|
Missed
Information
Project
Censored’s top 10 stories ignored or underreported by mainstream
news media in 2008 and 2009
By
Rebecca Bowea
Peter
Phillips, director of Project Censored for 13 years, says
he’s finished with reform. It’s impossible, he says in a recent
interview, to try to get major news media outlets to deliver
relevant news stories that serve to strengthen democracy.
“I
really think we’re beyond reforming corporate media,” says
Phillips, a professor of sociology at Sonoma State University
and the director of Project Censored. “We’re not going to
break up these huge conglomerates. We’re just going to make
them irrelevant.”
Every year since 1976, Project Censored has spotlighted the
25 most significant news stories that were largely ignored
or misrepresented by the mainstream press. Now the group is
expanding its mission: to promote alternative news sources.
But it continues to report the biggest national and international
stories that the major media ignored.
The term “censored” doesn’t mean that some government agent
stood over newsrooms with a rubber stamp and forbade the publication
of the news—or even that the information was completely out
of the public eye. The stories Project Censored highlights
may have run in one or two news outlets—but didn’t get the
type of attention they deserved.
The project staff begin by sifting through hundreds of stories
nominated by individuals at Sonoma State, where the project
is based, as well as 30 affiliate universities all over the
country.
Articles are verified, fact-checked, and selected by a team
of students, faculty, and evaluators from the wider community,
then sent to a panel of national judges to be ranked. The
end product is a book, co-edited this year by Phillips and
associate director Mickey Huff, which summarizes the top stories,
provides in-depth media analysis, and includes resources for
readers who are hungry for more substantive reporting.
Project Censored doesn’t just expose gaping holes in the news
brought to you by the likes of Fox, CNN, or USA Today—it
also shines a light on less prominent, but more incisive alternative-media
sources serving up in-depth investigations and watchdog reports.
Phillips is stepping down this year as director of Project
Censored and turning his attention toward a new endeavor called
Media Freedom International, which will tap academic affiliates
from around the globe to verify the content put out by independent
news outlets, in order to facilitate trust in these lesser-known
sources. “The biggest question I got asked for 13 years was,
who do you trust?” he explains. “So we’ve really made an effort
in the last three years to try and address that question,
in a very open way, in a very honest way, and say, these are
[the sources] who we can trust.”
Benjamin Frymer, a sociology professor at Sonoma State who
is stepping into the role of Project Censored director, says
he believes the time is ripe for this kind of push. “The actual
amount of time that people spend reading online is increasing,”
Frymer points out. “It’s not as if people are just cynically
rejecting media—they’re reaching out for alternative sources.
Project Censored wants to get involved in making those sources
visible.”
The Project Censored book this year uses the term “truth emergency.”
“We
call it an emergency because it’s a democratic emergency,”
Huff asserts. In this media climate, he says, “We’re awash
in a sea of information. But we have a paucity of understanding
about what the truth is.”
The top 25 Project Censored stories of 2008-2009 highlight
the same theme that Phillips and Huff say has triggered the
downslide of mainstream media: the overwhelming influence
of powerful, profit-driven interests. The No. 1 story details
the financial sector’s hefty campaign contributions to key
members of Congress leading up to the financial crisis, which
coincided with a weakening of federal banking regulations.
Another story points out that in even in the financial tumult
following the economic downturn, special interests spent more
money on D.C. lobbyists than ever before.
Here’s this year’s list:
1.
Congress sells out to Wall Street
The
total tab for the Wall Street bailout, including money spent
and promised by the United States government, works out to
an estimated $42,000 for every man, woman and child, according
to American Casino, a documentary about subprime lending and
the financial meltdown. The predatory lending free-for-all,
the emergency pumping of taxpayer dollars to prop up megabanks,
and the lavish bonuses handed out to Wall Street executives
in the aftermath are all issues that have dominated news headlines.
But another twist in the story has received scant attention
from the mainstream news media: The unsettling combination
of lax oversight from national politicians with high-dollar
campaign contributions from financial players.
“The
worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed
were together a kind of revolution, a coup d’état,” Matt Taibbi
wrote in “The Big Takeover,” a March, 2009 Rolling Stone
article. “They cemented and formalized a political trend
that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover
of the government by a small class of connected insiders,
who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically
weaken financial regulations.”
In the 10-year period beginning in 1998, the financial sector
spent $1.7 billion on federal campaign contributions, and
another $3.4 billion on lobbyists. Since 2001, eight of the
most troubled firms have donated $64.2 million to congressional
candidates, presidential candidates, and the Republican and
Democratic parties.
