censored 2012 - excerpt

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C2012_text:Layout 1 8/19/11 5:41 AM Page 1

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“This invaluable resource deserves to be more widely known.”—Wilson Library Bulletin


CENSORED2012Sourcebook for the Media Revolution

The Top Censored Stories andMedia Analysis of 2010–2011

MICKEY HUFF AND PROJECT CENSORED

Introduction by Peter PhillipsCartoons by Khalil Bendib

Seven Stories PressNEW YORK


Copyright ©2011 by Mickey Huff

Introduction ©2011 by Peter Phillips

A Seven Stories Press First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored ina retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, includingmechanical, electric, photocopying, recording or otherwise, withoutthe prior written permission of the publisher.

Seven Stories Press140 Watts StreetNew York, NY 10013www.sevenstories.com

isbn 978-1-60980-347-6 (paperback)isbn 978-1-60980-358-2 (electronic)

ISSN 1074-5998

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Book design by Jon Gilbert

Printed in the USA


ContentsPreface:Moving Beyond Media Reform for Censored 2012 ...............11Introduction by Peter Phillips ............................................................27

section iCensored News and Media Analysis

Chapter 1Project Censored News Clusters andthe Top Censored Stories of 2010 and 2011by Peter Phillips, Mickey Huff, Elliot D. Cohen, Dean Walker, Andy LeeRoth, Elaine Wellin, Kristen Seraphin, Joel Evans-Fudem, Amy Ortiz, KennBurrows, and Tom Atlee, with additional research and editing by TrishBoreta, Bill Gibbons, Craig Cekala, Melody J. Haislip,Nolan Higdon, and Casey Goonan .........................................................35

Introductionby Mickey Huff, director of Project Censored .................................................35

censored news cluster: Human Costs ofWar and Violenceby Peter Phillips and Craig Cekala ...............................................................43

censored news cluster: Social Media and Internet Freedomby Elliot D. Cohen ....................................................................................55

censored news cluster: Economics and Inequalityby Dean Walker, with research assistance by Bill Gibbonsand editing by Melody J. Haislip ................................................................69

censored news cluster: Power, Abuse, and Accountabilityby Andy Lee Roth ....................................................................................84

censored news cluster: Health and the Environmentby Elaine Wellin and Kristen Seraphin ........................................................98

censored news cluster: Women and Gender Issuesby Joel Evans-Fudem and Amy Ortiz ..........................................................118

censored news cluster: Collaboration and Common Goodby Kenn Burrows and Tom Atlee................................................................137


Chapter 2Déjà Vu:What Happened to Last Year’s Top Censored Storiesby Mickey Huff with Project Censored Interns.....................................149

Chapter 3Framing the Messengers: Junk Food News andNews Abuse for Dummiesby Mickey Huff and Adam Bessie, with contributions byAbby Martin, Nolan Higdon, and Clifton Roy Damiens.........................183

Chapter 4Signs of Health and Emerging Culture:Stories of Hope and Creative Change from 2010 and 2011by Kenn Burrows ...............................................................................229

Chapter 5Media Democracy in Actionby Mickey Huff with contributions by Abby Martin, Tracy Rosenberg,Jeff Cohen, Lisa Graves, Josh Wolf, Khalil Bendib, Nolan Higdon, RyanShehee, and Emma Cape with Logan Price ..........................................261

section iiTruth Emergency

Understanding Propaganda in Theory and PracticeIntroduction by Mickey Huff

Chapter 6A Brief History of Propagandaby Randal Marlin ................................................................................293

Chapter 7A Theoretical Approach to Mass Psychological Manipulation:Jacques Ellul’s Analysis of Modern Propagandaby Jacob Van Vleet ...............................................................................313

Chapter 8Drawing Back the Veil on the US Propaganda Machineby Robert Abele ...................................................................................325


Chapter 9The Impending Demise of Net Neutralityby Elliot D. Cohen ...............................................................................337

Chapter 10A Tea Party Among Us:Media Censorship,ManufacturedDissent, and the Right-Wing Rebellionby Anthony DiMaggio..........................................................................351

section iiiProject Censored InternationalHuman Rights and the Right to Know

Introduction by Mickey Huff with an introduction to theFair Sharing of the Common Heritage by Mary Lia

