Project Censored 2009: the stories your corporate news whores are ignoring
If you have a pulse and an IQ of at least 70, you probably realize that our mainstream press sucks. The silly bitches at the networks (and way too many newspapers, as well) fall all over themselves address the pig/lipstick story. They treat the price of John Edwards’ latest haircut like they would news that Lower Fucktardistan just nuked Annandale (although they don’t seem nearly as concerned over John McCain’s $5K celebrity makeover). And their fair and balanced coverage can’t seem to distinguish between the truth and a bald-faced lie.
In short, we know – at an abstract level – that they aren’t telling us the important stories. But … what are those stories that they aren’t telling us? When they send a “reporter” to cover the latest Sarah Palin photo-op, what story have they decided not to cover?
Thanks to Project Censored, whose “objective is training of SSU students in media research and First Amendment issues and the advocacy for, and protection of, free press rights in the United States,” we actually have a concrete, detailed sense of what stories the MSM doesn’t deem fit to print. Each year they release their Top 25 Censored Stories – the most important should-be news events that most people simply aren’t hearing about – and the list never fails to appall. How, we have to ask, can a semi-responsible press organization waste even a second of time on the trivia that passes for news these days (let’s see what FOX has up at the moment … ah, here’s one: “Lesbian Pics Prompt School to Change Yearbook Policy”) when all these other stories – massively important stories that have meaningful implications for the lives of Americans – are ignored?
Here’s this year’s list, and you can click for the stories at the Project Censored page:
# 1. Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by US Occupation
# 2 Security and Prosperity Partnership: Militarized NAFTA
# 3 InfraGard: The FBI Deputizes Business
# 4 ILEA: Is the US Restarting Dirty Wars in Latin America?
# 5 Seizing War Protesters’ Assets
# 6 The Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act
# 7 Guest Workers Inc.: Fraud and Human Trafficking
# 8 Executive Orders Can Be Changed Secretly
# 9 Iraq and Afghanistan Vets Testify
# 10 APA Complicit in CIA Torture
# 11 El Salvador’s Water Privatization and the Global War on Terror
# 12 Bush Profiteers Collect Billions From No Child Left Behind
# 13 Tracking Billions of Dollars Lost in Iraq
# 14 Mainstreaming Nuclear Waste
# 15 Worldwide Slavery
# 16 Annual Survey on Trade Union Rights
# 17 UN’s Empty Declaration of Indigenous Rights
# 18 Cruelty and Death in Juvenile Detention Centers
# 19 Indigenous Herders and Small Farmers Fight Livestock Extinction
# 20 Marijuana Arrests Set New Record
# 21 NATO Considers “First Strike” Nuclear Option
# 22 CARE Rejects US Food Aid
# 23 FDA Complicit in Pushing Pharmaceutical Drugs
# 24 Japan Questions 9/11 and the Global War on Terror
# 25 Bush’s Real Problem with Eliot Spitzer
Not that any of this stacks up against Jenna Bush’s wedding, of course, but you get my point.
As it says right up there in our masthead, “think – it ain’t illegal yet.” Your ability to think is, in part, a function of what you give your brain to think about (garbage in, garbage out, after all). Thanks to Project Censored, we don’t have to settle for the prefabricated faux-news entertainment product – let’s call it Newz-Whiz® – that the corporate media insist on slopping up.
Remember, ignorance isn’t a crime unless it’s self-inflicted.
lullaby pit 
hey sam! know of any good and verifilable links to support the eliot spitzer story?
Did you hit the link at the PC site?
A link to each of those stories would be nice. Unless you don’t want to practice what you preach. I know most of the stories but was actually shocked not to recognize a couple.
Try clicking on the clearly marked link to the PC story – there are links to every item there.
You completely ignored the stories about how McCain has betrayed all the POWs that he left behind by abusing their families and blocking all attempts to get any information about their loved ones.
This self-proclaimed “Radical” J. McCain, tries to say he thinks “outside the box” especially in his Palin choice…I think because she’s attractive he was maybe guilty of only thinking inside the box..hers.
What Ra said; check out Sydney Schanberg’s reporting on how McCain and Kerry sold out the POWs left behind in SE Asia.
Also, the top 20 censored stories comes out as a softcover trade paperback each year, so you can settle in with a nice glass of wine and seethe at your leisure.
“know of any good and verifilable links to support the eliot spitzer story?”
Here it is…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021302783.html?nav=hcmodule
John McCain only wants to talk about how he was a POW…certainly not how he sold his brothers in arms out to get more lenient treatment…certainly not how the Navy had to discontinue the package route the he used after seeing a 60% jump in aircraft fatalities after McCain’s capture…certainly not how there are still families who’d like to know what happened to their loved one that never returned.
And while the POW/MIA groups have some “let’s send Rambo to rescue those still there” fringes, the majority of the families want to know how things stood in ’73 when the big group of POW’s was released. They can’t piece that information together because John McCain has fought tooth and nail to make sure that none of the debriefing records will ever be released.
Were McCain to be held to the Military Code of Conduct of his time, he’d be summarily executed as an enemy collaborator and a traitor. Instead, he might well be president. In which case, let’s hope that the “high ranking naval officer” Gen Kalugin (KGB, ret…now a consultant for the DHS and DoS) referred to as being in the employ of the KGB is not John McCain. Note: Kalugin made that reference under oath in the Senate…not on Prison Planet dot com.
