The mission of Project Censored is to teach students and the public about the role of a free press in a free society – and to tell the News That Didn’t Make the News and Why
WHAT IS MODERN CENSORSHIP?
At Project Censored, we examine the coverage of news and information important to the maintenance of a healthy and functioning democracy. We define Modern Censorship as the subtle yet constant and sophisticated manipulation of reality in our mass media outlets. On a daily basis, censorship refers to the intentional non-inclusion of a news story – or piece of a news story – based on anything other than a desire to tell the truth. Such manipulation can take the form of political pressure (from government officials and powerful individuals), economic pressure (from advertisers and funders), and legal pressure (the threat of lawsuits from deep-pocket individuals, corporations, and institutions).
WHAT IS MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY?
In our view, the only valid justification for declining a news story is that in a medium limited by time and space, another news story was simply more important to the people of the community, whether local, national or international. While admittedly a subjective process, it is nonetheless, a process to be undertaken by the news people themselves (the investigative journalists and editors), NOT by the managers and CEOs of their “parent company.” No professional journalist or researcher should ever have to face the destruction of his or her career (or life) simply because they wanted to tell the truth. While no two people will always agree on what story is more important than another, a system where the working reporters and editors run the newsroom would at least provide a fertile environment for debate, dissent and critical thinking.
The growth of independent media and journalism in recent years shows that people throughout the world yearn to hold not only their leaders accountable, but their media sources as well. For that reason, the Project Censored research program continues, in its small way, to support and highlight those who tell the truth about the powerful (no matter the consequences) and are relentless in their quest to hold Big Media accountable for their decisions.
PROJECT CENSORED OVERVIEW
Carl Jensen
Project Censored was founded by Carl Jensen in 1976, and is a media research program working in cooperation with numerous independent media groups in the US. Project Censored’s principle 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. Project Censored has trained over 1,500 students in investigative research in the past three decades.
Through a partnership of faculty, students, and the community, Project Censored conducts research on important national news stories that are underreported, ignored, misrepresented, or censored by the US corporate media. Each year, Project Censored publishes a ranking of the top 25 most censored nationally important news stories in the yearbook, Censored: Media Democracy in Action, which is released in September. Recent Censored books have been published in Spanish, Italian and Arabic.
Peter Phillips
The Project works in cooperation with SSU academic classes Sociology of Media and Sociology of Censorship, where students earn credit for their research and participate in writing the annual yearbook. Additionally, Project Censored sponsors and supervises over 60 student interns a year who do in depth investigative research, sponsor campus events and speakers, and organize a series of Modern Censorship Lectures each fall semester. Students also participate in writing the Project Censored quarterly newsletter (circulation 9,000) and assist with maintaining the Project Censored website www.projectcensored.org, which receives over a million views a month from all over the world.
Between 700 and 1000 stories are submitted to Project Censored each year from journalists, scholars, librarians, and concerned citizens around the world. With the help of more than 200 Sonoma State University faculty, students, and community members, Project Censored reviews the story submissions for coverage, content, reliability of sources and national significance. The university community selects 25 stories to submit to the Project Censored panel of judges who then rank them in order of importance. Current or previous national judges include: Noam Chomsky, Susan Faludi, George Gerbner, Sut Jhally, Frances Moore Lappe, Michael Parenti, Herbert I. Schiller, Barbara Seaman, Erna Smith, Mike Wallace and Howard Zinn. All 25 stories are featured in the yearbook, Censored: The News That Didn’t Make the News.
Project Censored is administered through the SSU Sociology Department with financial support from the SSU Instructionally Related Activity Fund, School of Social Science, Media Freedom Foundation Inc. and donations from thousands of supporters around the country.
PROJECT CENSORED’S NEW DIRECTOR
Mickey Huff
Mickey Huff is Associate Professor of History at Diablo Valley College; Director of the Project Censored and the Media Freedom Foundation, online at http://projectcensored.org and http://mediafreedominternational.org., where Project Censored was the recipient of the 2008 PEN Oakland National Literary Censorship Award. Mickey was recently a former Adjunct Lecturer in Sociology at Sonoma State University and the previous Co-Director of the alternative public opinion research agency Retropoll, http://retropoll.org, in Berkeley, CA.
