Project Censored

Project Censored
Motto The News That Didn't Make the News.
Type Non-Profit
Location
Fields Journalism and Media
Key people
 Mickey Huff
Director
Website www.projectcensored.org

Project Censored is a media research, education, and advocacy initiative housed at Sonoma State University since 1976. Project Censored was founded by Professor Carl Jensen to expose censorship in propaganda and mass media. Jensen named Professor Peter Phillips his successor, who then enlisted professors Mickey Huff and Andy Lee Roth. They have expanded Project Censorship to approximately two dozen university and college campuses across the United States, which is now the current size.[1] Among its journalistic activities is the publication of news stories omitted or censored by other media sources.[2]

Reception

Walter Cronkite said 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".[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, Mother Jones, and New Politics that are concerned that the Project's 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]

List of winners of Project Censored awards

See also

References

  1. ↑ Huff, Mickey; Roth, Andy Lee (October 7, 2014). Censored 2015: Inspiring We the People. New York/Oakland: Seven Stories Press. p. 11. ISBN 1609805658.
  2. ↑ "Project Censored Media Democracy in Action: About Us". Project Censored. Archived from the original on 2006-12-19. Retrieved 2006-12-22.
  3. ↑ "Censored 2004: The Top 25 Censored Stories". Powell's Books.
  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.

External links