Chapter 11Media Distortion of Nonviolent Struggles: Putting DarkLenses on Colored Revolutionsby Cynthia Boaz ..................................................................................373

Chapter 12The US in Africa:Velvet Glove on a Military Fistby Ann Garrison .................................................................................387

Chapter 13Establishing Ghetto Palestineby Jon Elmer .......................................................................................413

Chapter 14HBO’s Treme: Exposing the Fractured Press Coverageof the Storm and Post-Katrina New Orleansby Robin Andersen .............................................................................423

Chapter 15Single Payer Singled Out: Corporate Control of theMessage in US Health Reformby Margaret Flowers............................................................................437


Chapter 16Censorship of the True State of Maternity Care in the USby Ina May Gaskin..............................................................................445

Acknowledgments ..........................................................................462How to Support Project Censored..................................................472About the Author .............................................................................473Index.................................................................................................475


Dedicated to the first real rebel and truth teller I ever knew:my father,

Jesse Francis “Mickey” Huff (1939–2004)

and to the next generations that continue inthat same vein—Meg, Molly, and . . .


11

preface

Moving Beyond MediaReform for Censored 2012by Mickey Huff

In the final analysis, each scholar, just like every citizen,has to take a long, hard look in the mirror and considerthe following: If we act as if social change for the betteris impossible, we guarantee it will be impossible. That isthe long-standing human dilemma, except that in crit-ical junctures our powers increase and the odds canswing dramatically in democracy’s favor. We holdimmense power in our hands. Let’s not blow this oppor-tunity. Let’s have a real communication revolution.1

—robert mcchesney, media scholar

Reformers who are always compromising, have not yetgrasped the idea that truth is the only safe ground tostand upon.—elizabeth cady stanton

As we approach the historically prophetic and nowmass media-hyped“End of Times” year of 2012, hysterical speculation abounds. Thefailed prediction of a preacher in Oakland, California, who claimed theRapture was upon us come May 21, 2011, was quite metaphoric as itexposed, yet again, how someone in American society is always able tocaptivate the corporate media by spinning doomsday yarns, whether itbe Y2K or the upcoming 2012 end of the Mayan calendar (furthermanifest in the outpouring of Hollywood apocalypse films). Though,to be clear, it is not merely the entertainment media that succumb tothis lowest common denominator (fear sells), it is the news media aswell, in the forms of Junk Food News and News Abuse (see chapter 3)and relentless power elite propaganda (see the Truth Emergency sec-tion of this volume).In the realm of the “serious” traditional institutional news media


12 PREFACE

in the US, increasingly, speculation masquerades as fact, gossip, andtripe stand in for analysis, and the titillating and inane trump the soberand sane. The ongoing corporate media feeding frenzy at the troughof the factually groundless and absurd has only intensified over thepast decade, whether promulgating faux fears—from killer bee attacksto various flu viruses—or pushing nonexistent weapons of massdestruction and the Orwellian, nebulously defined yet unending Waron Terror. Fear and innuendo rule the headlines of the day while tele-vision news programs are dominated by opinion journalism, emptytechnological displays, and elaborate computer graphics (perhapscasting the shadows in Plato’s cave). In short, for establishment“news” as we have known it in the last quarter of the twentieth cen-tury, it really is the “end of times,” and no amount of “reform”attenuating the current commercially dominated system from the topdown will likely resuscitate it, at least in journalistic terms.That there is a crisis in journalism seems to be understood by many

scholars and independent journalists, while many in the corporatemedia don’t seem to notice, or at least don’t mention it much. Further,they do not divulge much in terms of the challenges we face in thetwenty-first century as the corporate media flood the airwaves withcelebrity tales and misinformation. The overall so-called “mainstream”reporting in the United States is the equivalent to fiddling while Romeburns. And make no mistake, the US is an empire, and we are indecay. We the People of these United States already stand at a very realprecipice—the potential end of what has been deemed the GreatAmerican Experiment, the institutional embodiment of humanfreedom protected by government of, by, and for the people. Mean-while, the corporate media fill so-called news time with faux-angst,Astroturf platforms, cult-of-personality disorders, and one manufac-tured irrelevant crisis after another in what appears to be a Herculeaneffort to avoid telling the public what is really going on at home andabroad—with the economy, with the environment, in Afghanistan,Libya, or in Fukushima, Japan. In short, the establishment press inAmerica is not telling people what is really going wrong and how, andwhat we can start doing about it as a society. The Fourth Estate is deadto the people.America in the first decade of the twenty-first century is experi-


