Text File

Path: uuwest!spies!apple!shelby!bu.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!sgi!shinobu!odin!ratmandu.sgi.com!dave From: dave@ratmandu.sgi.com (dave "who can do? ratmandu!" ratcliffe) Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.activism,misc.headlines,alt.conspiracy,ca.politics,ba.politics Subject: Project Censored--1989 list Keywords: Centrally controlled info--#1 threat to liberty & justice for all Message-ID: <9041@odin.corp.sgi.com> Date: 18 Jun 90 18:49:29 GMT Sender: news@odin.corp.sgi.com Reply-To: dave@ratmandu.sgi.com (dave "who can do? ratmandu!" ratcliffe) Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA Lines: 534

Centrally controlled information has always posed one of the greatest threats to liberty and justice for all. Think you're well-informed? Think we in America have free an unfettered access to *ALL* the goings on around us and throughout the world--particularly those that might have a negative effect on our ourselves or others in far away lands? Read on to see what the top-ten most censored stories for 1989 were as selected by "Project Censored", an annual nationwide media research project, created in 1976 by Dr. Carl Jensen, Professor of Communications Studies at Sonoma State University. Quoting from their own brochure:

The primary objective of "Project Censored" is to explore and publicize the extent of censorship in our society by locating stories about significant issues of which the public should be aware, but is not, for one reason or another.

The following article appeared in the "San Francisco Bay Guardian", May 30, 1990, and is reprinted here with permission of the newspaper. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ NOTE: This article examines Project Censored's annual report of the top-ten most censored news-worthy stories of 1989. I have inserted pieces from the Project Censored brochure into this posting and have delimited their inclusion within square braces--[ ... ].

THE NEWS WE DIDN'T HEAR

A panel of journalism experts names the year's ten most important censored stories in the 14th annual Project Censored report

By Jean Tepperman and Emma Torres ---------------------------------

SOME OF THE most important news of 1989 scarcely made the headlines. From corporate thought control to toxic waste in your gas tank, the major news media failed to report numerous big stories--and Project Censored has identified them. In the United States, says Project Censored's founder, Sonoma State University Journalism Professor Carl Jensen, stories are censored, not by outright government repression, but by "the media's penchant for self-censorship and desire to avoid sensitive issues, coupled with the Bush administration, which is even more secretive than the Reagan era, [depriving] the public of information about issues it should know about." For the 14th year a panel of distinguished journalists and journalism experts, under the auspices of Project Censored, has selected the top ten censored stories of the year.

____________________________________________________________________ | | | THE PROJECT CENSORED PANEL | | | | JUDGES FOR THIS year's selection of the top censored stories | | were: Dr. Donna Allen, founding editor of "Media Report to | | Women"; Jonathan Alter, senior writer at "Newsweek"; Ben | | Bagdikian, former dean of the Journalism School of the | | University of California at Berkeley; Jim Cameron, founder | | and systems operator, CompuServe Journalism forum; Noam | | Chomsky, professor of Linguistics and Philosophy, | | Massachusetts Institute of Technology; George Gerbner, | | professor, Annenberg School of Journalism, University of | | Pennsylvania: Nicholas Johnson, professor, College of Law, | | University of Iowa; Rhoda H. Karpatkin, executive director, | | Consumer's Union; Charles L. Klotzer, editor and publisher, | | "St. Louis Journalism Review"; Judith Krug, director, Office | | for Intellectual Freedom, American Library Association; | | Frances Moore Lappe', executive director, FOOD FIRST; Bill | | Moyers, executive editor, "Public Affairs Television"; Jack | | L. Nelson, professor, Graduate School of Education, Rutgers | | University; Herbert I. Schiller, professor, Department of | | Communication, University of California at San Diego and | | Sheila Rabb Weidenfeld, president, D.C. Productions. | | Sonoma State University student researchers reviewed and | | evaluated some 500 "censored" nominations from throughout | | the country. They were: Michael Accurso, Sally Acevedo, | | Audrey Auerbach, Alan Barbour, Janie Barrett, Debbie Cohen, | | Tahd Frentzel, Bill Gibbons, John Gilles, Jim Gregoretti, | | Tanya Gump, Tim Hilton, Darren LaMarr, Scott McKittrick, | | Tina Rich, Terril Shorb, Wendy Strand, Heller Waidtlow and | | Bill Way. Mark Lowenthal was Project Censored Research | | Associate. | |____________________________________________________________________|

