20 Years of Censored News


Book Description

Based on the work of Project Censored, the national media research project, 20 Years of Censored News reveals, year by year, the top censored news stories from 1976 to 1995. Of the 200 stories presented, less than 25 percent ever received sustained attention in the mainstream press. A disturbing report card of the media's long-term performance, 20 Years of Censored News provides rigorous documentation of the national news media's failure to keep the public informed.




Stories that Changed America


Book Description

Exuberantly written, highly informative, Jensen's Stories That Changed America examines the work of twenty-one investigative writers, and how their efforts forever changed our country. Here are the pioneering muckrakers, like Upton Sinclair, author of the fact-based novel The Jungle, that inspired Theodore Roosevelt to sign the Pure Food and Drug Act into law; "Queen of the Muckrakers" Ida Mae Tarbell, whose McClure magazine exposés led to the dissolution of Standard Oil's monopoly; and Lincoln Steffens, a reporter who unearthed corruption in both municipal and federal governments. You'll also meet Margaret Sanger, the former nurse who coined the term "birth control"; George Seldes, the most censored journalist in American history; Nobel Prize-winning novelist John Steinbeck; environmentalist Rachel Carson; National Organization of Women founder Betty Friedan; African American activist Malcolm X; consumer advocate Ralph Nader; and Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters whose Watergate break-in coverage brought down President Richard Nixon. The courageous writers Jensen includes in this deftly researched volume dedicated their lives to fight for social, civil, political and environmental rights with their mighty pens.




Project Censored Yearbook


Book Description




Project Censored's State of the Free Press 2021


Book Description

The new and improved "Censored," detailing the top censored stories and media analysis of 2020. Our nation's oldest news-monitoring group, Project Censored, refreshes its longstanding yearbook series, Censored, with State of the Free Press 2021. This edition offers a more succinct and comprehensive survey of the most important but underreported news stories of 2020; in addition to a comparative analysis of the current state of corporate and independent news media, and its effect on democracy. The establishment media sustains a decrepit post-truth era, as examined the lowlight features: "Junk Food News"-frivolous stories that distract the public from actual news-and-"News Abuse"-important stories covered in ways that undermine public understanding. The alternative media provokes a burgeoning critical media literacy age, as evaluated in the highlight feature: "Media Democracy in Action"-relevant stories responsibly reported on by independent organizations. Finally, in an homage to the history of the annual report, the editors reinstate the "Déjà vu News" feature-revisited stories from previous editions. State of the Free Press 2021 endows readers with the critical thinking and media literacy skills required to hold the corporate media to account for distorting or censoring news coverage, and thus, to revitalize our democracy.




Censored 1999


Book Description

The yearly volumes of Censored, in continuous publication since 1976 and since 1995 available through Seven Stories Press, is dedicated to the stories that ought to be top features on the nightly news, but that are missing because of media bias and self-censorship. The top stories are listed democratically in order of importance according to students, faculty, and a national panel of judges. Each of the top stories is presented at length, alongside updates from the investigative reporters who broke the stories. Beyond the Top 25 stories, additional chapters delve further into timely media topics: The Censored News and Media Analysis section provides annual updates on Junk Food News and News Abuse, Censored Déjà Vu, signs of hope in the alternative and news media, and the state of media bias and alternative coverage around the world. In the Truth Emergency section, scholars and journalists take a critical look at the US/NATO military-industrial-media empire. And in the Project Censored International section, the meaning of media democracy worldwide is explored in close association with Project Censored affiliates in universities and at media organizations all over the world. A perennial favorite of booksellers, teachers, and readers everywhere, Censored is one of the strongest life signs of our current collective desire to get the news we citizens need—despite what Big Media tells us.