PREFACE 13

encing a decline of epic proportions in terms of the performance andaccessibility of its economy, the efficacy of its civil institutions underconstitutional law, and the ability to deliver the promise of what wasknown as the American Dream to all that strove for it in earnest. But,perhaps this is not so surprising given the recent past, at least for thosethat know it in spite of the fact that the so-called mainstream mediain America has done a good deal to not report on what is really goingon in the world, and at home. The late comic and critic George Carlinonce said, “It’s called the ‘American Dream’ because you have to beasleep to believe it.” Based on our current circumstances, Carlin’s quipseems sage.Of course, for many, the promises of equality and democracy that

lie within the American Dream ethos never existed in the history ofthe United States. Certainly, racism, sexism, classism, and imperi-alism, have all played the role of antagonist to said promises. However,America’s founding documents were particularly rife with rhetoricalflourishes that were supportive of liberty, freedom of expression, thepursuit of happiness—all of which actually sprouted many social andpolitical movements that changed American culture by striving towardthose founding principles, achieving them in varying degrees. In thisregard, America has succeeded in realizing the essence of some of itspromises. But in reality, the US, in historical terms, has fallen shortin myriad ways across the demographic spectrum and that trend is notabating. This is in large part due to Americans’ reliance on institu-tional reform over implementation of revolutionary ideals and actionsas tools for change. We are in need of such radical action now.Arguably, the root of these aforementioned problems within

democracy, beyond exclusion or manipulation of the franchise, chieflyresides in the controlling of public information and education, andaccess to it. Thomas Jefferson once offered a possible solution to theseissues when he wrote, “The functionaries of every government havepropensities to command at will the liberty and property of their con-stituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the peoplethemselves, nor can they be safe with them without information.Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.” Thefocus then is to achieve a truly free press and a literate citizenry inmaintenance of democratic government.


14 PREFACE

More recently, this was purportedly the focus of the organizers andA-list participants of the National Conference on Media Reform thispast spring in the historic (once revolutionary?) city of Boston. Cer-tainly groups like Free Press and the Media Consortium, among manyothers, have pursued laudable media democracy causes. However, andmost respectfully stated, some of the reformers and key participantsof the event are also part of the establishment media and politicalsystem (Federal Communications Commission [FCC], Congress).These people have fallen short of achieving reform goals, noble as theymay be, by working through the current system.We the People should go straight to the root of our problems with

media, which means taking a radical approach in dealing with the cur-rent problems of our supposed free press, to ensure that all are, asJefferson put it, safe. For starters, we should move well beyondreformist calls for attenuating institutional dials, changing a fewmetaphorical channels, or appointing new FCC commissioners. Thishas not worked. The root of democracy is with the people, in educa-tion, in media literacy, in civic awareness. The path to change comesfrom the people, not the president. That we move beyond a reformethos concentrated on elite media control must be agreed upon by allthose aware of the problem in order for real change to take place. Andwhile moving beyond reform, we cannot succumb to a top-down-initiated “hope and change we can believe in,” which was promisedyet never delivered after the 2008 election, on which many reformersfocused great efforts to no avail. These eventual outcomes of reformserve to create a subculture of acceptance in defeat, living to fightagain . . . in another four years.That is a cyclical game. And we have played it for a long time. It is

true that reforms play a role in radical changes, though they are merelysteps to paradigmatic shifts. The time to unite, face reality, and act torebuild a new and relevant democracy on the foundation of a truly freepress is upon us as we are now in dire straits as a country, as a world,from economic collapse to environmental destruction. A People’sMedia Revolution is the vehicle for such a change—and it is, in someparts of the world, indeed in America, at the tips of our fingers.Like falling empires of old, the US today is mired in multi-front,