This year the panel's selection for the number one under-reported story focuses on the very issue that inspired Project Censored: the increasing monopoly of a few giant media corporations, which control more and more of the world's means of exchanging ideas and information. [The growing threat of a handful of monopolistic global media lords to the international marketplace of ideas was named the top under-reported issue in the 14th annual media research effort title "Project Censored". Ben Bagdikian, professor at the graduate school of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, warned that mammoth private organizations, driven by the profit motive, already dominate the world's mass media and threaten the freedom of information which is the basis of all liberty.] The top ten censored stories of 1989 are:

1. Corporate thought control [Global Media Lords Threaten Freedom of Information.] [Source: "The Nation," 6/12/89, "Lords of the Global Village," by Ben Bagdikian.]

News media have given us some glimpses of the high-stakes game of corporate mergers, but they have been almost silent about the growth of the small number of international companies that now dominate their own industry. In an article in "The Nation," June 12, 1989, media scholar Ben Bagdikian describes the power of five international giants, Time Warner, Inc., Bertelsmann AG, News Corporation Ltd. (Rupert Murdoch), Hachette SA and Capital Cities/ABC--together with a second string of huge media organizations like Gannett--to control the information, ideas and entertainment that shape people's consciousness. Vertical monopolies multiply media power: If one firm owns magazines, newspapers, movie studios and theaters, TV stations and record companies, it can create hits or celebrities that suddenly seem to be showing up everywhere. And media monopolies extend beyond TV and movies to the traditionally more sober areas of book publishing and even scholarly journals. Bagdikian warns that the size and global audience of these firms give them a stake in reducing communication to all-purpose, acceptable content. Book publishers, for example, are steered toward "blockbuster" books with huge sales. Controversial publications that might not sell in some part of the world market (Salmon Rushdie's "Satanic Verses," for example) are seen as commercial failures. Corporate links to the industries that make news--banking, for example, or tobacco companies--give these media monopolies incentives to stifle dissenting voices. At the same time, giant media firms have make-or-break power over politicians and many of their programs. Bagdikian warns that, as many countries are moving toward more democracy and civil liberties, these international media monopolies pose a new threat to freedom of communication. He proposes an updated United Nations declaration on freedom of information that would establish antitrust principles and assure diversity and access in the media, to combat the "new mutation of that familiar scourge of the free spirit, centrally controlled information."

2. Dumping on Africa [Turning Africa Into the World's Garbage Can.] [Source: "In These Times," 11/8/89, "Western developmental overdose makes Africa chemically dependent," by Diana Johnstone.]

As industrialized countries fill up their capacity for disposing of toxic waste--or companies get tired of paying high prices for toxic- waste disposal in the U.S. and Europe--some have searched for populations so desperately poor they will accept other countries' toxic wastes in exchange for badly needed cash. They have found some takers, not surprisingly, in sub-Saharan Africa, already suffering from poverty, drought and famine. In the Nov. 8th-14th issue of In These Times, Diana Johnstone describes several instances of toxic-waste dumping on Africa, including: a 1987 deal by the government of Guinea-Bissau to accept toxic waste for $40 a ton; a private arrangement by an individual in Nigeria to allow an international toxics-disposal firm to dump PCBs in his backyard; an agreement by the government of Benin to take up to five million tons a year of toxic waste for money to help pay its $700 million foreign debt. European environmentalists persuaded the European Parliament to condemn this practice and demand cancellation of toxic-waste contracts in May 1989. The Organization of African Unity has also condemned it, fearing that African governments' need for foreign exchange will push them to specialize in toxic-waste disposal, a pattern one Congolese diplomat called "attempted murder of African people." But the poverty and large expanses of sparsely populated land in many sub-Saharan countries make regulations against toxic-waste dumping hard to enforce.

