Banned Books Week, September 26 – October 2
Join Project Censored and the Banned Books Week Coalition in celebrating the right to read.
This year’s theme is “Books Unite Us, Censorship Divides Us.” Know censors, no censorship! Check out Banned Books Week for a full lineup of events.
Project Censored Co-Sponsors 2nd Annual Critical Media Literacy Conference of the Americas, October 15-17
The second annual Critical Media Literacy Conference of the Americans will take place October 15-17 online via Zoom. This year’s conference honors the legacy of Paulo Freire, father of critical pedagogy, on the centennial of his birth. Registration is free online. The event is co-sponsored by California State University, East Bay; the Critical Media Project at USC, the Union for Democratic Communications, Action Coalition for Media Education (ACME), and Project Censored (along with several others). We look forward to seeing you at CMLCA next month!
September Has Been a Busy Month For Project Censored. Here Are Some Highlights of Our Recent Happenings
Constitution Day Events
Project Censored’s associate director Andy Lee Roth participated in a panel discussion on “The First Amendment and the Press,” held September 20th at Salisbury University in Maryland. Sponsored by the university’s Institute for Public Affairs and Civic Engagement, the panel included Ashley Bosché, a partner and First Amendment specialist at Cockey, Brennan & Maloney; Jennifer Cox, associate professor of communication at Salisbury and author of Feature Writing and Reporting: Journalism in the Digital Age; Project Censored’s Andy Lee Roth; and Mike Walter, an Emmy-award winning journalist and anchor of CGTN America’s News Hour.
On September 16th, Project director Mickey Huff led an expert panel at Diablo Valley College for Constitution Day titled, “Cancel This Talk: Academic Freedom, Cancel Culture, and the First Amendment.” Panelists included human rights lawyer Dan Kovalik (author of Cancel This Book), journalist Mnar Adley of MintPress News, Nolan Higdon (author of The Anatomy of Fake News), and sociologist Sangha Niyogi, co-director of DVC’s Social Justice Program. They discussed the First Amendment, the relationship between power and free speech in a democratic culture, and the recent rise of so-called “cancel culture.”
September 11th Twenty Year Commemoration
Project director Mickey Huff recently spoke on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks at “Never Forget: 9/11 and the 20 Year War on Terror,” an online event co-sponsored by Code Pink, Peace Action Massachusetts, and ten other organizations. He delivered remarks on how the “never forget” mantra around that tragic day should include the many underreported historical elements from ignored forewarnings and the Bush administration’s stalling of the investigation to mass crack downs on civil liberties and two-decades long war on terror that has killed and displaced millions around the world. Excerpts of the event were featured recently on the Project Censored Show.
Project Censored Radio
Speaking of the Project Censored Show, this past month the program featured guests sharing their perspectives around the events of September 11th for the 20th anniversary, including Peter Dale Scott, Aaron Good, and Ben Howard who addressed many still unanswered questions about the attacks; Ray McGinnis discussed his new book that looks at 9/11 through the lens of the 9/11 Family Steering Committee and how the 9/11 Commission failed to address or answer a vast majority of their questions and concerns; and long-time researcher and filmmaker Ken Jenkins explained why activists must be aware of cognitive biases in their own thinking, especially on controversial issues such as 9/11 as he pointed out the many mistakes made by the movement while noting that some government claims have proven to be true despite other lingering inconsistencies. Earlier this month, journalist Dave Lindorff shared the untold history of Ted Hall (1925-1999), a teenage science prodigy who worked on the WWII Manhattan Project, then shared his atomic secrets with the USSR, to ensure that the US wouldn’t be the world’s only possessor of nuclear weapons. Also featured, a segment with the authors of the new book, In the Struggle: Scholars and the Fight against Industrial Agribusiness in California. The Project Censored Show airs on Pacifica Radio out of KPFA FM in Berkeley, CA and is syndicated on some 50 of stations around the US (with special thanks to our longtime producer, Anthony Fest).
What Are We Reading Online
Michael Levitin’s piece in The Atlantic, “Occupy Wall Street Did More Than You Think” coincides with his new book Generation Occupy: Reawakening American Democracy. Levitin writes that “while the movement itself has mostly disappeared, 10 years later, its legacy is everywhere.” He’ll be a guest on the Project Censored Show next month.
Sarah Lazare, writing for In These Times, muses “Imagine If We Had Spent the Last 20 Years Fighting Climate Change Instead of the War on Terror. At the dawn of the new millennium, we directed our national resources in the exact wrong direction.” She notes, however, that “it’s not too late to turn things around.”
Nolan Higdon’s review of Renee Hobbs’ Mind Over Media: Propaganda Education for a Digital Age was just published in the journal Education Review. Higdon concludes that the work “over-promises and under-delivers. It is not always clear if Hobbs is writing to a teacher, student, or lay-person, or if she is discussing propaganda or education. The threads and audiences that this book seeks to bring together are ambitious, and Hobbs deserves credit for trying to tackle such a far-reaching set of topics.”
Cory Doctorow’s “Starve the Beast: Monopoly Power and Political Corruption” from the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Deep Links Blog, explains that “when companies have monopolies, value is transferred from the company’s customers and workers to its executives and shareholders. That’s why executives love monopolies and why shareholders love to invest in them.”
Support Project Censored and The Censored Press
This year, Project Censored launched its publishing imprint, The Censored Press, in partnership with our longtime publishers Seven Stories Press. The first Censored Press title, Project Censored’s State of the Free Press 2022, hits the streets December 7, with three additional titles to follow in 2022.
As ever, we ask for your generous support so we can continue our work promoting critical media literacy education and fighting censorship in its many guises.
Please consider becoming a $10 monthly sustaining member to Project Censored. As long as you are a member, we’ll send you a signed version of each edition of State of the Free Press (which includes our annual listing of the year’s 25 most important but underreported news stories), and our stylish, bold bumper sticker so everyone knows you are a supporter of critical media literacy education and a truly free press. You can also make a one-time, tax deductible donation here.