Newspaper logo  
 
 
Local News & Opinion

Ref. : Local Newsbriefs

Travel
Films, Arts & Education
Letters

Ref. : Letters to the editor

Open Letters:

06.24 Mr. Holder, You Must Hold Torturers Accountable

Health & Environment

06.29 Thinking about Climate

06.26 False Health-Scare Ad on CNN

06.25 Louella Learns the Limits of Medicare

06.23 The Simple Answer to America’s Health Care Crisis: Medicare for All

06.23 Tell ABC: Include Single-Payer in Healthcare Debate

06.23 Serving the Medical-Industrial Complex

06.22 Thinking about Recoveries

06.20 Obama's Health Care Waterloo

06.15 Obama, Like Clinton Before Him, is Blowing the Chance for Real Health Care Reform

06.11 Two Key Health-Care Numbers

06.10 Big Breakthroughs for Single Payer Health Care

06.10 Readying Americans for Dangerous, Mandatory Vaccinations

Media Watching

06.29 WP's Connolly Back, on Health Reform

06.17 Hypocrisy and Hope: Western Coverage, Iranian Courage

06.15 Excusing Outrages of the Right

06.11 Tying Obama to Bush's Budget Mess

US Politics, Policy & Culture

06.30 Obama's Torture Hypocrisy

06.30 Court Circular: Annals of Imperial Continuity

06.29 Obama, They Want You to Fail

06.26 Who to Trust on a Truth Commission?

06.26 Tarnished Shields: The Morally Bankrupt 'Family Values' Republican Leadership

06.25 America's "Bases of Empire"

06.24 Twelve Angry White People: Jury Nullification in a Pennsylvania Coal Town

06.24 Touring Empire's Ruins

06.23 Employers are Undermining the Economic Stimulus Program

06.19 Criminalizing Dissent: Obama Pot Calls Iranian Kettle Black

06.17 Afghanistan's Operation Phoenix

06.16 Are You Ready for War with a Demonized Iran?

06.13 Where's the Anger as the Wheels Come Off Obama's and the Democrats' Recovery Program?

06.10 Waiving the Rules for Old Glory

06.10 Obama's Era of Openness Is Closed

“High Crimes?”

07.03 Reviewing Marjorie Cohn and Kathleen Gilberd's "Rules of Disengagement"

07.01 Iraq: A Bitter Strategic Failure

06.25 It's All Good, Again: 'Uptick' in the American-Made Tides of Violence in Iraq

06.22 Obama Opposes Plame-gate Release

06.21 Dexter's Legions: The "Good" Killers of the "Good" War

06.18 Extending the Tradition: Proudly Taking American Torture Into the Future

06.15 New UN Report Denounces America's Human Rights Record

06.14 Fear Rules

Economics & Business Non/Mis/Malfeasance

07.01 Michael Hudson's "Super Imperialism:" The Economic Strategy of Imperial America

06.23 Obama's Financial Reform Proposal - A Stealth Scheme for Global Monetary Control

06.10 Cyberscares About Cyberwars Equal Cybermoney

International

07.01 Pirates of the Mediterranean

06.29 Color Revolutions, Old and New

06.25 Iran Divided & the 'October Suprise'

06.23 Astringent Corrective: AbuKhalil on Iran's Turmoil

06.22 Reviewing F. William Engdahl's "Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order:" Part I

06.20 Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated “Color Revolution?”

06.20 Through a Glass Darkly: Sifting Myth and Fact on Iran

06.19 Iran's Election and US - Iranian Elections

06.16 The Ir-Af-Pak War: Obama Looses the Manhunters

06.12 Israeli War Crimes Against Children During Operation Cast Lead

We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
Google
This site Web
  Censored News Stories in US Highlighted by Academic Research Group
Newspaper logo

MEDIA ANALYSIS:

Censored News Stories in US Highlighted by Academic Research Group

by Peter Phillips
Many anti-war activists will be surprised to learn that President Bush has signed two executive orders that would allow the US Treasury Department to seize the property of any person perceived to, directly or indirectly, pose a threat to US operations in the Middle East.
Media Accountability Day, October 1, marks the annual release of the news stories that were not covered by the corporate-mainstream media in the US. The list, just announced by Project Censored at Sonoma State University in California, includes the twenty-five most important uncovered news stories of the year selected by over 200 academics.

Stories about the Iraq occupation lead the list. Unreported in the US corporate media is how over one million Iraqis have met violent deaths resulting from the 2003 US-led invasion. According to a study conducted by the British polling group Opinion Research Business, the human toll exceeded 900,000 as of August 2007. In addition, a United Nations Refugee Agency study found that five million Iraqis had been displaced by violence in their country.

Also ignored by mainstream media was the report of how 300 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans came forward in March of 2008 to recount the brutal impact of the ongoing occupations. The Winter Soldier hearings in Silver Spring, Maryland, organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War, presented multiple testimonies by veterans who witnessed or participated in atrocities against Iraqis or Afghans.

Independent media reported that the United States Federal Reserve shipped $12 billion in US currency to Iraq at the beginning of the war, of which at least $9 billion went missing, but this story never saw the light of day in the US mainstream.

Additionally, many anti-war activists will be surprised to learn that President Bush has signed two executive orders that would allow the US Treasury Department to seize the property of any person perceived to, directly or indirectly, pose a threat to US operations in the Middle East.

Also not reported in the US news is how the leaders of Canada, the US, and Mexico have been secretly meeting to expand the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to form a militarized tri-national Homeland Security force, and how more than 23,000 representatives of US private industry are working with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to collect information on fellow Americans.

Coverage of how massive new US-backed military funding threatens peace and democracy in Latin America and that NATO officials are considering a first-strike nuclear option was also missing from the corporate press.

Unreported news also includes the stories that the Justice Department believes it is legal for the president to secretly ignore previous executive orders any time he wants, and the FDA is complicit in allowing drug companies to make false, unsubstantiated, and misleading advertising claims.

Censored news stories also included why the No Child Left Behind program is a huge success for corporate profits, but has had little positive impact on public education. Children in juvenile detention centers in the US face conditions that involve sexual and physical abuse, and even death. And radioactive materials from nuclear weapons production sites are being dumped into public landfills, and being used as recycled metals.

Untold news includes CARE announcing last year that it was turning down $45 million in food aid from the United States government because the procedures the US demands for handling the food actually increases starvation instead of relieving it.

Twenty-seven million slaves exist in the world today.

Rounding out the Project Censored list is the news that the guest worker program in the United States victimizes immigrant workers and creates a new form of indentured servitude and that twenty-seven million slaves exist in the world today.

Censorship is a harsh term, but the shocking fact is that the corporate-mainstream media in the US was so busy entertaining us that these and many other important news stories became lost in a news system run amok.


Peter Phillips is a professor of sociology at Sonoma State University and director of Project Censored. Censored 2009 was released October 1, 2008 by Seven Stories Press. For more information, see: Daily independent news and a full on-line review of the most censored stories.


Copyright © 2008 The Baltimore News Network. All rights reserved.

Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent.

Baltimore News Network, Inc., sponsor of this web site, is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed in stories posted on this web site are the authors' own.

This story was published on October 11, 2008.

 


Public Service Ads:
Verifiable Voting in Maryland