Wall Street’s spending spree on political contributions coincided
with a weakening of federal banking regulations, which in
turn created a recipe for the astronomical financial disaster
that sent the global economy reeling.
Sources:
“Lax Oversight? Maybe $64 Million to DC Pols Explains It,”
Greg Gordon, Truthout.org and McClatchey Newspapers, Oct.
2, 2008; “Congressmen Hear From TARP Recipients Who Funded
Their Campaigns,” Lindsay Renick Mayer, Capitol Eye,
Feb. 10, 2009; “The Big Takeover,” Matt Taibbi, Rolling
Stone, March 2009
2.
De facto segregation deepening in public education
Latinos
and African-Americans attend more segregated public schools
today than they have for four decades, Professor Gary Orfield
noted in “Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society: A 21st
Century Challenge,” a study conducted by the Civil Rights
Project of the University of California Los Angeles. Orfield’s
report used federal data to highlight deepening segregation
in public education by race and poverty.
About 44 percent of students in the nation’s public school
system are people of color, and this group will soon make
up the majority of the population in the United States. Yet
this racial diversity often isn’t reflected from school to
school. Instead, two out of every five African-American and
Latino youth attend schools that Orfield characterizes as
“intensely segregated,” comprising 90 to 100 percent people
of color.
For Latinos, the trend reflects growing residential segregation.
For African-Americans, the study attributes a significant
part of the reversal to the ending of desegregation plans
in public schools nationwide. Schools that are segregated
by race and poverty tend to have much higher dropout rates,
higher teacher turnover, and greater exposure to crime and
gangs, placing students at a major disadvantage in society.
The most severe segregation is in Western states, including
California.
Fifty-five years after the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board
of Education ruling, Orfield wrote, “Segregation is fast spreading
into large sectors of suburbia and there is little or no assistance
for communities wishing to resist the pressures of resegregation
and ghetto creation in order to build successfully integrated
schools and neighborhoods.”
Source:
“Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society: A 21st Century
Challenge,” Gary Orfield, The Civil Rights Project, UCLA,
January 2009
3.
Somali pirates: The untold story
Somali
pirates off the Horn of Africa were like gold for mainstream
news outlets this past year. Stories describing surprise attacks
on shipping vessels, daring rescues, and cadres of ragtag
bandits extracting multimillion-dollar ransoms were all over
the airwaves and front pages.
Even as the pirates’ exploits around the Gulf of Aden captured
the world’s attention, however, very little ink was devoted
to factors that made the Somalis desperate enough to resort
to piracy in the first place: the dumping of nuclear waste
and rampant overfishing in their coastal waters.
In the early 1990s, when the government of Somalia collapsed,
foreign interests began swooping into unguarded coastal waters
to trawl for food—and venturing into unprotected Somali territories
to cheaply dispose of nuclear waste. Those activities continued
with impunity for years. The ramifications of toxic dumping
hit full force with the 2005 tsunami, when leaking barrels
were washed ashore, sickening hundreds and causing birth defects
in newborn infants. The uncontrolled fishing harvests, meanwhile,
damaged the economic livelihoods of Somali fishermen and eroded
the country’s supply of a primary food source. That’s when
the piracy started.
“Did
we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches,
paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish
to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome?” asked
journalist Johann Hari in a Huffington Post article. “We didn’t
act on those crimes—but when some of the fishermen responded
by disrupting the transit corridor for 20 percent of the world’s
oil supply, we begin to shriek about ‘evil.’ ”
Sources:
“Toxic waste behind Somali piracy,” Najad Abdullahi, Al
Jazeera English, Oct. 11, 2008; “You are being lied to
about pirates,” Johann Hari, The Huffington Post, Jan. 4,
2009; “The Two Piracies in Somalia: Why the World Ignores
the Other,” Mohamed Abshir Waldo, WardheerNews, Jan.
8, 2009
4.
North Carolina’s nuclear nightmare
The
Shearon Harris nuclear plant in North Carolina’s Wake County
isn’t just a power generating station. The Progress Energy
plant, located in a backwoods area, bears the distinction
of housing the largest radioactive-waste storage pools in
the country. Spent fuel rods from two other nuclear plants
are transported there by rail, then stored beneath circulating
cold water to prevent the radioactive waste from heating.
