Project Censored 2007

May 27, 2007 11:29 AM

Project Censored compiles an annual list of 25 news stories of social significance that have been overlooked, under-reported or self-censored by the country's major national news media. On this year's list : Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technologies to Iran, Oceans of the World in Extreme Danger, High-Tech Genocide in Congo, and many more.
posted by Afroblanco (26 comments total)

server down
posted by KokuRyu at 11:46 AM on May 27, 2007

Well that sucks, eh Afroblanco?

In the interim until it gets back up, Kim Pearson at BlogHer compiled corresponding blog coverage for each of Project Censored's 25 stories.
posted by madamjujujive at 11:53 AM on May 27, 2007

Halliburton Secretly Doing Business with Key Member of Iran's Nuclear Team. I keep thinking I should have long since ceased to be shocked by the utter venality of these scumfuckers, and yet...my jaw drops, once again.
posted by scody at 12:04 PM on May 27, 2007

and just to preempt the inevitable wingnut attempt at derailing: Whitewater! There. Got that out of the way for the BushCo apologists.
posted by scody at 12:06 PM on May 27, 2007

scody, unfortunately that article is by Jason Leopold. He makes shit up.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:09 PM on May 27, 2007

Since the server is down, I checked yesterday's /. discussion to see if there's a coralized version available but came up empty.

Here's a link to that discussion. Just like every year it's largely "these guys don't know what the word censorship means" "STFU! yes they do" "nuh-uh!" "yes-huh!".
posted by psmith at 12:09 PM on May 27, 2007

My "favourite" under-reported story is Earth's dying oceans. Fisheries researcher Daniel Pauly believes we're entering the "age of slime" and that, thanks to human activity the seas are actually "devolving". As we remove higher orders of life, empty ecological niches are being occupied by primitive organisms such as algae.

It's strange to think that in ten years or so fresh, wild fish will be hard to come by.
posted by KokuRyu at 12:19 PM on May 27, 2007

Damn. Looks like I picked the worst possible time to post this. Oh well, hopefully the servers will come back online soon.
posted by Afroblanco at 12:56 PM on May 27, 2007

It's back up.
posted by Kattullus at 1:24 PM on May 27, 2007

The post madamjujujive linked to about blog coverage of the stories is interesting because it seems to reveal something about the nature of Internet news and analysis, especially in light of the Gore quote about the Internet being the future hope of democracy leading that piece.

The author of that post's conclusion is that, aside from the Net Neutrality issue, bloggers are largely ignoring the other stories. It seems to me that the first story about Net Neutrality is the one which critics have the most justification for saying its absence from the media is not really censorship. While important, the vast majority of people are not tech or web savvy, and to them the issue likely seems trivial, especially when compared to the other things on the list. Only to the online community does it take on an aura of life-or-death importance, and seems to be given a distorted level of attention. What does this say about the future potential of blogs and the Internet as a valid news source if they are doing the same thing that the "Old Media" institutions are doing: giving their audiences the stories they want to hear about?
posted by Sangermaine at 1:40 PM on May 27, 2007

The servers weren't down - they were being censored.
posted by Chunder at 2:15 PM on May 27, 2007

Some of these are pretty dubious:

"#18 Physicist Challenges Official 9-11 Story"
"#14 Homeland Security Contracts KBR to Build Detention Centers in the US"


Are these really censored stories? Or simply conspiracy theories that people aren't taking seriously because they are dumb? Some of the stuff on the list is real, some are not really ignored at all, some is crap, but it certainly is not a shining example of good journalism.
posted by blahblahblah at 2:36 PM on May 27, 2007

Oh yeah, here is the NY Times article on the KBR detention centers, which is not mentioned in Project Censored.

And here is some coverage in the Times of Steven Jones, the scientist who claims a 9/11 conspiracy.
posted by blahblahblah at 2:43 PM on May 27, 2007

Sometimes I rather wish I hadn't been trained to analyze information and its implications.
posted by SaintCynr at 3:01 PM on May 27, 2007

blahblahblah has it right. Most of these "censored" stories are really just shabby journalism with sensationalist slants.

Or, in the case of No. 1 ("Future of Internet Debate Ignored by Media"), the "untold story" is really just an opinion about news judgment in general (I read plenty of net neutrality stories, but Project Censored says it wasn't enough).

Or, like No. 12 ("Pentagon Plans to Build New Landmines"), the "untold story" is completely without meaningful context (the Pentagon spends 100 times more money researching gigaton-sized nuclear weapons than it does landmines, and some might argue the U.S. is more likely to use tactical nukes than deploy landmines).

There's a reason you haven't heard of these stories, and it has nothing to do with "corporate media."
posted by frogan at 3:44 PM on May 27, 2007

"This interview conducted on May 26, 2007 on the Alex Jones Show exposes criminal behavior in our government that should be on every major news media program in America . . . but it is conspicuously absent. "

BBC Greg Palast : Rove Voter Fraud Story

Photographs taken by "ordinary soldiers".
posted by nickyskye at 5:55 PM on May 27, 2007

I'll certainly be thinking about this one for the next day or so...
posted by pax digita at 6:18 PM on May 27, 2007

from nickyskye's link: the last six years summed up in one photo.
posted by trondant at 6:52 PM on May 27, 2007

There are a lot of fucked-up tanks in those photos.

#18 Physicist Challenges Official 9-11 Story

1. Steven Jones is a physicist, not a structural engineer.
2. BYU forced him to retire because his paper wasn't peer-reviewed and he was an embarrassment to the university.
3. He also thinks Jesus visited North America.

posted by kirkaracha at 7:32 PM on May 27, 2007

kirkaracha: Of course Jesus visits North America. The President consults with him daily!
posted by lukemeister at 8:14 PM on May 27, 2007

Yeah, the 9-11 story is pretty tinfoil, but I think the rest of the list is credible. Especially the part about the oceans. Pretty goddamn freaky if you ask me.
posted by Afroblanco at 9:12 PM on May 27, 2007

Is it just me or are most of these stories from 2005? Check the sources for these stories.
posted by PreteFunkEra at 9:41 PM on May 27, 2007

Afroblanco, but the whole thing is a bit weird. Stories are either tinfoil/unsourced (concentration camps, 9/11 conspiracies, Haliburton and a nuclear Iran) or they are rather trivial (Andean gold mining) or they seem to be well covered indeed. The oceans stuff has been covered by the Washington Post, NPR, and Time recently, the undisclosed DHS spending article is from Congressional Quarterly, the rainforests aren't being ignored, the death of Iraqi civilians is from the New Yorker, and has been covered elsewhere, etc.

The net feeling I get from this is that the media is generally doing a rather good job covering issues, if these are the big censored stories, but that the emphasis may not be what the creators of Project Censored would like. The real sensational stuff that isn't being covered according to this list are the ones that are, essentially rumor. The others feel like a rather random list of stories that could be important. I am sure right-wingers would draw up a different list of "censored stories" in any case.
posted by blahblahblah at 10:13 PM on May 27, 2007

Anyone have a good source for number 11 about the genetically modified food somehow being toxic? Ridiculous claims about GMOs are one of my pet peeves, I want to see just how shoddy their source material is here.

I'm interested in the one about roundup as well, since that sounds like it could actually be a valid concern: it's pesticides, we know they're toxic already and the new farming techniques could be resulting in increased exposure.
posted by Arturus at 11:32 PM on May 27, 2007

Just adding to the hot off the presses 9/11 roster: the Flight 93 crash film footage.
posted by nickyskye at 11:45 PM on May 27, 2007

Thanks for the list.
posted by homodigitalis at 6:23 AM on May 28, 2007