The Unbearable Lameness of Project Censored
It has become pointless, misleading, and laughable. It's time to slay the alternative media's sacred cow and put us all out of our misery.
Will Project Censored please go away?
On Mar. 29, this year's top 25 "censored" stories were announced to a giant yawn. Just like every year at this time, the latest edition of Project Censored's book compiling those stories is hitting the stores, and alternative weeklies are plastering the list on their covers.
The fact that Project Censored is predictable and boring isn't its biggest problem these days. It's also become irrelevant, laughable, and cheesy. Worse still, it's losing its credibility -- not a good thing for a media watchdog.
Censorship is a big, scary word. It's dangerous to toss around the concept casually; there are legitimate First Amendment issues in this country, never mind the limits of press freedoms elsewhere in the world that should get attention but don't. Censorship implies that some covert cabal somewhere is conspiring to keep The Truth from The People. But that's hardly the case with Project Censored's latest picks.
These stories are allegedly "The News That Didn't Make the News" -- except, of course, for the ones that did, which in fact include every article cited. The articles on this year's list appeared in dozens of publications, from our own Mother Jones to Dollars and Sense, The Nation, and The Village Voice -- all reputable and reasonably well-known publications.
The small print in this year's Project Censored materials tell us that the stories it honors are actually "underreported" or "undercovered" by the general media. Of course, the corporate media's flaccidity and vacuousness is a bad thing. But some grand conspiracy of censorship it isn't. Then again, "Project Underreported" wouldn't sell as many books, get as much press, or make its fans feel as self-righteous.
Also misleading is Project Censored's central assertion that the mainstream media has ignored the stories the PC team has unearthed. In the cases of the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th most "censored" stories of 1999, at least one major mainstream newspaper, magazine, or television news program (C-Span, CNN, and the Washington Post among others) did in fact cover the exact story, before the publication that Project Censored honors.
Perhaps the greatest indicator that Project Censored has passed its prime is how high on the "no shit" scale most of this year's honorees will rank with even marginally informed readers. For example, the sixth most "censored" story: "NATO Defends Private Economic Interests in The Balkans." Or how about number five: "Turkey Destroys Kurdish Villages with US Weapons." No kidding ... Clinton acknowledged that in 1995, as Project Censored's Web site itself notes. Or my personal favorite, number two: "Pharmaceutical Companies Put Profits Before Need." Thank God someone told us.
It should embarrass us that Project Censored has become a thinly veiled excuse for an alternative press self-love-fest, an opportunity for us to give ourselves awards, something to convince us that we're doing well and doing good. Are we really that insecure?
On the laughable front, this year we've got the left's poster boy Mumia Abu-Jamal writing the introduction. Mumia, perhaps the most inappropriately overexposed individual on earth -- who still insists that he is being censored, despite having a radio show and column carried just about anywhere Birkenstocks can be found, and on whose behalf thousands of sheep-like youth are leafletting an urban center near you -- serving as an example of censorship?
And just how credible can this operation be if, in its online abstract of one honored story, it identifies the KLA as the Kosovo Libertarian Army? Of course, it does make for a scarier story: Rush Limbaugh running a breakaway European republic!
It's sad, really. Back when Carl Jensen founded Project Censored in 1976 at Sonoma State University in Northern California, outlets for alternative views and news -- such as cable television, weekly newspapers, and Internet sites -- were either far fewer than they are now or didn't exist. If the mass media of the time didn't report it, we likely never heard it.
Jensen and his journalism students pored through public-interest groups' studies and trade journals for his "censored" stories. He was, at the time, justified to some extent in invoking the spectre of censorship, because no mainline news media ever covered the stories he cited, despite the fact that some mainstream journalists told him that they had known about the stories but chose not to pursue them. The public was stunned and outraged by what Project Censored exposed in those early years, and the news media were publicly shamed.
We owe Jensen a debt of gratitude: His two decades of work helped change journalism for the better. Unfortunately, his success made Project Censored a less compelling project after the first decade. Four years after Jensen's retirement, the project is so far from its founding mission and sensibility that it's not only irrelevant -- it's an embarrassment. Not only is the project no longer run by journalists (it moved from the communications department to the sociology department with Jensen's departure) or effectively even about journalism, it has become more misleading than informative.
Project Censored has done great things for public-interest media. Let's give it a dignified burial.
Page 1 of 1 
You seem to just choose the facts that seem harmless and yes most anybody with any form of media in their home would know,but the information on the War Commissions Act is in itself rather alarming certainly more important than "10 Ways to Stay Hip".
If your site covered half of the real social issues Project Censored currently reports on , maybe Mother Jones wouldn't be so worried about " altrnative " news reporting & " she " could stick to real information rather than ostentatious insults .
Since when was Rush Limbaugh a Libertarian? He's a right wing republican. Has he ever said otherwise?
You're trying to discredit Libertarianism by associating it with Conservatism.
Smart, Fearless, Journalism? How about craven, misleading, crap. Mother Jones would turn over in her grave if she saw how her name was being used to prop up the moribund status-quo. So you found a typo? Whooopppeeeeeeee! Where are the articles telling us that the right-wing press should be buried because everyone already knows that Bush is the decider?