Mickey has been interviewed by many radio stations and news sources throughout the country, including NPR, Air America, Pacifica, Republic Broadcasting, Progressive Radio Network, The Santa Rosa Press Democrat, New Standard News, and others, and has been published on numerous media and news websites from Global Research, Buzzflash, and Counterpunch to Z Mag, Truthout and even a few corporate media outlets(which he routinely critiques). He teaches courses in U.S. Media History, Sociology of Media and Censorship, Propaganda and Media Studies, Critical Thinking concerning 9/11 and American Empire, and Popular Culture. Mickey designed and taught classes on “History of U.S. Media” atBerkeley City College, Critical Reasoning in History, “America, 9/11, and the War on Terror: Media Myth Making and the Propaganda of Historical Construction,” and “American Popular Culture and Mass Media in Historical Perspectives” at DVC and other colleges in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Mickey has co-organized and presented at numerous national academic conferences on media and recent historical events, including in Santa Cruz, Minneapolis, and Sonoma on Truth Emergency and Media Reform issues in 2008 (see http://truthemergency.us). He has also given many public addresses at colleges, community halls, and bookstores across the US on media censorship and American history. He was the host of the Modern Media Censorship Lecture Series at Sonoma State University fall of 2008. In spring 2009 he was the Visiting Scholar for the Academic Library at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln where he sat on a panel and gave a keynote address on media censorship and democracy.
Mickey has been published in “Censored 2009” from Seven Stories Press, co-authoring “Media Reform Meets Truth Emergency” and “Deconstructing Deceit: 9/11, the Media, and Myth Information.” Mickey co-edited and co-authored in the “Censored 2010” volume with Dr. Peter Phillips which was published in fall 2009 and is working on several articles on the truth emergency, post-9/11 propaganda studies, and collective memory. He is co-author with Peter Phillips on a number of academic articles to be published throughout 2010. When he has time, he blogs at http://mythinfo.blogspot.com and http://dailycensored.com. Mickey is also a musician and composer of over 20 years and lives with his family just outside Berkeley, CA.
PROJECT CENSORED’S SPANISH EFFORTS
Ernesto Carmona Ulloa is our primary translator in South America for the Annual Censored Releases, and south American Host for Project Censored Visits. You can find his translations at ArgenPress at http://www.argenpress.info/search/label/Proyecto%20Censurado
Querido Sandro:
Sobre el concurso en Venezuela para libros publicados en 2008:
Plazo fatal: 31 de marzo 2009
Enviar 7 libros a:
Premio Libertador al Pensamiento Crítico 2008
Ministerio del Poder Popular para la Cultura de Venezuela,
Foro Libertador, Edificio Archivo General de La Nación, PB,
(al final de la Avenida Panteón)
Caracas, Venezuela
Imprimir y adjuntar carta (cuyo archivo se adjunta) que indica claramente el objetivo de participar en el “Premio Libertador al Pensamiento Crítico” (representando también a Peter Phillips). Es decir, con la carta que te adjunto, porque piden datos personales del autor y resumen curricular. (El premio son 150.000 dólares)
Mayor información en
http://www.ministeriodelacultura.gob.ve/images/stories/premios/Espanol.jpg
http://www.ministeriodelacultura.gob.ve/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7156&Itemid=192
Si llegáramos a ganar, mi idea es que este premio sea conpartido con el Proyecto Censurado-Peter, para seguir haciendo más libros con Timéli. Después venderemos la vaca, o la gallina…
Adjunto la carta que debe acompañar los 7 libros, debidamente empacados, con una etiqueta que diga:
Premio Libertador al Pensamiento Crítico 2008
Ministerio del Poder Popular para la Cultura de Venezuela,
Foro Libertador, Edificio Archivo General de La Nación, Planta Baja,
(al final de la Avenida Panteón)
Caracas, Venezuela
Te saluda afectuosamente,
Ernesto Carmona Ulloa
Periodista y escritor chileno
Consejero Nacional del Colegio de Periodistas de Chile
Secretario Ejecutivo de la Comisión Investigadora de Atentados a Periodistas (CIAP) de la Federación Latinoamericana de Periodistas (FELAP)
Teléfonos 562-204 0780 – 569-9599 8151
Santiago, Chile
PROJECT CENSORED