unilateral wars and is engaging in new ones that are ongoing, all while


PREFACE 15

living well beyond its means at home, ignoring domestic affairs whennot outright waging internal wars against those who actually expectelected and appointed officials to live up to our founding Enlighten-ment principles. These current so-called “wars on terror” have costover $3 trillion to date and occupy a great deal of time of politicalleaders. All the while, the US boasts record declines in middle- andworking-class incomes and opportunities; a jobless “recovery” in thewake of the economic collapse of 2008 (caused in large part by thebiggest banks on Wall Street, which subsequently were not heldaccountable and instead bailed out at taxpayer expense); a crumblinginfrastructure; failing schools (including public and private charterschools); abysmal records on access and quality of health care giventhe overall wealth and technological prowess of the country; risinginfant mortality rates; increasing homelessness; skyrocketing foreclo-sures; collapse of community development and nonprofit supportsystems; faulty elections procedures; the use of torture abroad and athome; an encroaching police state and erosion of the rule of law; anincreasing lack of transparency with more attacks on whistle-blowers . . . the list goes on and on. Though don’t expect to hear thison the ever-consolidating, oligopoly-owned “news” media.Last but not least, we suffer a hyperreal condition as a society,

spurred on by fearful, factless, and feckless news programming by thenation’s supposed leading journalistic outlets. This is why most peoplein America do not seem to notice the inevitable descent. America isso disconnected that, even while individuals may suffer in large num-bers, they lack a collective adhesive in a modern media landscape.They erroneously believe they suffer alone, and thanks to corporatemedia propaganda, are often afraid of the wrong things. Yet, a trulyfree press should help build and protect democracy for the people, notdestroy it.All this is taking place in what appears to be absolute decline across

the board for most Americans as the upper few percent of the popula-tion control most of the nation’s wealth. A real free press would tell usto forget the gross domestic product (GDP) and focus on communitybuilding, local banking, and public works programs, not abstractmarket fluctuations and foreign exchange rates. America is a debtornation within its population and has not made much outside of


16 PREFACE

weapons and related technologies accompanied by military-industrial-media complex propaganda/advertising for years—all masqueradingas official foreign policy and the “news.” The US government, alongwith this massive military-industrial-media complex, has now armedthe world to the teeth to justify a permanent warfare state. As I writethis, we are involved in six wars . . . and counting. (According to theNation Institute’s Tom Engelhardt, these include Iraq, Afghanistan,Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and what used to be called the Global War onTerror, which may mark a record for simultaneous wars in US his-tory—unbeknownst to the public.) However, the Obama administrationand its media lapdogs are careful not to refer to any of these as “wars,”even if that is exactly what they are, and they are bankrupting theempire.America, its government of and by corporations over the people

(especially after the Citizens United case), is now locked in a self-cre-ated, last-ditch effort to occupy the nether regions of oil, industrialcapitalism’s dwindling lifeblood. The US forces the rest of the world totrade on the dollar to maintain global hegemony, funding its expan-sion of over a thousand military bases in over 130 countries.Meanwhile, China, Russia, and several South American countries arealready operating outside this monetary imposition, which, as the latescholar and author of the Blowback trilogy Chalmers Johnson argued,is what would spell the end of American empire: fiscal bankruptcy.The collapse of the dollar would hasten that, as was reported in lastyear’s most censored story in Censored 2011. Indeed, that time drawsnigh. The cry for austerity from ostentatious leaders rings hollowacross the land as US leaders spend billions (and now trillions) on thewars for empire. But at home, it’s all “tightening of the belts,” beltsthat are slowly becoming tourniquets for democracy.Don’t expect the so-called mainstream media to explain all this to

the public. After all, according to the mainstream media in the US,there are teachers to blame and public workers to vilify, and there is anever-ready supply of immigrant populations to enslave or deport as wellas invasions to carry out on exotic lands Americans can’t find on a mapin efforts to rout evildoers who supposedly cause our current calami-ties. (And let’s not forget that in actuality, it is the corporatemedia, butthe term “mainstream” is used so often people tend to forget it is not at