The hidden danger, according to investigative reporter Jeffery
St. Clair, is the looming threat of a pool fire. Citing a
study by Brookhaven National Laboratory, St. Clair highlighted
in Counterpunch the catastrophe that could ensue if a pool
were to ignite. A possible 140,000 people could wind up with
cancer. Contamination could stretch for thousands of square
miles. And damages could reach an estimated $500 billion.
“Spent
fuel recently discharged from a reactor could heat up relatively
rapidly and catch fire,” Robert Alvarez, a former Department
of Energy advisor and Senior Scholar at the Institute for
Policy Studies noted in a study about safety issues surrounding
nuclear waste pools. “The fire could well spread to older
fuel. The long-term contamination consequences of such an
event could be significantly worse than Chernobyl.”
Shearon Harris’ track record is pocked with problems requiring
temporary shutdowns of the plant and malfunctions of the facility’s
emergency-warning system.
When a study was sent to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
highlighting the safety risks and recommending technological
fixes to address the problem, St. Clair noted, a pro-nuclear
commissioner successfully persuaded the agency to dismiss
the concerns.
Source:
“Pools of Fire,” Jeffrey St. Clair, CounterPunch, Aug.
9, 2008
5.
U.S. fails to protect consumers against toxics
Two
years ago, the European Union enacted a bold new environmental
policy requiring close scrutiny and restriction of toxic chemicals
used in everyday products. Invisible perils such as lead in
lipstick, endocrine disruptors in baby toys, and mercury in
electronics can threaten human health, and the European legislation
aimed to gradually phase out these toxic materials and replace
them with safer alternatives.
The story that’s gone unreported by mainstream American news
media, however, is how this game-changing legislation might
impact the United States, where chemical corporations use
lobbying muscle to ensure comparatively lax oversight of toxic
substances. As global markets shift to favor safer consumer
products, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is lagging
far behind in its own scrutiny of insidious chemicals.
As investigative journalist Mark Schapiro pointed out in Exposed:
The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What’s at Stake
for American Power, the EPA’s tendency to behave as if
it were beholden to big business could backfire in this case,
placing U.S. companies at a competitive disadvantage because
products manufactured here will be regarded with increasing
distrust.
Economics aside, the implications of loose restrictions on
toxic products are chilling: Just one-third of the 267 chemicals
on the EU’s watch list have ever been tested by the EPA, and
only two are regulated under federal law. Meanwhile, researchers
at University of California Berkeley estimate that 42 billion
pounds of chemicals enter American commerce daily, and only
a fraction of them have ever undergone risk assessments. When
it comes to meeting the safer, more stringent EU standard,
the stakes are high—with consequences including not just economic
impacts, but public health.
Sources:
“European Chemical Clampdown Reaches Across Atlantic,” David
Biello, Scientific American, Sept. 30, 2008; “How Europe’s
New Chemical Rules Affect US,” Environmental Defense Fund,
Sept. 30, 2008; “US Lags Behind Europe in Regulating Toxicity
of Everyday Products,” Mark Schapiro, Democracy Now! Feb.
24, 2009
6.
As economy shrinks, D.C. lobbying grows
In
2008, as the economy tumbled and unemployment soared, Washington
lobbyists working for special interests were paid $3.2 billion—more
than any other year on record. According to the Center for
Responsive Politics, special interests spent a collective
$32,523 per legislator, per day, for every day Congress was
in session.
One event that triggered the lobbying boom, according to CRP
director Sheila Krumholz, was the federal bailout. With the
U.S. government shelling out billions in stimulus money, industries
wanted to ensure they’d get a piece of the pie. Ironically,
some of the first in line were the same players who helped
precipitate the nation’s sharp economic downturn by engaging
in high-risk, speculative lending practices.
“Even
though some financial, insurance and real estate interests
pulled back last year, they still managed to spend more than
$450 million as a sector to lobby policymakers,” Krumholz
notes. “That can buy a lot of influence, and it’s a fraction
of what the financial sector is reaping in return through
the government’s bailout program.”
The list of highest-ranking spenders on D.C. lobbying reads
like a roster of some of the most powerful interests nationwide.
Topping the list was the health sector, which spent $478.5
million lobbying Congress last year. A very close runner-up
was the finance, insurance and real-estate sector, spending
$453.5 million. Pharmaceutical companies plunked down $230
million, electric utilities spent $156.7 million, and oil
and gas companies paid lobbyists $133.2 million.
