You'll have to go to the article to read about each of the ten items, including the few soources that did cover each story.The top 10 stories not brought to you by mainstream news media in 2008 and 2009BY REBECCA BOWEWednesday September 30, 2009Peter Phillips, director of Project Censored for 13 years, says he's finished with reform. It's impossible, he said in a recent interview, to try to get major news media outlets to deliver relevant news stories that serve to strengthen democracy.
"I really think we're beyond reforming corporate media," said Phillips, a professor of sociology at Sonoma State University and director of Project Censored. "We're not going to break up these huge conglomerates. We're just going to make them irrelevant."
Every year since 1976, Project Censored has spotlighted the 25 most significant news stories that were largely ignored or misrepresented by the mainstream press. Now the group is expanding its mission — to promote alternative news sources. But it continues to report the biggest national and international stories that the major media ignored.
The term "censored" doesn't mean some government agent stood over newsrooms with a rubber stamp and forbid the publication of the news, or even that the information was completely out of the public eye.
The stories Project Censored highlights may have run in one or two news outlets, but didn't get the type of attention they deserved.The project staff begins by sifting through hundreds of stories nominated by individuals at Sonoma State, where the project is based, as well as 30 affiliated universities all over the country.
Articles are verified, fact-checked, and selected by a team of students, faculty, and evaluators from the wider community, then sent to a panel of national judges to be ranked. The end product is a book, co-edited this year by Phillips and associate director Mickey Huff, that summarizes the top stories, provides in-depth media analysis, and includes resources for readers who are hungry for more substantive reporting.
Project Censored doesn't just expose gaping holes in the news brought to you by the likes of Fox, CNN, or USA Today — it also shines a light on less prominent but more incisive alternative-media sources serving up in-depth investigations and watchdog reports.
Phillips is stepping down this year as director of Project Censored and turning his attention to a new endeavor called Media Freedom International. The organization will tap academic affiliates from around the world to verify the content put out by independent news outlets as a way to facilitate trust in these lesser-known sources. "The biggest question I got asked for 13 years was, who do you trust?" he explained. "So we've really made an effort in the last three years to try to address that question, in a very open way, in a very honest way, and say, these are [the sources] who we can trust."
Benjamin Frymer, a sociology professor at Sonoma State who is stepping into the role of Project Censored director, says he believes the time is ripe for this kind of push. "The actual amount of time people spend reading online is increasing," Frymer pointed out. "It's not as if people are just cynically rejecting media — they're reaching out for alternative sources. Project Censored wants to get involved in making those sources visible."
The Project Censored book this year uses the term "truth emergency."
"We call it an emergency because it's a democratic emergency," Huff asserted. In this media climate, "we're awash in a sea of information," he said. "But we have a paucity of understanding about what the truth is."
The top 25 Project Censored stories of 2008-09 highlight the same theme that Phillips and Huff say has triggered the downslide of mainstream media: the overwhelming influence of powerful, profit-driven interests. The No. 1 story details the financial sector's hefty campaign contributions to key members of Congress leading up to the financial crisis, which coincided with a weakening of federal banking regulations. Another story points out that in even in the financial tumult following the economic downturn, special interests spent more money on Washington lobbyists than ever before.
Here's this year's list.
1. CONGRESS SELLS OUT TO WALL STREET
2. DE FACTO SEGREGATION DEEPENING IN PUBLIC EDUCATION
3. SOMALI PIRATES: THE UNTOLD STORY
4. NORTH CAROLINA'S NUCLEAR NIGHTMARE
5. U.S. FAILS TO PROTECT CONSUMERS AGAINST TOXICS
6. AS ECONOMY SHRINKS, D.C. LOBBYING GROWS
7. OBAMA'S CONTROVERSIAL DEFENSE APPOINTEES
8. BIG BUSINESS CHEATS THE IRS
9. U.S. CONNECTED TO WHITE PHOSPHOROUS STRIKES IN GAZA
10. ECUADOR SAYS IT WON'T PAY ILLEGITIMATE DEBT
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Censored! The top 10 stories not brought to you by mainstream news media in 2008 and 2009
Some of the news you may have missed - because the mainstream media (MSM) did not cover it. This list comes out each year and it is always more than a little depressing to discover the ways in which the MSM consistently finds way to protects its corporate owners - and the various ways in which the government screws the citizens.
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