Censored 2019


Book Description

“For more thanforty years, Project Censored has been our watchdog on the establishment media, casting its eye on how the information that we receive––and don’t receive––shapes our democracy. We need it more than ever today!” —Christopher Finan, Executive Director, National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) THESE ARE JUST A FEW OF THE STORIES PRESENTED IN CENSORED 2019: --“Open-Source” Intelligence Secrets Sold to Highest Bidders --ICE Intends to Destroy Records of Inhumane Treatment of Immigrants --Indigenous Communities around World Helping to Win Legal Rights of Nature --FBI Racially Profiling “Black Identity Extremists” --The Limits of Negative News and Importance of Constructive Media DID YOU KNOW THAT SINCE 1998 THE US GOVERNMENT SPENT $21 TRILLION IT CAN’T ACCOUNT FOR? Or that Internet co-ops are mobilizing poor communities to resist net neutrality rollbacks? How about the health risks of wireless tech that cell phone companies have covered up, or the opiate crisis that Big Pharma knowingly unleashed? Haven’t heard the news? Neither did the rest of the world. That’s because these and countless other news items are suppressed or ignored by our nation’s “free press” every day. For the past forty-three years, Project Censored has been unearthing the buried stories that corporate media deem unfit to print—and debunking the “fake news” governments and corporations use to consolidate their power—to promote well-informed citizen action and critical media literacy. This year’s Project Censored yearbook features: -- “Vetting Free Speech” by Sally Gimson, Layli Foroudi, and Sean Gallagher -- “#TimesUp: Breaking the Barriers of Sexual Harassment in Corporate Media for You and #MeToo” by Julie Frechette -- “Data Activism through Community Mapping and Data Visualization” by Dorothy Kidd -- “How Mainstream Media Evolved into Corporate Media” by Peter Phillips -- “Campus–Newsroom Collaborations” by Patricia W. Elliott -- “The Public and Its Problems” by Susan Maret Plus Junk Food News, News Abuse, and Media Democracy in Action. In a time of decline in the rule of law and democratic safeguards, Project Censored offers a constructive alternative to the “fake news” blues, holding the corporate media to account for its negative bias, propaganda for wealth and power, and outright censorship.




All Things Censored


Book Description

More than 75 essays—many freshly composed by Mumia with the cartridge of a ball-point pen, the only implement he is allowed in his death-row cell—embody the calm and powerful words of humanity spoken by a man on Death Row. Abu-Jamal writes on many different topics, including the ironies that abound within the U.S. prison system and the consequences of those ironies, and his own case. Mumia's composure, humor, and connection to the living world around him represents an irrefutable victory over the "corrections" system that has for two decades sought to isolate and silence him. The title, All Things Censored, refers to Mumia's hiring as an on-air columnist by National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," and subsequent banning from that venue under pressure from law and order groups.




Dangerous Ideas


Book Description

A fascinating examination of how restricting speech has continuously shaped our culture, and how censorship is used as a tool to prop up authorities and maintain class and gender disparities Through compelling narrative, historian Eric Berkowitz reveals how drastically censorship has shaped our modern society. More than just a history of censorship, Dangerous Ideas illuminates the power of restricting speech; how it has defined states, ideas, and culture; and (despite how each of us would like to believe otherwise) how it is something we all participate in. This engaging cultural history of censorship and thought suppression throughout the ages takes readers from the first Chinese emperor’s wholesale elimination of books, to Henry VIII’s decree of death for anyone who “imagined” his demise, and on to the attack on Charlie Hebdo and the volatile politics surrounding censorship of social media. Highlighting the base impulses driving many famous acts of suppression, Berkowitz demonstrates the fragility of power and how every individual can act as both the suppressor and the suppressed.




The New Censorship


Book Description

An examination of how the media is under fire and how to safeguard journalists and the information they seek to share with the public. Journalists are being imprisoned and killed in record numbers. Online surveillance is annihilating privacy, and the Internet can be brought under government control at any time. Joel Simon, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, warns that we can no longer assume that our global information ecosystem is stable, protected, and robust. Journalists are increasingly vulnerable to attack by authoritarian governments, militants, criminals, and terrorists, who all seek to use technology, political pressure, and violence to set the global information agenda. Reporting from Pakistan, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, and Mexico, among other hotspots, Simon finds journalists under threat from all sides. The result is a growing crisis in information—a shortage of the news we need to make sense of our globalized world and fight human rights abuses, manage conflict, and promote accountability. Drawing on his experience defending journalists on the front lines, he calls on “global citizens,” U.S. policy makers, international law advocates, and human rights groups to create a global freedom-of-expression agenda tied to trade, climate, and other major negotiations. He proposes ten key priorities, including combating the murder of journalists, ending censorship, and developing a global free-expression charter to challenge the criminal and corrupt forces that seek to manipulate the world's news. “Wise and insightful. [Simon] offers hope to all who care about maintaining the free flow of information in a world full of would-be censors.”—Ann Cooper, Columbia Journalism School




In the Dream House


Book Description

A revolutionary memoir about domestic abuse by the award-winning author of Her Body and Other Parties In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado’s engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming. And it’s that struggle that gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope—the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman—through which Machado holds the events up to the light and examines them from different angles. She looks back at her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations of the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships. Machado’s dire narrative is leavened with her characteristic wit, playfulness, and openness to inquiry. She casts a critical eye over legal proceedings, fairy tales, Star Trek, and Disney villains, as well as iconic works of film and fiction. The result is a wrenching, riveting book that explodes our ideas about what a memoir can do and be.