Source:
“Washington Lobbying Grew to $3.2 Billion Last Year, Despite
Economy,” Center for Responsive Politics, Open Secrets.org
7.
Obama’s controversial defense appointees
President
Barack Obama’s appointments to the U.S. Department of Defense
have raised serious questions among critics who’ve studied
their track records. Although the news media haven’t paid
much attention, the defense appointees bring to the administration
controversial histories and conflicts of interest due to close
ties to defense contractors.
Obama’s decision to retain Robert Gates, secretary of defense
under President George W. Bush, marks the first time in history
that a president has opted to keep a defense secretary of
an outgoing opposing party in power.
Gates, a former CIA director, has faced criticism for allegedly
spinning intelligence reports for political means. In Failure
of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA, author and
former CIA analyst Melvin Goodman described him as “the chief
action officer for the Reagan administration’s drive to tailor
intelligence reporting to White House political desires.”
Gates also came under scrutiny for questions surrounding whether
he misled Congress during the Iran-Contra scandal in the mid-1980s,
and was accused of withholding information from intelligence
committees when the United States provided military aid to
Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war.
Critics are also uneasy about the appointment of Deputy Defense
Secretary William Lynn, who formerly served as a senior vice
president at defense giant Raytheon and was a registered lobbyist
for the company until July 2008. Lynn, who previously served
as Pentagon comptroller under the Clinton Administration,
came under fire during his confirmation hearing due to “questionable
accounting practices.” The Defense Department flunked multiple
audits under Lynn’s leadership, because it was unable to properly
account for $3.4 trillion in financial transactions made over
the course of several years.
Sources:
“The Danger of Keeping Robert Gates,” Robert Parry, ConsortiumNews.com,
Nov. 13, 2008; “Obama’s Defense Department Appointees- The
3.4 Trillion Dollar Question,” Andrew Hughes, Global Research,
Feb. 13, 2009; “Obama Nominee Admiral Dennis Blair Aided perpetrators
of 1999 church Killings in East Timor,” Allan Nairn, Democracy
Now! Jan. 7, 2009; “Ties to Chevron, Boeing Raise Concern
on Possible NSA Pick,” Roxana Tiron, The Hill, Nov.
24, 2008
8.
Big business cheats the IRS
The
Cayman Islands and Bermuda are magnets for financial giants
such as Bank of America, Citigroup, American International
Group, and eleven other beneficiaries of the federal government’s
2008 Wall Street bailout. It’s not the balmy weather that
inspires some of America’s wealthiest companies to open up
operations in the Caribbean archipelago: The offshore oases
provide safe harbors to stash cash out of the reach of Uncle
Sam.
According to a 2008 report by the Government Accountability
Office—which was largely ignored by the news media—83 of the
top publicly held U.S. companies, including some receiving
substantial portions of federal bailout dollars, have operations
in tax havens that allow them to avoid paying their fair share
to the Internal Revenue Service. The report also spotlighted
the activities of Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS), which has
helped wealthy Americans to use tax schemes to cheat the IRS
out of billions in recent years.
In December 2008, banking giant Goldman Sachs reported its
first-ever quarterly loss, then followed up with a statement
that its tax rate would drop from 34.1 percent to 1 percent,
citing “changes in geographic earnings mix” as the reason.
The difference: Instead of paying $6 billion in total worldwide
taxes as it did in 2007, Goldman Sachs would pay a total of
$14 million in 2008. In the same year, it received $10 billion
and debt guarantees from the U.S. government.
“The
problem is larger than Goldman Sachs,” U.S. Representative
Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat who serves on the tax-writing
House Ways and Means Committee, told Bloomberg. “With the
right hand out begging for bailout money, the left is hiding
it offshore.”
Sources:
“Goldman Sachs’s Tax Rate Drops to 1% or $14 Million,” Christine
Harper, Bloomberg, Dec. 16, 2008; “Gimme Shelter: Tax Evasion
and the Obama Administration,” Thomas B. Edsall, The Huffington
Post, Feb. 23, 2009
9.
U.S. connected to white phosphorous strikes in Gaza
In
mid-January, as part of a military campaign, the Israeli Defense
Forces fired several shells that hit the headquarters of a
United Nations relief agency in Gaza City, destroying provisions
for basic aid such as food and medicine.
The shells contained white phosphorous (referred to as “Willy
Pete” in military slang), a smoke-producing, spontaneously
flammable agent that is designed to obscure battle territory
but can also ignite buildings or cause grotesque burns if
it touches the skin.