PREFACE 17

all mainstream.) And when this “news” gets too heavy, big media inthe US can intersperse a steady diet of Junk Food News on which Amer-icans can vicariously feast—celebrity gossip and sport spectaclesranging from Charlie Sheen’s Tiger Bloodmeltdown and Bristol Palin’sDancing with the Stars scandal to the next Super Bowl and more MarchMadness, all in hopes that the problems we all face in the real worldwill simply just go away. But they won’t. They only get bigger.These are the same issues many in the media reform movement

also decry, and rightfully so. Reform efforts have been laudable, andthere are many that continue to work toward creating better, moretruthful, and democratic media (see chapter 5). But the solutions manyreformers offer mostly seem to involve “fixing the system,” by focusingon the influence of advertisers or regulating ownership, which to datehave not achieved reformer objectives. Other reformers want the gov-ernment to step in to “fix the system” by creating a public media,without noting that government has played a big role in the currentproblem; even while public media is under attack by Congress, PublicBroadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR) havehardly stood out in major ways to challenge the plutocracy in the nameof the people. A publicly subsidized free press is a good idea, but get-ting there is another story, one that likely does not involve the current,or a future, Congress or the FCC, at least if the past is prologue.These reform notions do not go to the root of the problem, they do

not map out a radical solution. And, despite reformers’ benevolentinstincts and intentions, don’t always expect reformers that criticizethe big media messengers’ behaviors to realize that the system theyspend so much time trying to repair is now defunct—not that it everexisted in a democratically utopian means in the first place. This iswhy we, the media-literate citizens of this dying republic, must nowmove beyond reform to create a new way.We need to Be the Media in word and deed (as David Mathison has

said), not lobby those in power to reform their own current establish-ment megaphones for their own power elite agendas, as that will nothappen, and indeed, has not, for the most part, in the past. In order toachieve real change, we need not have elaborate conferences that relyon power elite voices, their foundation monies, and their apologeticreformist rhetoric. We need to embody the true change channeled by


18 PREFACE

nineteenth-century American activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton when shesaid, “Reformers who are always compromising have not yet graspedthe idea that truth is the only safe ground to stand upon.” Indeed.The time to speak truth to power—to media power elites, their

political allies, and their funders—is now. Media Reform is an impor-tant movement, but it should not be seen as the only path to creatinga more just and democratic media system. More radical approachesare needed at this point. So just say “no” to reform-driven agendasdelivered as so much managed news propaganda, and insteadembrace the possibilities of a radical media democracy in action, of,by, and for the people. Show it with actions through citizen journalismand through support of local and independent, non-corporate, com-munity media. Real change only begins with radical action on the locallevel. That’s the only way a truly free press can be created, preserved,and nurtured to be a tool of the people and not the reformers withtheir unrequited overtures to the media power elite. The time to act isnow. As Robert McChesney said, “Let’s have a real communicationrevolution.” We may not have time enough for the next reform con-ference to save us, despite all the best intentions. We are the mediarevolution of tomorrow. But we must act today.

Notes on Recent Literature Concerning Media Reform

The topic of a failing free press system, or the shortcomings of the so-called mainstream media, has been the subject of many works,including scholarly works from esteemed, academic, establishmentpublishing houses over the past few years. Two key works include AlexS. Jones’s Losing the News: The Future of the News That Feeds Democ-racy, and W. Lance Bennett, Regina G. Lawrence, and StevenLivingston’s When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Mediafrom Iraq to Katrina.2 Both works have legitimate critiques but operatewithin the confines of a traditional media system—that is, a corporatemedia system.Jones in particular calls for a return to accountability (and account-

ability is certainly not a bad thing, though whether or not we arereturning to it, as if it existed prior, is another question, and thisaccountability is referred to as an “iron core,” which has eroded, thus


PREFACE 19

the unproven “return” concept). Bennett et al. focus on the corporatemedia failures in covering Abu Ghraib and Hurricane Katrina, specif-ically on the role of the White House and political spin machines. Anotable section is the inclusion of Kristina Borjesson in an interviewwith Ron Suskind, who tries to explain the role of the Fourth Estate inthe lead up to the Iraq War, and ends up saying the press utterly failed,as its real role was to prevent both the American people and Congress“from seeing clearly the true reasons and motivation that ultimatelydrove us to war.” Even with this damning inclusive observation, theauthors here cite how the same establishment press do a stellar job onother political issues like abortion, and are rife with diverse views, butwithout giving any real evidence. Again, the notion is that the estab-lishment press, the corporate media, are not really all that bad and doa mostly good job, but that they have had a rough first decade on acouple major issues in the twenty-first century. Even using the sameexamples Bennett et al. use, another conclusion seems highly possible,one leaning more toward not just “when the press fails,” but rather,toward a sentiment of “when does the press not fail so miserably?”While both are good works on a number of levels in calling out the

