220 Students Participate in Project’s 2022-23 Campus Affiliates Program

As we prepare the April newsletter for distribution, the Project’s international panel of esteemed judges is beginning to review the Validated Independent News stories received and vetted by the Project in 2022-2023. Students participating in the Project’s Campus Affiliates Program identify, vet, and summarize important but under-reported independent news stories as part of their hands-on training in critical media literacy.

This year 220 students from twelve college and university campuses across the US contributed to this collective effort to raise public awareness of important but under-reported social issues. In turn, these stories become candidates for inclusion in the Project’s acclaimed Top 25 “Censored” story list.

Candidate stories for the 2022-23 list include independent reporting on fracking and maternal health, the discovery of “forever” chemicals in rainwater, and the use of bogus copyright claims to throttle investigative journalists, to name just a few. The story list also highlights the best “solutions” journalism, including, for example, reporting on an innovative mental health “first aid” training program to prepare teens to act as first responders in mental health crises.

You can review the full slate of candidates for this year’s Top 25 story list on the Project’s Validated Independent News page. The 2022-2023 story list will be published in Project Censored’s State of the Free Press 2024, due out this December from The Censored Press/Seven Stories Press.

Guilty of Journalism in Berlin and Online

Kevin Gosztola was in Berlin to promote Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange, published in March by The Censored Press and Seven Stories Press. Gosztola spoke on a panel with lawyer Stella Assange (Julian Assange’s wife) and investigative journalist Stefania Maurizi at the Disruption Lab Network’s Smart Prisons conference. Video of the panel, titled “Targeted by Surveillance: Julian Assange, WikiLeaks & Networked Repression,” can be viewed on the Disruption Lab Network’s YouTube channel.

Dissident Voice published How Chelsea Manning’s Court-Martial Laid the Groundwork for Julian Assange’s Prosecution, and Scheerpost published “From Media Outlet to ‘Non-State Hostile Intelligence Service, both adapted from Guilty of Journalism.

Gosztola was also featured in an interview with Peter Handel, published by Truthout, CIA’s War on WikiLeaks Is a Scandal Worthy of Congressional Investigation.

Tune into this week’s Project Censored Show as we celebrate Daniel Ellsberg Week (April 24-30). Host Mickey Huff gets updates from Kevin Gosztola about Julian Assange’s extradition case. Then, we share part two of Kevin’s historic conversation with famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg on the sorry state of the press today. They spoke for nearly two hours on the release date for Guilty of Journalism back in March.

Going Remote

Later this month, Adam Bessie, author of Going Remote: A Teacher’s Journey, will give the annual Faculty Lecture at Diablo Valley College, in Northern California, where he teaches.

Going Remote is scheduled to hit the shelves of your local independent bookstore on May 16th. But if you can’t wait, you can order copies directly from Project Censored now!

Media and Me on Audiobook

Tantor Media, a leading independent publisher of audio books, has purchased the audio rights to The Media and Me. Tantor will produce and distribute an unabridged audio version of The Media and Me to retail and library markets, expanding the reach of the Project’s guidebook to critical media literacy for young people.

CT Politics, a Connecticut-based public affairs program, devoted three episodes to critical media literacy education, featuring Media and Me coauthors Nolan Higdon and Mickey Huff (April 4), Ben Boyington and Andy Lee Roth (April 5), and Allison Butler and Nicholas Baham III (April 7), all in conversation with host Joe Aguiar and high school teacher Barth Keck.

The Project Censored Show

Recent episodes of The Project Censored Show, co-hosted by Eleanor Goldfield and Mickey Huff, have focused on the prospects of a US-led peace movement in Ukraine and the twentieth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, with Brian Becker and Peter Kuznick; the US addiction to militarism, featuring Lindsay Koshgarian and Matthew Hoh; as well as French resistance to neoliberalism and the political economy of a declining US empire, with an organizer, Kim from Rennes, France, and economist Richard Wolff.

The Show also featured a recording of a special panel discussion, hosted by St. Mary’s College in Northern California, featuring Nolan Higdon (author of The Anatomy of Fake News) discussing the State of Our So-Called Free Press with Mnar Adley of MintPress News, Maximillian Alvarez of The Real News Network, Davey D of Hard Knock Radio, and Project Censored’s Mickey Huff.

The Show’s most recent episode featured Kenn Burrows, who teaches Holistic Health at San Francisco State University, and Tony Brasunas (author of Red, White & Blind: The Truth About Disinformation and The Path to Media Consciousness) discussing political polarization and media consciousness; as well as pediatrician and public health advocate Dr. Margaret Flowers on the rise of for-profit healthcare firms and their negative impacts on quality of patient care.

Dispatches on Media and Politics

Since late March, the Project’s bi-weekly syndicated column, Dispatches on Media and Politics, has featured: an original report from Kevin Gosztola, How the New York Times Sat on a Story Daniel Ellsberg Gave Them, based on his recent conversation with the renowned whistleblower; No Turning Back, Nolan Higdon’s long-form analysis of the missteps, censorship, and establishment propaganda that often passed for genuine investigative journalism during the COVID-19 pandemic; and Andy Lee Roth’s The Lifeblood of Democracy, on journalists as front-line defenders of human rights, including the foundational rights to freedom of expression and information.

Project Censored Out and About

Project Censored’s director, Mickey Huff, addressed a “packed room” of students, faculty, and community members at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles on March 22nd. In his talk, Huff encouraged students to “tell a story that someone else isn’t telling,” especially in order to question systems of entrenched power. He was joined by the Project’s intern, Reagan Haynie, a graduating senior from Loyola, and Gavin Kelley, co-author of last year’s Junk Food News chapter. Huff’s talk, and the workshop which followed, were hosted by LMU’s departments of journalism and communication, with special thanks to Professors Evelyn McDonnell and Kyra Pearson, as well as the Center for Media Arts and a Just Society, the Dean of the Library, Phi Beta Kappa, the Global Policy Institute, and the Fletcher Jones Chair for Literature and Writing.

Long-time Project Censored judge and faculty mentor Kenn Burrows hosted an interdisciplinary conference, From Polarization to Integration: A New Vision of Health, Activism & Cultural Evolution, at San Francisco State University on April 21st. “From Polarization to Integration” was the 2023 edition of Burrow’s Future of Healthcare conference series, presented by SFSU’s Institute for Holistic Health Studies. Project Censored director Mickey Huff was one of the speakers on the program, along with Mnar Adley of MintPress News and Sharyl Attkisson of Full Measure.

Finally, Nolan Higdon, one of the co-authors of The Media and Me, appeared on the nationally syndicated television program Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson to discuss the importance of critical media literacy education and the challenges of navigating an increasingly curated and censored media landscape.