The attack on the relief-agency headquarters is but one example
of a civilian structure that researchers discovered had been
hit during the January air strikes. In the aftermath of the
attacks, Human Rights Watch volunteers found spent white phosphorous
shells on city streets, apartment roofs, residential courtyards,
and at a UN school in Gaza.
Human Rights Watch says that IDF’s use of white phosphorous
violated international law, which absolutely prohibits deliberate,
indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks that result in
civilian casualties. After gathering evidence such as spent
shells, the international organization issued a report condemning
the repeated firing of white phosphorus shells over densely
populated areas of Gaza as a war crime. Amnesty International,
another human-rights organization, followed suit by calling
upon the United States to suspend military aid to Israel—but
to no avail.
The U.S. was a primary source of funding and weaponry for
Israel’s military campaign. Washington provided F-16 fighter
planes, Apache helicopters, tactical missiles, and a wide
array of munitions, including white phosphorus.
Sources:
“White Phosphorus Use Evidence of War Crimes Report: Rain
of Fire: Israel’s Unlawful Use of White Phosphorus in Gaza,”
Fred Abrahams, Human Rights Watch, March 25, 2009; “Suspend
Military Aid to Israel, Amnesty Urges Obama after Detailing
US Weapons Used in Gaza,” Rory McCarthy, Guardian/UK,
February 23, 2009; “US Weaponry Facilitates Killings in Gaza,”
Thalif Deen, Inter Press Service, January 8, 2009; “US military
re-supplying Israel with ammunition through Greece,” Saed
Bannoura, International Middle East Media Center News,
January 8, 2009
10.
Ecuador says it won’t pay illegitimate debt
When
President Rafael Correa announced that Ecuador would default
on its foreign debt last December, he didn’t say it was because
the Latin American country was unable to pay. Rather, he framed
it as a moral stand: “As president, I couldn’t allow us to
keep paying a debt that was obviously immoral and illegitimate,”
Correa told an international news agency. The news was mainly
reported in financial publications, and the stories tended
to quote harsh critics who characterized Correa as an extreme
leftist with ties to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
But there’s much more to the story. The announcement came
in the wake of an exhaustive audit of Ecuador’s debt, conducted
under Correa’s direction by a newly created debt audit commission.
The unprecedented audit documented hundreds of allegations
of irregularity and illegality in the decades of debt collection
from international lenders. Although Ecuador had made payments
exceeding the value of the principal since the time it initially
took out loans in the 1970s, its foreign debt had nonetheless
swelled to levels three times as high due to extraordinarily
high interest rates. With a huge percentage of the country’s
financial resources devoted to paying the debt, little was
leftover to combat poverty in the Ecuador.
Correa’s move to stand up against foreign lenders did not
go unnoticed by other impoverished, debt-ridden nations, and
the decision could set a precedent for developing countries
that are struggling to get out from under massive debt obligation
to first-world lenders.
Ecuador eventually agreed to a restructuring of its debt at
about 35 cents on the dollar, but the move nonetheless served
to expose deficiencies in the World Bank system, which provides
little recourse for countries to resolve disputes over potentially
illegitimate debt.
Sources:
“As Crisis Mounts, Ecuador Declares Foreign Debt Illegitimate
and Illegal,” Daniel Denvir, Alternet, November 26, 2008;
“Invalid Loans to Ecuador: Who Owes Who,” Committee for the
Integral Audit of Public Credit, Utube, Fall 2008; “Ecuador’s
Debt Default,” Neil Watkins and Sarah Anders, Foreign
Policy in Focus, Dec. 15, 2008
Other
stories in the Top 25
11.
Private corporations profit from the occupation of Palestine
12. Mysterious death of Mike Connell—Karl Rove’s election
thief
13. Katrina’s hidden race war
14. Congress invested in defense contracts
15. World Bank’s carbon trade fiasco
16. U.S. repression of Haiti continues
17. The ICC facilitates U.S. covert war in Sudan
18. Ecuador’s constitutional rights of nature
19. Bank bailout recipients spent to defeat labor
20. Secret control of the presidential debates
21. Recession causes states to cut welfare
22. Obama’s Trilateral Commission team
23. Activists slam World Water Forum as a corporate-driven
fraud
24. Dollar glut finances U.S. military expansion
25. Fast-track oil exploitation in western Amazon
Read them all at projectcensored.org.
|
Site
Search 