failures of the establishment press, neither go so far as to critique theoverarching structure within which the media they critique actuallyoperate—that of capitalism and the private, for-profit model for jour-nalism in a supposedly free and egalitarian society. Both works areheavily sourced with establishment journalists, politicians, scholars,publications, etc. One will find similar critiques coming out of Harvard,Columbia, and the Annenberg Schools, all leaving out consideration ofthe latter issue (though not everyone associated with those institutionswould agree, there is a pattern leading in the direction described). Thesemajor institutions all miss a big piece of the puzzle that has also con-tributed to the collapse of modern journalism: the reliance onestablishment sources and exclusion of vernacular views.On the other hand, works bymedia scholars like Robert W.McChes-

ney do such a critique, and include different sources, as have others likeEdward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, all of whom are also at majoracademic institutions, but these were mostly ignored in the two highlypraised academic works cited above. Both the previous works paid lipservice to McChesney, Herman, and Chomsky, towering figures in the


20 PREFACE

field of media criticism to be sure, but only on one or two pages of theiroverall analysis which, again, called for subtle changes in the currentmedia system regarding journalism. And, to be fair, even the establish-ment-based changes suggested in Jones and Bennett et al., which arehardly revolutionary, have not been adopted in the corporate media. Per-haps this is why McChesney, Chomsky, and others in similar fashionare framed as “radical” (read “untenable” if one is in the establishmentmedia or academia), even though much of what they put forward iseither merely a deconstruction of the current free press problem inAmerica, or a solution that utilizes current existing models of jour-nalism, including government subsidization, which has proven to bequite tepid in its implementation due to the overarching problems ofthe for-profit, privatized philosophical tyranny that exists in what passesfor American discourse.The above-cited books above are worthy of reading as they offer

insightful commentary on recent media failures and the collapse oftraditional journalism. However, a thorough reading of Will the LastReporter Please Turn Out the Lights: The Collapse of Journalism and WhatCan Be Done to Fix It, edited by Robert W. McChesney and VictorPickard, and The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Rev-olution that Will Begin the World Again, by Robert W. McChesney andJohn Nichols, will leave the reader with a much broader understandingof the problem of the failures of the free press in America and whatone can do about it.3 Further, samplings from the Truth Emergencyand Project Censored International sections of this work, and Censored2011, may do the same. Reading these works together, the reader mayseriously begin to make up his or her mind about the current state ofaffairs for the supposed free press in the US, and what can be done tochange or improve it, which is ultimately the purpose of this Censored2012 volume—to generate a more media-literate public.Indeed, we at Project Censored are suggesting that we need to go

even further than that which is proffered by the recent McChesneyworks, at least in terms of citizen journalism—having people becomethe media—though the group he helped found, Free Press, has madegreat strides in the realm of media freedom. That said, we need to uti-lize our systems of education to produce accurate and qualityinformation in our local communities, news production from the


PREFACE 21

bottom up, to further diminish reliance on imposed, corporate-man-aged news platforms, especially those on cable television, but alsoincluding the major networks and even national broadcasts from NPRand PBS. These institutions have ritually kept the public in the darkon some of the most crucial issues of our times. McChesney himselfnoted, in The Problem of Media in the 21st Century, that the quality ofreporting by major media sources about key matters, like the nationgoing to war, has sadly not changed much over the past hundred years,and that the tendencies toward so-called yellow journalism are stillalive and well:

Journalists who question agreed-upon assumptions by the polit-ical elite stigmatize themselves as unprofessional and political.Mostmajor USwars over the past century have been sold to thepublic on dubious claims if not outright lies, yet professionaljournalism has generally failed to warn the public. Compare thepress coverage leading up to the Spanish-AmericanWar, whichis a notorious example of yellow journalism—before the adventof professional journalism to the coverage leading up to the2003 Iraq war and it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that thequality of reporting has not changed much.4

We are in need of a true media revolution, neither controlled by thecorporations nor the moneyed foundations, liberal or otherwise. Weneed the free press promised and protected by America’s founders inpure, radical fashion. And we can’t just ask the powers-that-be to giveit to us. We have to not only demand it; we must rid ourselves of cor-porate media dominion and create a new, democratic system of mediaof, by, and for the people. Media literacy and democracy must be partof a vibrant, diverse, and inclusive program of public education andcivic action. We must work together to be the media revolution of thetwenty-first century if our democracy is to survive.

