Project Censored

Project Censored is a media research, education, and advocacy initiative started at Sonoma State University in 1976, currently housed at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, California. 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. Among its journalistic activities is the publication of news stories omitted or significantly under-reported by other media sources.

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".

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". It has also been criticized for reporting on stories which are arguably not "under-reported" or "censored" at all, 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, for exaggerating the dangers of the Cassini-Huygens space probe to Saturn, and for giving support to 9/11 conspiracy theories.

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.

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."

Lists of winners

Projects listed by year (top ten)

2014

1. Ocean Acidification
2. Top 10 U.S. Aid Recipients Practice Torture
3. Trans-Pacific Partnership: A Secret Deal to Help Corporations
4. Corporate Interest Providers Threaten Net Neutrality
5. Bankers Remain on Wall Street Despite Major Crimes
6. The 'Deep State' of Plutocratic Control
7. FBI Dismisses Plot Against Occupy as NSA Cracks Down on Dissent
8. Ignoring Extreme Weather Connection to Global Warning
9. U.S. Media Hypocrisy in Covering Ukraine Crisis
10. World Health Organization Suppresses Report on Iraq Impacts

2013

1. [Bradley] Manning and the Failure of Corporate Media
2. The Richest Global 1 Percent Hide Billions in Tax Havens
3. Trans-Pacific Partnership
4. Obama's War on Whistle-Blowers
5. Hate Groups and Anti-Government Groups on Rise Across U.S.
6. Billionaires' Rising Wealth Intensified Poverty and Inequality
7. Merchant of Death and Nuclear Weapons
8. Bank Interests Inflate Global Prices by 35 to 40 Percent
9. Icelanders Vote to Include Commons in Their Constitution
10. A "Culture of Cruelty" Along the Mexico-U.S. Border

2001

1. Corporations Threaten to Take Over the Airwaves
2. GATS' For-Profit Model Threatens to Gobble Up the World's Water
3. U.S. Policy Funds Human Rights Abuses in Colombia
4. Bush Administration Ordered FBI Off Bid Laden Trail
5. U.S. Destruction of Iraqi Water Supply
6. Renewed Threat of Nuclear Warfare
7. Public Schools Become Guinea Pigs for HMO Model
8. NAFTA Impoverishes Small Family Farmers
9. Housing Crisis in the U.S.
10. CIA Spooks Destabilize Macedonia

2000

1. World Bank and Multinational Corporations Seek to Privatize Water
2. OSHA Fails to Protect U.S. Workers
3. U.S. Army's Psychological Operations Personnel Worked at CNN
4. Did the U.S. Deliberately Bomb the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade?
5. U.S. Taxpayers Underwrite Global Nuclear Power Plant Sales
6. International Report Blames U.S. and Others for Genocide in Rwanda
7. Independent Study Points to Dangers of Genetically-Altered Foods
8. Drug Companies Influence Doctors and Health Organizations to Push Meds
9. EPA Plans to Disburse Toxic/Radioactive Wastes into Denver's Sewage System
10. Silicon Valley Uses Immigrant Engineers to Keep Salaries Low

1999

1. Secret International Trade Agreement Undermines the Sovereignty of Nations
2. Chemical Corporations Profit Off Breast Cancer
3. Monsanto's Genetically Modified Seeds Threaten World Production
4. Recycled Radioactive Metals May Be in Your Home
5. U.S. Weapons Mass Destruction Linked to the Deaths of a Half-Million Children
6. U.S. Nuclear Subverts U.N.'s Comprehensive Test Ban Treat[y]
7. Gene Transfers Linked to Dangerous New Diseases
8. Catholic Hospital Threaten Mergers Reproductive Rights for Women
9. U.S. Tax Dollars Support Death Squads in Chiapas
10. Environmental Student Activists Gunned Down on Chevron Oil Facility in Nigeria

Notable people and media

• Joel Bleifuss
• Dave Lindorff, 2004
• Rock Creek Free Press, 2008

See also

• Secrecy News
• Junk food news

External links

• [1] Project Censored website
• [2] Project Censored's 2015 list
• [3] Critical article concerning Project Censored's 2000 list
• [4] "Project Censored: The Movie," IMDb

• Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez, "Project Censored 2014: Ocean Acidification Tops the Annual List of Important Stories Ignored by the Mainstream Media," San Francisco Bay Guardian, September 30, 2014
• Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez, "Project Censored 2013," Orlando Weekly, November 26, 2013
• Project Censored 2001: "Ten Tantalizing Tales . . .," September 2, 2002
• Sonoma State University press release
• Project Censored website