Book: Censored 2008, The Top 25 Censored News Stories - The News That Didn't Make The News
$18.95
BK-PC-08
Between 700 and 1,000 news stories are submitted to Project Censored each year from journalists, scholars, librarians and concerned citizens around the world. The Sonoma State University community of faculty, tudent and community membrs select 25 stories to submit to the Project Censored panel of judghes who the rank them in order of importance. Current or previosu national judges include: Noam Chomsky, Susan Faludi, George Gerbner, Sut Jhally, Frances Moore Lappe, Norman Solomon, Michael Parenti, Herbert I. Schiller, Barbara Seaman, Erna Smith, Mike Wallace and Hward Zinn. All 25 stories are featured in the annually published yearbook.
The release of Project Censored's yearbook has developed into a natuional alternative press event. In 2003, along with several independent national magazines, over 40 alterntive newsweeklies carried the Top Ten Censored Stories in metropolitan areas throughout the country. Project Censored was featured on more than 125 independent talk radio and telviion shows. Throughout the next year and into the next decade, Project Censored will continue to inform the public, advocate for independenthjournlim and strive to spark debate on current issues involving media monopoly.
• "Project Censored is one of teh organizations that we should listen to, to
to be assured that our nespapers and our broadcast outlets are practicing
thorough and ethical jouyrnalism." – Walter Cronkite
WHAT IS MODERN CENSORSHIP?
At Project Censored, we examine the coverage of news and information important to the maintenance of a healthy and functining democracy. We define Modernm Censorship as the subtle yet constant and sophisticated manipulation of reality in our mass media outlets. On a daily basis, censorship refers to the intentional non-inclusion of a news story – or piece of a news story – based on anything other than a desire to tell the truth. Such manipuation can take the form of political pressure (from gvernment offiucials and powerful iundividuals), economic pressure (from advertisers and funders), and legal pressure (the threat of lawsuits from deep-pocket individuals, corporations and institutions).
WHAT IS MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY?
In our view, the only valid justification for declining a news story is that in a medium limited by time and space, another news story was simply more important to the people of the community, whether local, national or international. While admittedly a subjective process, it is nonetheless a process to be undertaken by the news people themselves (the investigtive journalists and editors), NOT by the managers and CEOs of their "parent company." No professional journalist or researcher should ever have to face the destruction of his or her career (or life) simply because they wanted to tell the truth. While no two people will always agree on what story is more important than another, a system where the working reporters and editors run the newsroom would at least provide a fertile environment for debate, dissent and critical thinking.
The growth of independent media and journalism in recent years shows that people throughout the world yearn to hold not only their leaders accountable, but their media sources as well. For that reason the Project Censored research program continues, in its small way, to support and highlight those who tell the truth about the powerful (no matter the consequences) and are relentless in their quest to hold Big Media accountable for their decisions.