____________________________________________________________________ | | | BAY GUARDIAN STORY NOTED | | | | ELEVENTH in the Project Censored panel's pick of the top 25 | | censored stories of 1989 was a Bay Guardian report by Craig | | McLaughlin that revealed the reasons behind the failures of | | the Federal Emergency Management Agency during the Oct. 17th | | earthquake. The story traced FEMA's internal political | | history, demonstrating that its priority has increasingly | | been nuclear-war preparedness. Under the leadership of | | right-wing ideologues assigned to the agency by the Reagan | | administration, planning for nuclear-war survival has so | | dominated the agency's agenda that it has failed to prepare | | for or provide help in real-life emergencies. | |____________________________________________________________________|

3. Hidden holocaust [The Holocaust in Mozambique] [Sources: "20/20," 3/2/90, "Children of Terror" and "Against All Odds," by Janice Tomlin and Tom Jarriel; "Renamo Watch," 2/90, "Renamo's U.S. Support;" "Utne Reader," Nov/Dec 1989, "The Hidden War in Mozambique," by Kalamu ya Salaam; "MOZAMBIQUE Support Newsletter," 2/90.]

last year, as U.S. news media celebrated the overthrow of repressive Communist regimes, they all but ignored an ongoing, massive campaign of almost unbelievable cruelty being waged against the government and people of Mozambique by right-wing terrorists--with material and political support from private individuals and groups in the United States and Europe. The difference in coverage, observed the November/December 1989 "Utne Reader" seems obviously related to the fact that "the government of Mozambique is predominately black and socialist and its chief enemy is the white-ruled anti-communist regime in South Africa." South Africa initially armed and supported the Mozambique National Resistance, whose methods include not only extensive economic sabotage like blowing up bridges and burning villages--causing widespread famine in this poorest country in the world--but also cruelty aimed at terrorizing people. Its special targets are children, who are forced to watch the torture and murder of family members, drafted into the army at ages as young as eight, forced to kill other children and villagers, raped and mutilated and separated by the tens of thousands from families and native villages. Three of every five Mozambican children dies before age five. Senator Jesse Helms, who calls RENAMO "freedom fighters," television evangelist Pat Robertson and the Washington-based Heritage Foundation are among the U.S. citizens giving political or financial support to RENAMO. Roy Stacy, U.S. State Department deputy assistant secretary for African affairs is quoted in the "Utne Reader" article calling the RENAMO campaign "one of the most brutal holocausts against ordinary human beings since World War II." The United Nations and the World Bank have both recently issued reports on the war in Mozambique. But a March 2, 1990 report on ABC's "20/20" and a few stories on National Public Radio have been almost the only U.S. mainstream press coverage of RENAMO's devastation of Mozambique.

4. Losing the drug war [America's Deceitful War on Drugs.] [Sources: "NBC Nightly News," 2/22/89, by Brian Ross, Ira Silverman, and Garrick Utley; "San Francisco Chronicle," 12/89, "Policy Reportedly Undercut Drug War."]

Does the U.S. really want to win the war on drugs? That was the question the news media should have raised when Richard Gregorie, one of the country's top narcotics prosecutors in Miami, quit his job. Gregorie had aggressively pursued big-time cocaine bosses and drug- corrupted officials in and out of the United States. But as he began going up the drug-business chain of command, he targeted foreign officials friendly with the U.S. government, and the State Department started interfering with his investigations, telling him to stay away from certain sensitive areas. Gregorie's operations were subsequently stopped at the request of the State Department and he quit in protest. One story on the Feb. 22,1989 "NBC Nightly News," by Brian Ross, Ira Silverman and Garrick Utley, and a brief "New York Times" news story in December 1989 reported on Gregorie's claims of interference by the State Department, but in other media the story was suppressed. An editor at the "New York Times Magazine" assigned a free-lance writer to profile Gregorie, but a senior editor later killed the article.

5. History repeats Itself [Guatemalan Blood on U.S. Hands.] [Sources: "Guatemala Update," 2/90, "US Aid Said to Encourage Rights Violation;" "Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA," 12/24/90, "U.S. Citizen Kidnapped and Tortured in Guatemala."]