Why do you believe Mumia is overexposed? For those who do not listen to pacifica, he has virtually no exposure. NPR censorhip ring any bells?
Michelle Malkin? Is that you?
Slogging through your sophomoric invective, I managed to extract a couple of points that weren't just derived from your shallow but sassy, cocktail circuit world view. (Maureen Dowd much?)
Namely, that the name no longer applies because so many outlets actually have covered these stories - outlets like your own rag, MJ.
Is it your contention that because one or two alternative publications cover a story, then censorship can't be accurately claimed even if other media outlets, like CBS or ABC, did in fact censore that story?
And even if that were logically consistent, which of course it is not, are you under some illusion that MJ etc. actually impact the public in any meaningful way compared to the big, corporate owned media?
Exaggerate your importance much?
Project Censored provides a service that many readers find valuable. It aggregates in some cases, and investigates in others, stories that are either deliberately or negligently ignored by the big, agenda setting media.
The project, and its name, are as much a statement about the misplaced priorites and, I would argue, corruption of the big media, than about the stoties themselves.
It is true that the emergence of blogs and other outlets have helped bring ignored stories to light. But that does not negate the value of PC's good work.
Is PC perfect? No. It is the product of many researchers and writers, with varying levels of talent and skill.
But, as your work demonstrates, this applies to Mother Jones as well.
Us readers have adapted in both cases, and know how to skip along.
If you're not being entertained by news then it is somehow irrelevant??? Weird. Your smear campaign of honest, investigative, no holds barred journalism discredits you immediately. Mother Jones is ashamed, I'm sure. What you fail to realize, probably because you're too consumed searching for ENTERTAINMENT updates as opposed to factual news, is that "censored" in this regard doesn't (always) mean fully suppressed... often it's simply highly passed over in favor of information deemed "more entertaining".
Truth is that I only made it half-way through of this piece of **** article but didn't hear one real piece of information. Just sounds like the same old insults and arrogant attitude displayed by a tiny minded individual who cannot form a credible argument.
BTW can you fit any more ad's on this waste of bandwidth?
Mother Jones is deserving of this kind of slam for its lack of scrutiny concerning many of the issues that have been RIGHTLY highlighted as effectively censored. Mother Jones is clearly owned by some nefarious sources to put out a hit piece on Project Censored. Nothing better to do? You make me sick! That bogus piece by James Ridgeway on 9/11 was a disgrace. But then, the fact that David Corn has take a post at MJ shows that something is truly rotten and that that magazine has nothing to do with the woman whose good name it has stolen.
"Put us *all* out of our misery"???
"Please go away"???
Please speak for yourself. What a whiny waste of time. Don't you have better villains to trash than some well-meaning sociology students who are ostensibly on your side?
You ARE on our side, aren't you?
Please see the following story NOT covered by Mother Jones. I suspect it was not covered by Mother Jones due to fear of reprisal by the Senior Senator from California Ms. Feinstein. So much for fearless journalism. The good Senator could be viewed as corrupt channeling contracts to her husband. It becomes hard to point a finger at Chenney.
# 23 Feinstein’s Conflict of Interest in Iraq
Source:
North Bay Bohemian, January 24, 2007
Title: “Senator Feinstein’s Iraq Conflict”
Author: Peter Byrne
http://www.bohemian.com/metro/01.24.07/dianne-feinstein-0704.html
There are important issues at hand.
Very disappointed in Mother Jones smear article.
Here's a great fact sheet about Mumia's case and the evidence that proves his innocence:
http://www.partisandefense.org/pubs/articles/factsheet1231.html
Well, well, well. It's 8 years later... Who's unbearably lame now?
Liar! Prove that the Censored work is "more misleading than informative". What crap... Every year SSU students work for hours on this stuff. The stories covered in the book have NEVER made it to the front page of mainstream newspapers. Maybe a snippet buried on page 18... Yeah, we've got alternative media now that covers a lot of this stuff, but most people still read newspapers expecting to hear about the most important news - and it's not there. And so what if the program moved from journalism to comms to sociology? What's your point? Sociologists are first and foremost researchers - are they somehow less than journalists? Maybe the Project needs an update in its methods, since the advancements of the internet, but that doesn't change the fact that for THIRTY YEARS, on a wing and a prayer, the Project has been publishing crucial stories that citizens need to know.
I find it unbelievable that some so-called alternative media would even print an article like this one! What a disgrace - and insult to your readers. As for the author, why don't you just go work for CNN or Fox News or some lame piece of **** governement sponsored media since they obviously are your source of inspiration!
I find it unbelievable that some so-called alternative media would even print an article like this one! What a disgrace - and insult to your readers. As for the author, why don't you just go work for CNN or Fox News or some lame piece of [deleted] governement sponsored media since they obviously are your source of inspiration!
Project Censored's #1 story on Iraqi deaths (for 2009) excludes a lot of "inconvenient" (but important) research. In fact, the following asks if Project Censored are resorting to censorship themselves on this issue:
