude of Libor to attract the big media attention they truly deserve.

“Kill the Gays Law?” Corporate Media Coverage Won't Touch This!

South Korean songwriter, rapper, dancer, and producer Park Jae-Sang, or, as he is known on stage, “Psy,” became a junk news sensation over the past year. He is best known for his international hit song “Gangnam Style,” which became the most-watched video in the history of YouTube with nearly one trillion views.
²⁰
The video's success even earned the singer a trip to the White House to meet President Obama.
²¹
Corporate media-induced controversy struck Psy when health officials in England issued a warning to middle-aged men to avoid overexerting themselves, after a forty-six-year-old Psy fan with a heart condition collapsed while performing the equally popular signature dance that accompanies Psy's hit song.
²²

After the tragedy, the singer issued an apology to the family “for any pain caused.”
²³

Corporate media pundits previously took offense to Psy's 2004 performance of “Dear American,” which expressed criticism of the “war on terror” and the murder of two Korean schoolgirls by US ar-tillery. Just as conservative media pundits had objected to the White House invitation extended by the Obama administration to rapper and poet Common, they also petitioned to bar the Korean rapper from performing there, prompting Psy to issue an apology for the nearly ten-year-old performance criticizing US actions.
²⁴
Despite the controversy, Psy became a media darling and performed with former rap/pop sensation MC Hammer at the American Music Awards. They performed Hammer's 1990 mega-hit “U Can't Touch This,” which dominated the airwaves and was part of the New Year's celebration in New York's Times Square.