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 DIRECTOR
Mickey Huff
Mickey Huff is the director of Project Censored and is on the board of directors for the Media Freedom Foundation. He is currently professor of social science and history at Diablo Valley College (DVC) in the San Francisco Bay area, where he is co-chair of the history department. Huff is co-host with former Project Censored director Dr. Peter Phillips of the Project Censored Show. The program airs weekly as part of The Morning Mix on Pacifica’s KPFA Free Speech Radio in Berkeley, CA, and rebroadcasts on several stations including NoLiesRadio.org and the Progressive Radio Network out of New York City. He is also on the steering committee of Banned Books Week working with members of the American Library Association, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, and the National Coalition Against Censorship, among others, as Project Censored is a co-sponsor of the events this year.
Huff has been interviewed by affiliates of NPR, PBS, ABC, Pacifica, The New York Times Co., Russia Today (RT TV), Progressive Radio Network, Republic Broadcasting, and many other commercial and independent news media outlets. He has been a lecturer at numerous colleges in the San Francisco Bay Area, including in sociology at Sonoma State University. Huff speaks regularly at venues in the San Francisco Bay Area and across the US on issues of censorship, propaganda, media literacy, and historiography.
Huff’s work has appeared in numerous academic journals and books (published by Praeger, Palgrave Macmillan, Emerald) and has been published by many online news and commentary sites from the far left to the libertarian right including Global Research, Truthout, Buzzflash, Dissident Voice, Lew Rockwell, The Daily Bell, Information Clearinghouse, and The Daily Censored, among others. He testified as an expert at the Kent State Truth Tribunal in New York City in 2010 and has been an outspoken advocate for addressing historical inaccuracies in the Kent State shootings of 1970 as well as many other events in the recent past. He has been a co-editor, editor, and/or contributor to the award-winning Censored annual book series from 2008 to the present, all published by Seven Stories Press in New York City.
Before becoming the current director of Project Censored, Huff was the associate director of Project Censored, where the Project was honored with a PEN literary award during this period. He was also previously co-director of the alternative public opinion polling group Retropoll. Huff teaches courses in the social sciences and US history with an emphasis on the recent past. His special areas of focus include “Money, Power, and Politics” and “Critical Reasoning in History.” His critical thinking courses have addressed “History in the Making: Contemporary Historiography, Mass Media, and the Rough Draft of History.” The subtopic for the course is “America, 9/11, and the War on Terror: Case Studies in Media Myth-Making and the Propaganda of Historical Construction.”
Huff is a member of numerous academic, professional, and community based organizations. He is also a musician and composer of over twenty-five years. He lives with his family in northern California.
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
E-book Censored 2012 (Amazon)