Inside Censored 2012

This year, we continue to divide our annual publication into three sec-tions as we broaden, grow, and diversify efforts to illuminate examples


22 PREFACE

of censorship in the corporate mainstream US press. Further, we con-tinue to promote ways of improving our systems of reporting andcommunicating to the public at large about the most crucial issues weface as a society.Former director of Project Censored, Dr. Peter Phillips, kicks off

Censored 2012 in a no-holds-barred introduction that frames this year’svolume. His call for a media revolution to dismantle empire is clear,and his noting of how we can get there, through our collective culturesof resistance, is advice we should heed.

The first section of this year’s book—the News that Didn’t Make theNews andWhy—houses the traditional top censored news stories fromthe past year, which are, for the first time, analyzed in what we call Cen-sored News Clusters. Within these Clusters, Project Censored’s teamof media experts and their student interns analyze and connect the dotsamong stories based on similar themes or topics, flushing out whysome topics are prone to such underreporting, and what we might doabout this problem, rather than simply list the top stories as ranked inimportance by Project Censored judges. This year, our chapter 1 writingteam includes Peter Phillips, Elliot D. Cohen, Dean Walker, Andy LeeRoth, Elaine Wellin, Kristen Seraphin, Joel Evans-Fudem, Amy Ortiz,Kenn Burrows, and Tom Atlee, with additional research and editing byTrish Boreta, Bill Gibbons, Craig Cekala, Melody J. Haislip, NolanHigdon, and Casey Goonan. Of course, it also involves hundreds of stu-dents and professors from colleges across the United States.In chapter 2, Censored Déjà Vu, we check for any new or increased

coverage of previously underreported top stories. Most receive little ifany coverage in the corporate mainstream press, but if they do, wemonitor and remark upon it here, ever in hopes that the corporatemedia may be improved, but not waiting for such a change to takeplace as we advocate for the coming media revolution.In chapter 3, Adam Bessie joins the Project Censored director, Abby

Martin of Media Roots, and student interns Nolan Higdon and CliftonRoy Damiens to analyze the ubiquity of Junk Food News and thegrowing problem of News Abuse, including framing and propagandain the US media. This year we include a case study of how pubicworkers—teachers especially—have been negatively portrayed in thecorporate press as a major example of News Abuse.


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Chapter 4, by San Francisco State University professor of holisticstudies Kenn Burrows, brings out the best in underreported news aswe look at the positive, the signs of health and community buildingas published in the independent press, which the corporate mediatend to deride, downplay, or outright ignore. The problems we face donot only include the sordid stories the corporate media fail to report;they also include the many positive things going on often right in frontof us. When the corporate media do not acknowledge these stories,they contribute to a sense of disconnection among many in society.Chapter 5 brings back our media activism showcase, of examples

of media democracy in action, highlighting what other activists,scholars, and organizations are doing to achieve the media revolutionand support the First Amendment, in maintenance of self governanceand democracy. This year we include Abby Martin of Media Roots,Tracy Rosenberg of Media Alliance, Jeff Cohen of the Park Center forIndependent Media (Cohen was also the founder of Fairness and Accu-racy In Reporting, which just celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary),Lisa Graves of PR Watch, Josh Wolf, Khalil Bendib of the Voices of theMiddle East and North Africa radio program, and the pro-transparencygroup supporting Bradley Manning and Wikileaks, Courage to Resist.Section 2 focuses on what we call the Truth Emergency.5 This Truth

