Project Censored

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Project Censored
Motto: The News That Didn't Make the News.
Type: Non-Profit
Location: Rohnert Park, California, USA
Key people: Peter Phillips
Director
Fields: Journalism and Media
Website: www.projectcensored.org

Project Censored is a non-profit, sociological project of an investigative nature within the Sonoma State University Foundation. It is managed through the School of Social Sciences at the university.

According to the Project Censored official website, the organization describes itself as a media research group that "tracks the news published in independent journals and newsletters. From these, Project Censored compiles an annual list of 25 news stories of social significance that have been overlooked, under-reported or self-censored by the country's major national news media."[1]

Contents

[edit] Project function

Project Censored identifies and researches news stories which it believes have been underreported, mis-reported, or censored in the mainstream media. With this research, the group aims to advocate the protection of the First Amendment rights granted by the United States Constitution and freedom of information within the United States of America. The project is built around the "Sociology 435: Media Censorship" course based at the university. This course requires long hours of researching library databases. Each student is invited to develop skills of finding and researching such news stories and make full use of them for the purpose of conducting coverage reports on more than 200 under-published stories yearly. One of the goals of the project is to encourage the development of a national interconnected community-based media news service that will offer a "diversity" of news and information to local mainstream audiences through various media. Support and encouragement is provided to journalists, faculty, and student investigation of the principle objectives as stated above.

According to the group, a story covered by Project Censored should:

  1. contain information that the general population has a right and a need to know, but to which it has limited access.
  2. be timely, ongoing, and have implications for a significant number of residents of the United States of America.
  3. have clearly defined concepts and be backed with solid verifiable documentation.
  4. have been published electronically or in print, in a circulated newspaper, journal, magazine, newsletter, or similar publication by a foreign or domestic source.
  5. have direct connections and implications for people within the United States of America, possibly including activities US citizens are engaged in abroad.

To date, the participants number nearly 200 and include the program staff of the School of Social Sciences at Sonoma State University, its students, its faculty, research interns, community experts, funders, and volunteer judges. Major sources of funding are provided by hundreds of individual donors, Working Assets, Anita Roddick, and The Body Shop International, as well as the Office of the President, the Office of the Provost, and the School of Social Science at Sonoma State University.

Project Censored was founded in 1976 by Dr. Carl Jensen. He retired in 1996, and since then the project has been directed by Dr. Peter Phillips.

[edit] Published works

Since 1993 Project Censored has published an annual trade paperback review of the “Top 25 Censored Stories of the Year.” Features of the book include Junk Food News, comic strips by Tom Tomorrow, updates on previous top stories, essays, and interviews. The publisher is Seven Stories Press in New York. Other projects include For the Record, a weekly radio program featuring underpublished stories, hosted by Pat Thurston.

[edit] Prominent praises

“ Project Censored is one of the organizations that we should listen to, to be assured that our newspapers and our broadcasting outlets are practicing throrough and ethical journalism. ”
 

[edit] Criticism

According to the editor of the Pasadena Weekly, Projct Censored suffers from a "perceived extreme left-leaning bent that editors . . . have assumed over the years in selecting, writing, and publishing its stories. . . . more than anything it has been the Project's perceived long leftward lean that has done the most damage to its overall credibility."[3] Although the group never explicitly takes a political stance, a majority of the stories Project Censored highlights have a leftist political slant, criticizing big business, economic inequality, damage to the environment, and the Pentagon, and misdeeds of conservative politicians, among other progressive issues; at least 20 of the "Top 25 Censored Stories of 2007" could be classified in one of these categories.[4] Project Censored has had several well-known progressive journalists and academics on its panel of national judges, including Robert Jensen, Martin A. Lee, Michael Parenti, and Norman Solomon without any corresponding number of conservatives.

In response, Project Censored and its supporters have stated that conservatives have been invited to serve as judges each year, but have largely refused; that such right-wing topics as criticism of "big government" have been well publicized by Republicans in Congress and covered by the corporate-owned media, and so do not qualify as under-reported; and that Project Censored has in fact featured stories from The Spotlight, a right-wing newspaper.[5] Project Censored's work seeks to correct the bias of the mainstream media, and from their perspective, "any bias in the upper echelons of journalism looks to be skewed toward established political, economic and social power bases."[6]

The founder of the progressive news analysis and commentary website AlterNet criticized Project Censored as "stuck in the past" with a "dubious selection process" that "reinforces self-marginalizing, defeatist behavior."[7] It is also been criticized for reporting on stories which are arguably not "under-reported" or "censored" at all,[8] as they have appeared in The New York Times and other high-profile publications. In addition, the group periodically is criticized for shoddy reporting or misrepresentation of facts, the same fallacies the group itself claims to battle. For example, Project Censored has been criticized for consistently downplaying Serbian atrocities in Bosnia and Kosovo,[9] for exaggerating the dangers of the Cassini-Huygens space probe to Saturn,[10] and for giving support to 9/11 conspiracy theories.[11] Some of these claims come from other progressive publications, such as AlterNet, Mother Jones and New Politics in the examples above, that are concerned that the Project's alleged mis-reporting will give the progressive movement and its alternative media less credibility. Two progressives, professor Robert Jensen and journalist Norman Solomon, resigned from Project Censored's panel of national judges over the decision to highlight the 9/11 conspiracy theories of Steven E. Jones, a founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, in Censored 2007.[12]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Project Censored Media Democracy in Action: About Us. Project Censored. Retrieved on 2006-12-22.
  2. ^ "Censored 2004: The Top 25 Censored Stories", Powell's Books. Retrieved on 2006-12-23. 
  3. ^ Kevin Uhrich (2006-06-01). Time Up for Project Censored?. AlterNet/Pasadena Weekly. Retrieved on 2007-01-31.
  4. ^ Peter Phillips and Project Censored (2006). Top 25 Censored Stories of 2007. Project Censored/Seven Stories Press. Retrieved on 2007-04-02.
  5. ^ Mark Lowenthal (1996-05-27). Unclear on the Concept (Part II). Albion Monitor. Retrieved on 2006-12-23.
  6. ^ Stephanie Salter. "Bias depends upon where you sit", San Francisco Chronicle, 2005-05-05. Retrieved on 2006-12-23. 
  7. ^ Don Hazen (2000-04-01). Beyond Project Censored: It's time for a new award. AlterNet. Retrieved on 2007-02-04.
  8. ^ Brooke Shelby Biggs (2000-04-11). The Unbearable Lameness of Project Censored. Mother Jones. Retrieved on 2007-01-31.
  9. ^ David Walls (2002). How Project Censored Joined The Whitewash of Serb Atrocities. New Politics. Retrieved on 2006-12-23.
  10. ^ Lynn Cominsky, Phil Plait, and David Walls (2004-10-03). With Cassini's Orbit, Science Trumps Ignorance. Albion Monitor. Retrieved on 2007-01-31.
  11. ^ Paul Payne (2006-11-04). There's that other theory on 9/11: SSU hosts discredited academic who says U.S. could have planned attack. The Press Democrat. Retrieved on 2007-01-28.
  12. ^ C.D. Stelzer (June 28, 2007). "Over the Line: Two Judges Quit Project Censored to Protest 9/11 Story". Illinois Times. Retrieved on 2007-09-13.

[edit] External links

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