Thread: The 10 big news stories the mainstream media IGNORED

The 10 big news stories the mainstream media IGNORED
By Amanda Witherell
The daily dispatches and nightly newscasts of the mainstream media regularly cover terrorism, but rarely how fear of attacks is used to manipulate the public and set policy. That's the common thread of many of the unreported stories last year, according to an analysis by Project Censored.

Since 1976, Sonoma State University has released an annual survey of the top 25 stories the mainstream media failed to report or reported poorly. Culled from worldwide alternative news sources, vetted by students and faculty, and ranked by judges, the stories may not have been overtly censored. But their controversial subjects, challenges to the status quo or general under-the-radar subject matter might have kept them from the front pages. Project Censored recounts them, accompanied by media analysis, in a book published annually by Seven Stories Press.

"This year, war and civil liberties stood out," Peter Phillips, who has been director of the project since 1996, says of the top stories. "They're closely related and part of the War on Terror that has been the dominant theme of Project Censored for seven years, since 9/11."

Whether it's preventing what one piece of legislation calls "homegrown terrorism" by federally funding the study of radicalism, using vague concerns about security to quietly expand the North American Free Trade Agreement, or refusing to count the number of Iraqi civilians killed in the war, the threat of terrorism is being used to silence people and expand power.

"The war on terror is a sort of mind terror," says Nancy Snow, one of the project's 24 judges and an associate professor of public diplomacy at the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. Snow, who has taught classes on war, media and propaganda, elaborates: "You can't declare war on terror. It's a tactic that's used by groups to gain publicity and it will remain with us. But it's unlikely that {the number of terrorist acts} will spike. It spikes in the minds of people."

She pointed out that terrorist attacks have declined worldwide since 2003. Some use the absence of fresh attacks as evidence that the so-called "war on terror" is working, but a RAND Corporation study for the Defense Department that was released in August said the war on terror hasn't effectively undermined al-Qaeda. It suggested the phrase be replaced with the less-loaded term "counterterrorism."

Both Phillips and Snow agree that comprehensive, contextual reporting is missing from most of the coverage. "That's one of my criticisms of the media," Snow says. "They spotlight issues and don't look at the entire landscape."

This year, the landscape of Project Censored itself is expanding. After talking with educators who bemoan the ongoing decline of news quality and have offered to help, Phillips has launched the Truth Emergency Project, in which Sonoma State partners with 23 other universities. All will host classes for students to search out untold stories, vet them for accuracy and submit them for consideration to Project Censored.

"There's a renaissance of independent media," Phillips says. He thinks bloggers and citizen journalists are filling crucial roles left vacant by staff cutbacks throughout the mainstream media. And, he notes, it's time for universities, educators and media experts to step in and help. "It's not just reforming the media but supporting them in as many ways as they need, like validating stories by fact-checking."

The Truth Emergency Project will also host a news service that aggregates the top 12 independent media sources and posts them on one page. "So you can get an RSS feed from all the major independent news sources we trust," Phillips explains. Discerning newshounds can find headlines from the BBC, Democracy Now!, and Inter Press Service News Agency in one spot. "The whole criteria," he says, "is no corporate media."

Carl Jensen, who started the project in 1976, says the expansion is a new and necessary phase: "It answers the question I was always challenged with: How do you know this is the truth? Having 24 campuses reviewing all the stories and raising questions really provides a good answer. These stories will be vetted more than Sarah Palin."

Phillips says he hopes to expand the project to 100 schools within the year to bring more attention to the dire need for public support for quality news reporting. "I think it's going to require government subsidies and nonprofit organizations doing community media projects," he says. "It's more than just reforming at the Federal Communications Commission level.â€

fedup

I'm going to spend some time on that site.

Thank you again for posting articles.

That's one cute kid!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm going to see if we can get this part on our homepage under our North American Union topics section

[quote]2. NAFTA on Steroids
Coupling the perennial issue of security with Wall Street’s measures of prosperity, the leaders of the three North American nations have convened the Security and Prosperity Partnership. The White House-led initiative—launched at a March 23, 2005, meeting of President George Bush, Mexico’s then-president Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin—joins beefed-up commerce with coordinated military operations to promote what it calls “borderless unity.â€

Added the above section to the Homepage:
http://www.alipac.us/article-3592--0-0.html