Emergency we face is a result of the lack of factual reporting by the so-called mainstream media over the past decade. Americans aresubjected to mass amounts of propaganda, from misinformation todisinformation, on a daily basis, about some of the most significantissues of the day. Whether this involves the post-9/11 wars in theMiddle East, the health care debate, election fraud, or economic col-lapse, most Americans are unaware of all the facts of how we gotwhere we now are as a society. It is the duty of the constitutionally pro-tected free press to report factually to the public on these matters.However, as shown by Project Censored’s work dating back to 1976,that is not happening.One way of combating this Truth Emergency is by understanding

the nature of propaganda. This year, our Truth Emergency section is aprimer on Propaganda Studies, which includes a brief history, theory,application, and case studies all presented to enhance media literacyamong the general public. We are pleased to bring some of the best


24 PREFACE

and brightest in the field to offer insight on this ever-important area ofstudy. Randal Marlin gives a brief history of propaganda; Jacob VanVleet looks at one of the key theorists of propaganda, Jacques Ellul.Robert Abele offer a philosophical and structural analysis of propa-ganda for readers, while Elliot D. Cohen and Anthony DiMaggio lookat specific areas, the importance of net neutrality and Astroturfactivism in the so-called Tea Party respectively, where understandingcommunication politics and media literacy really matter if a society isto be truly democratically functional, able to operate outside the prop-aganda matrix of the corporate media and establishment publicrelations machine.The final section of the book is Project Censored International,

which is a collection of various studies and media commentary thatnot only look at problems of global media censorship but also examinehow these important issues are handled, or ignored, in the US corpo-rate press. This section brings us a diverse group of scholars andactivists and also introduces our work on the Fair Share of theCommon Heritage awards. This year, we welcome Mary Lia, CynthiaBoaz, Ann Garrison, Jon Elmer, Robin Andersen, Margaret Flowers,and Ina May Gaskin. The significant issues in this section include theFair Sharing of the Common Heritage, on moving toward an embraceof the human commons; understanding nonviolence and how mediadepict such movements for peace and social justice; and the decon-struction of various myths—from the incredibly biased reporting onAfrica to distorted views of recent disaster coverage, plus the ongoingskewed coverage concerning Israel/Palestine. This section continueson issues of health with an analysis of the top-down denial of masspublic support for single payer health care, and we round out Censored2012 by looking at how corporate media distort life itself, from birth, byeither ignoring or demonizing the efficacy of natural childbirth andmidwifery in the US, despite facts surrounding home birth culturethat clearly refute the mass media’s biased coverage.All in all, this is a work in progress (all thirty-five years of it), and it

involves hundreds of dedicated scholars, students, activists, and peoplefrom all walks of life across the globe who have at least one thing incommon: the belief in democracy and the role a free press plays in thecreation, protection, and maintenance of it. Thanks to all who made


PREFACE 25

this work possible, to all the tireless and selfless contributors, to allthe readers and supporters of a free and vibrant people’s press, onethat is always and only uncensored. Please pass it on . . .

Mickey HuffBerkeley, CAJune 2011

Notes1. Robert McChesney, Communication Revolution: Critical Junctures and the Future of

Media (New York: New Press, 2007), 221.2. Alex S. Jones, Losing the News: The Future of the News That Feeds Democracy (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2009); and W. Lance Bennett, Regina G. Lawrence, andSteven Livingston,When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraqto Katrina (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

3. Robert W. McChesney and Victor Pickard, eds., Will the Last Reporter Please TurnOut the Lights: The Collapse of Journalism and What Can Be Done to Fix It (New York:New Press, 2011); and Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols, The Death and Lifeof American Journalism: The Media Revolution that Will Begin the World Again (NewYork and Philadelphia: Nation Books, 2010).

4. Robert W. McChesney, The Problem of the Media: US Communication Politics in the21st Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004), 74.

5. See Peter Phillips, Mickey Huff, et al., “Truth Emergency Meets Media Reform,”chap. 11 in Censored 2009: The Top 25 Censored Stories of 2007–08, eds. Peter Phillipsand Andrew Roth (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2008), 281–95. Also see PeterPhillips and Mickey Huff, “Truth Emergency: Inside the Military Industrial MediaEmpire,” chap. 5 in Censored 2010: The Top 25 Censored Stories of 2008–09, eds. PeterPhillips and Mickey Huff (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2009), 197–220.


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