What about the mass irradiation of our food supply behind our backs? Now we can eat fresh dead spinach and lettuce!
The number one story that NO ONE is discussing is the presence of Planet X. It is between the sun and the earth right now! I have seen it many times. Planet X is the reason for all of the following, but not ONE WORD in the mainstream news or the alternate news because it is the number one FORBIDDEN TOPIC. You won’t even post this, but this will be good for your education and then you will know why everything has been going down the way it has!
1. The bailout: They never thought this day would come. The power “elite” were tricked into thinking the pole shift would occur in May 2003, and they have been scrambling every since to cover up all their activities that they would never see the light of day.
2. Invasion of Iraq: See above. Bush and pals planned to sit on the oil in Iraq and invade Iran and other countries and steel their oil too. Ever wonder why there appeared to be no plan at all for the occupation? They did not need one as the pole shift was supposed to happen in May 2003. The U.S. military has not been under Bush’s command since at least August 2003 as a result of the huge mistake of being tricked about the date of the pole shift.
3. Increased extreme weather: Planet X is cainsg the earth to wobble.
4. Increased quakes: The USGS is covering up the true extent of the increase in quakes and their severity.
5. “Global warming”: The earth is heating up from the inside out. It is not caused by human activity at all.
6. “Election” of Bush: Bush stole two elections so that he would be in office during the pole shift, except the pole shift will happen after he leaves office.
7. “War on terror”: All about taking away our civil liberties and lining the pockets of the power “elite” and nothing else. Bush has tried many times to call martial law so he could stay in office indefinitely, but he is being stopped (thank God).
8. Increased volcanic activity: Planet X is causing the core to roil.
Better get ready as the government has NO plans to help the common man; none at all. Bush and pals have stolen trillions of dollars to build bunkers for themselves. Anyone who has been promised a place in the bunkers had best change their mind. The power “elite” is now building above-ground shelters for themselves as the “volunteers” who were forced to live in the bunkers died from core emmanations. The bunkers will also collapse and become tombs.
Ruben – as someone who knows a decent amount about radiation and electromagnetic theory, I actually sleep much better knowing that companies are irradiating my food to kill microorganisms that would otherwise be a threat to my family’s health.
hey sam – at the link (which i posted over at my lj) the only realy back up was the article that spitzer wrote (1. “Governor Spitzer Proposes Legislation to Address Sub-prime Mortgage Crisis,” New York State website, March 4, 2008.). i found this to be an interesting article, and i was hoping maybe you had heard something about it over the year and might have some additional backup for it. no worries. i have been doing a little research on my own.
yup, things are about as bad as you could imagine.
http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/24-japan-questions-9-11-and-the-global-war-on-terror/
How about Johnny mcPOW, his son was the head of a bank…Silver State Bank of Nevada
that was taken over by the feds. mcPOWs son was the chief auditor (in charge of making sure the assets were real and worth what they said they were worth)
He slunk away from Silver State only DAYS before it went under and had to be bailed out by FDIC (I believe).
So, our next Prez aspirant, Johnny (Keating 5) mcPOW! has not only his own history with bank fraud, his son was perpetrating the same crap less than a month ago.
Not only has Keating 5 got ZERO airplay this election, a current scandal where the facts are very available – concerning the Younger mcPOW! – is going absolutely untouched.
Kinda like our war Prez being a deserter. Oh, and if you are Dan Rather and you happen to bring up THAT story….you get fired and buried somewhere in the desert.
This ain’t The Press, It ain’t Journalism, it ain’t even News-Whiz
It is carefully controlled information delivery. NEVER show them what they need to see, only show them stuff that keeps them dumb and in the dark. If something true HAPPENS to get on the news, do everything to bury it, ignore it, blame it on Dems.
This isn’t about money or ratings folks. This is the machinery they use to dominate us. This is about maintaining that control. We need media reform (take back OUR AIRWAVES) more than any single thing right now. They are hiding all the real news from us (climate crisis anyone?) and it is only going to get more brutal as the stakes get higher. The more we see how they are keeping us in the dark, the stronger their tactics have to get. Pretty soon it will be outright WAR on the learned.
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Project Censored’s #1 story on Iraqi deaths excludes a lot of “inconvenient” (but important) research. In fact, the following asks if Project Censored are resorting to censorship themselves on this issue:
http://www.mediahell.org/project_censored.htm
Hey all, when I first heard through MSM about Spitzer and the pro’s I initially thought the hoopla was to distract us from a big military leader stepping down from Centcom – but when I found Spitzer’s editorial, I had the feeling something else may have been going on. I don’t have my research in front of me (I just came across this site surfing), but I also found it interesting that the targets of a lot of Spitzer’s legal work happened to be Bush Rangers and high financiers. Also, strangely convenient is the fact that tons of Spitzer’s documents were in WTC #7. As I recall, a lot of this stuff can just be found through Google, but if you have access to Lexis-Nexis, even better.
BTW, I just found some of the original documents, I didn’t actually write up Story #25 in PC2009.