Project Censored

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Project Censored
Type Non-Profit
Headquarters
Key people Mickey Huff
Director
Method(s) Journalism and Media
Motto The News That Didn't Make the News.
Website www.projectcensored.org
Project Censored is a media research, education, and advocacy initiative housed at Sonoma State University since 1976. Among its journalistic activities is the publication of news stories omitted or censored by other media sources.[1]

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.

Perception

Walter Cronkite, the late, iconic veteran broadcast journalist, stated that "Project Censored is one of the organizations that we should listen to, to be assured that our newspapers and our broadcasting outlets are practicing thorough and ethical journalism."[2]

Stephanie Salter in the San Francisco Chronicle defended Project Censored, saying that from their perspective, "any bias in the upper echelons of journalism looks to be skewed toward established political, economic and social power bases."[3]

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."[4] It has also been criticized for reporting on stories which are arguably not "under-reported" or "censored" at all,[5] as they have sometimes appeared in The New York Times and other high-profile publications.

Some of these claims come from other progressive publications, such as AlterNet,[citation needed] Mother Jones,[citation needed] and New Politics[citation needed] that are concerned that the Project's alleged mis-reporting will give the progressive movement and its alternative media less credibility. For example, Project Censored has been criticized for consistently downplaying Serbian atrocities in Bosnia and Kosovo,[6] for exaggerating the dangers of the Cassini-Huygens space probe to Saturn,[7] and for giving support to 9/11 conspiracy theories.[8]

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.[9]

In a debate with Project Censored's Associate Director Mark Lowenthal, Jack Shafer wrote that Project Censored had "an overbearing left-wing bias -- a fact belied by its refusal to review stories from the right-wing or conservative press, the openly partisan nature of the stories that are selected and the leftist panel of judges who help select them."[10]

Controversy

The project has come under scrutiny since it was announced that it was briefly at risk of being censored to prevent all mention of 9/11 Truth research by the Institute for Policy Studies.[11][12][13][14][15] This was covered by KPFA Guns and Butter as well as[citation needed] Project Censored itself.[16]

List of winners of Project Censored awards

See also

  • Secrecy News

References

  1. ↑ "Project Censored Media Democracy in Action: About Us". Project Censored. Archived from the original on 2006-12-19. Retrieved 2006-12-22. 
  2. ↑ "Censored 2004: The Top 25 Censored Stories". Powell's Books. 
  3. ↑ Stephanie Salter (2005-05-05). "Bias depends upon where you sit". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2006-12-23. 
  4. ↑ Don Hazen (2000-04-01). "Beyond Project Censored: It's time for a new award". AlterNet. Retrieved 2007-02-04. 
  5. ↑ Brooke Shelby Biggs (2000-04-11). "The Unbearable Lameness of Project Censored". Mother Jones. Retrieved 2007-01-31. 
  6. ↑ David Walls (2002). "How Project Censored Joined The Whitewash of Serb Atrocities". New Politics. Archived from the original on 2006-10-16. Retrieved 2006-12-23. 
  7. ↑ Lynn Cominsky, Phil Plait, and David Walls (2004-10-03). "With Cassini's Orbit, Science Trumps Ignorance". Albion Monitor. Retrieved 2007-01-31. 
  8. ↑ 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 2007-01-28. 
  9. ↑ C.D. Stelzer (June 28, 2007). "Over the Line: Two Judges Quit Project Censored to Protest 9/11 Story". Illinois Times. Retrieved 2007-09-13. 
  10. ↑ Mark Lowenthal (1996-05-27). "Unclear on the Concept (Part II)". Albion Monitor. Retrieved 2006-12-23. 
  11. ↑ Blumenthal, Sidney (July 30, 1986). "Left-wing thinkers". Transnational Institute. Transnational Institute. Retrieved 2010-11-04. 
  12. ↑ "Review: Discussion on The Current about minimum wages and executive compensation, January 29, 2007". CBC Radio Canada. June 14, 2007. Retrieved 2010-11-04. 
  13. ↑ Vermaat, Emerson (January 12, 2009). "Obama's Preferred Future Spy Chief Leon Panetta Supported Communist-Linked Anti-CIA Think Tank". Family Security Matters. Retrieved 2010-11-04. 
  14. ↑ Soley, Lawrence (September/October 1998). "Heritage Clones in the Heartland". Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. FAIR. Retrieved 2010-11-04. 
  15. ↑ Ponte, Lowell (July Thursday, October 14, 2004). "The ABC's of Media Bias". FrontPageMagazine. FrontPageMagazine. Retrieved 2010-11-04. 
  16. ↑ Janice Stalker. "Guns and Butter interview "Censored 2011" with Dr. Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff.". KPFA Radio. Retrieved 2010-09-15. 

External links

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