Husayn

PROJECT CENSORED 1995

T HE PROJECT CENSORED 1995 YEARBOOK has been published under the title Censored: The News That Didn't Make the News
(1995: 332 pages; ISSN # 1074-5998; $14.95; Four Walls Eight Windows Press).

Project Censored has been compiling a list of Top Ten Censored Stories since 1976, under the direction of California State Sonoma University Journalism Professor Carl Jensen. The Project is funded by the MacArthur Foundation, Body Shop International, the Angelina Fund, the Threshold Foundation, and the CS Fund (a local liberal-Left part of the political spectrum). Dr. Jensen is touted in promotional materials for the yearbook as being the "Ralph Nader of the media."

Project Censored struck out to expose major stories hidden or unpublished in American media. In its 1995 edition, Project Censored just simply struck out. Not one of the stories on its top 25 list had anything to do with what is called "foreign affairs." The datelines on all the stories were U.S.A. The selection reflects a yuppie white orientation which is alarmed at events or developments close at hand or somehow impinging on its privileged lifestyle while being singularly unconcerned with the catastrophes befalling "other" people or regions of the world.

The list is loaded down with "ecology" pieces, many of which relate to events which transpired in the relatively distant past. "Deadly Secrets of OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Agency)" is the "Number One Story." According to this report, 170,000 workers were not warned of possible cancer-causing conditions at their worksites. "Toxic Incinerators Poison Our Food Supply," "Clinton Administration Retreats on Ozone Crisis," "Millions of Tons of Fish Wasted Annually" and "1947 AEC Memo Reveals Why Human Radiation Experiments were Censored" are all crowded into the "Top Ten." The only not purely U.S.A.-oriented story was "The Return of Tuberculosis," with the drug-resistant strains of the disease coming on the scene in North America being the decisive factor in drawing attention to the long-raging international problem. At the bottom of the "Top 25" list is another story which became a story only when interests close to "home" were affected: "Deadly 'Mad Cow Disease' Spreads to North America." Other stories hovered around obscurantist alarmism of a highly specialized character to pseudo-controversial items designed to satisfy interest group particularisms without threatening the centers of power and privilege, from "Epilepsy Drug Fiasco Ignored by Press" to "News Media Masks Spousal Violence in the 'Language of Love.'"

While the prejudices and miasmas of uncritical and unreflective liberal leftism are catered to at every turn of the page, the suffering and horrifically oppressed "silenced majorities," often referred to as "third world" or "people of color," are studiously avoided. Mexico did not make the list in what was arguably the biggest political year in its history since 1910. 1994 was the year in which the Zapatistas launched their revolt in Chiapas, in which the ruling party had its Presidential candidate assassinated (probably in the course of internecine squabbling), in which NAFTA was put into effect and in which the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) rigged yet another election to ensure its continuing rule over the country. Of course, there were many other under-reported and misrepresented stories on the international scene in 1994, from Haiti and Cuba to Indonesia and the Philippines, with continuing phenomena such as structurally imposed mass starvation and disease.

Over one hundred wars are going on at any one time, most having to do with a quest for national self-determination. American media may cover (up) one or two of these, and those on an intermittent basis. "Project Censored" didn't "cover" any.

The American people get the mushroom-growing treatment: they are kept in the dark and covered with fertilizer when it comes to foreign affairs as well as massive coverups of domestic situations such as the systematic looting of the economy by a miniscule minority who hold power and laugh all the way to the bank while the benighted American people are left to chase their tails in confusion-or chase each other in inter-group hatreds which are fostered by the Jokers in charge. Project Censored could, as it has to some extent in years past, be a useful tool in helping to break through information monopoly enjoyed by ruling elites.

According to Project Censored spokesman Mark Lowenthal, the students at Sonoma State who took part in Project Censored were the guilty parties in the skewed selection. By the time that the "distinguished panel of Judges" became involved the Top 25 had already been selected. Lowenthal confirmed that the students were overwhelmingly white, with no black participants although he thought that one person "looked to be Hispanic." Judge Noam Chomsky found his choices to be "uncorrelated with what is brought before the board." Herbert Schiller was similarly dismayed at the "very narrow selection of items (with) the entire world omitted."

They should have subtitled this book "As selected by budding white yuppie liberal careerists." At least three of the "establishment" AP's top stories really belonged there, although they were covered up more than "covered" - Aristide's return as neo-colonial puppet in Haiti, the horrors of Rwanda, and the Palestinian resistance in the Gaza Strip and elsewhere.

The continuing destruction of Iraq and its people as a result of the U.S.-directed embargo against that country is never mentioned, although the "Gulf War Syndrome" in which returning U.S. troops got sick is referenced. Israel, Libya, Iraq, Cuba, Somalia, Kurds, Mexico, Indonesia, Lebanon, Palestine, Islam and Muslims are not even listed in the Index. A brief recap of the Iran-Contra scandal makes no mention of one of the primary instigators, Israel. The students went to great extremes to avoid "foreign" stories, even dredging up the Santa Barbara Oil Spill of 1969 in their neurotic avoidance of the rest of the world. Stories such as "Faulty Nuclear Fuel Rods," "AIDS Test Fallible," "Drug Companies and Pharmacists," "Caesarean Sections Epidemic" and "Over-the-counter Diet Pills" may have been under-reported but certainly were not earth-shattering revelations to many familiar with the subject matter. The lavish attention on ecologial and medical concerns affecting white middle class folks was decidedly out of proportion to the zero notice made of the plight of the silenced billions "down below" in what they now often call the "South."

Lowenthal insists that "It would be inappropriate for Dr. Jensen or I to direct the students, no matter what they might happen to come up with." Not enough of them were "interested in foreign policy" to include even one single non-USA-based or originated story in the entire list, according to Lowenthal. In spite of this, they intend to stick with the same format because "We've been doing it this way for l9 years." Everybody connected with the project whom I contacted blamed the students, yet no change in the procedure for selecting stories is contemplated. Such a Project should be spread out to include students, journalists, and others from as broad a variety of backgrounds as possible. Those affected by povery, war, oppression and injustice around the world need to get their stories on the list and into the tragically foreshortened attention spans of the American people, who are yet made to endure the "mushroom growing" treatment, with allegedly "Progressive" elements joining in the cultivation.

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