State of the Free Press 2022 Published–and Well Publicized!
The new Project Censored yearbook is finally available. Paper shortages, another consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, delayed the book’s printing. But we are glad to report that we now have books. If you are a supporting member, we will be mailing your copy very soon.
The listing of the Top “Censored” Stories of 2020-2021 is also accessible on the Project website.
The story list and State of the Free Press 2022 have already been receiving prominent coverage in a number of independent news weeklies, including Random Length News, Queen City Nerve, American Prospect, Orlando Weekly, and Detroit Metro Times.
Several Project Censored folks have been featured recently by the following broadcast outlets: Project director Mickey Huff appeared on the Thom Hartmann Program, 11/24/21, to discuss the new book and how hedge funds have decimated local news outlets; Huff and the Project’s associate director, Andy Lee Roth, appeared on “Intersections,” with Matthew Peddie, on WMFE, the NPR-affiliate out of Orlando, Florida, to discuss some of the year’s top “Censored” stories and the importance of critical media literacy.
Media Freedom Foundation board members Ben Boyington and Allison Butler appeared on Peace Talks Radio to discuss how the constant barrage of advertising impacts our lives, and how critical media literacy education can head off those negative impacts.
Random Lengths News just posted an hour-long discussion between Mickey Huff, Andy Lee Roth, and RLN’s founding editor, James Preston Allen, about censorship and critical media literacy.
The Project Censored Show
Meanwhile, Project Censored’s own nationally-syndicated radio program, The Project Censored Show, has featured episodes on Local Journalism Matters, with independent journalists Will Carruthers and Peter Byrne, who discuss financial conflicts of interest in local news reporting and “native” advertising as two challenges to news integrity. A previous episode of the Show welcomed back Kevin Gosztola, managing editor of Shadowproof, and also featured creative radical Eleanor Goldfield, who discussed the importance of whistleblowing and the case of Julian Assange.
Recent Publications
The Censored Notebook features Mischa Geracoulis on “Reassessing the Legacy and Power of DC Hardcore.” Drawing on Shayna L. Maskell’s new book, Politics as Sound, Geracoulis examines the Washington, D.C. punk scene as both subculture and political movement.
Andy Lee Roth and Steve Macek’s article, “Corporate Media Harms Not Only Through Omission, But Also by Distortion,” published by Truthout, draw on examples for Project Censored’s top story list for 2020-2021 to show how the effects of underreporting or misreporting may ultimately be more harmful than nonreporting.
Nicholas L. Baham III and Nolan Higdon’s book, The Podcaster’s Dilemma: Decolonizing Podcasters in the Era of Surveillance Capitalism, published by Wiley Blackwell, will drop in mid-December. You can read more about and order a copy of the book here.
Back on the Project Censored website, even though State of the Free Press 2022 has just dropped, we are already reviewing and posting new Validated Independent News stories. This first batch of the 2021-2022 story cycle features independent news reporting focused on education, including algorithmic biases in online testing programs and the blockade on critical race theory in Texas schools.
Independent News Stories We’re Tracking
- ProPublica has published a thoroughly-documented exposé of how St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, one of the most highly regarded health care charities in the United States, fails to provide the kind of support it touts for families with catastrophically sick children.
- For MintPress News, Alan MacLeod reveals that the Gates Foundation has bankrolled hundreds of media outlets and ventures, to the tune of at least $319 million. Given the foundation’s global influence on issues from big tech and public health to global governance and media affairs, there should be far more scrutiny and analysis of the impacts of such contributions on coverage of the many issues where Gates has, in MacLeod’s words, “a glaring conflict of interest.”
- Lee Fang, writing for The Intercept, describes how Pfizer is among the Big Pharma companies lobbying to block legislation that would strengthen whistleblowers’ ability to report corporate fraud.
- For Truthout, Sharon Zhang reports that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has called for new Amazon union elections after finding that Amazon had illegally interfered with union elections earlier this year. Zhang’s report can be read as an important follow-up to one of the Top 25 stories from State of the Free Press 2022, Google’s Union-Busting Methods Revealed. As Zhang reports and Project Censored has highlighted, workers deserve to have a voice at work, which unions provide.