Continuing a pattern that the U.S. government seems determined to repeat again and again, the Bush administration has strengthened ties with the Guatemalan military at the same time that its human rights violations are rising sharply. According to a 1989 review by Human Rights Watch, current U.S. Army involvement in Guatemala includes the training of Guatemalan paratroopers by Green Berets and $90 million of "nonlethal" military aid. Guatemala ranked tenth out of 90 countries in the amount of U.S. economic assistance received. The Guatemalan news agency, CERIGUA, has reported incidents of U.S. military participation in counter-insurgency operations and the Guatemala Human Rights Commission in the U S. has issued a detailed statement of the kidnapping and torture of Sister Diana Ortiz, an American citizen working as a teacher in Guatemala. These incidents have been reported mainly in newsletters devoted to disseminating information about Guatemala and have generated little attention in the mainstream U.S. media.

6. What radioactivity? [Radioactive Waste In the Neighborhood Landfill.] [Source: "The Workbook," Apr/Jun 1989, "NIMBY, Nukewaste in My Backyard?" by Diana D'Arrigo and Lynda Taylor.]

Faced with the difficulty of disposing of ever-increasing amounts of radioactive waste, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency and the nuclear industry are developing a plan to define away part of the problem. They propose to re-label as much as one-third of the material now considered "low-level" radioactive waste as "below regulatory concern" [BRC]. The waste material could then be dumped into ordinary landfills or recycled into consumer products. This scheme, reported by Diane D'Arrigo in the April/June 1989 issue of "The Workbook," a publication of the Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque, would make disposal of the waste easier and cheaper, since it would not be subject to the regulations and extra fees required for the disposal of radioactive waste. But the material would remain radioactive for hundreds of years, posing a continuing health threat to any nearby living things--the NRC, the article charges, consistently underestimates the health threat posed by low-level radioactive material. The downgrading of some radioactive materials to "BRC" status would make it easier to deal with the expected increase in the amount of nuclear waste, resulting from the cleanup of contaminated weapons plants and the planned "decommissioning" of older nuclear power plants. The "Workbook" cites an NRC advisor, Dr. Martin Steindler, pointing out that the greatest danger of reclassification is that BRC is forever: If the material is dumped as ordinary, not radioactive, waste, there will be no record of where it is. Fires, leaks into ground water and other events could increase the health risks posed by nuclear wastes buried in some landfill somewhere--but no one would know it was there. The reclassification would also take away state and local rights to keep the radioactive waste out of their territory. The NRC is expected to decide on whether to implement this plan sometime in 1990.

7. Ollie North & Co. [Oliver North & Co. Banned from Costa Rica.] [Source: "Extra!," Oct/Nov 1989, "Censored News: Oliver North & Co. Banned from Costa Rica."]

Although the Kerry Commission's findings on the U.S.-Contra drug- trafficking link caused little outrage in the U.S. Congress, a Costa Rican congressional committee concluded that the contra-resupply network, operating in Costa Rica and coordinated by North from the White House, doubled as a drug smuggling operation. That finding prompted Oscar Arias Sanchez to bar North and his gang--Poindexter, Secord, Joseph Fernandez and former U.S. Ambassador to Costa Rica, Lewis Tambs--from ever again setting foot in Costa Rica. The Associated Press reported this action in a lengthy press wire (7/22/90), but according to "Extra" (the Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting newsletter), the "New York Times" and all three national networks--perhaps following Congress's example of complacency--failed to carry the story.

8. CBS-WSJ coverup [Wall Street Journal Censors Story of CBS Bias.] [Sources: "Columbia Journalism Review," Jan/Feb 1990, "Mission Afghanistan," by Mary Williams Walsh; "Defense Media Review," 3/31/90, "Wall Street Journal and CBS: Case of Professional Courtesy?" by Sean Naylor; "The Progressive," 5/90, Afghanistan: Holes in the coverage of a holy war," by Erwin Knoll.]

Mary Williams Walsh, a respected journalist covering the Afghan war for the "Wall Street Journal", came face to face with media self- censorship when she wrote a story reporting that "CBS News" was broadcasting biased coverage of the Afghanistan war. In a well- documented article submitted to her editors at the Journal, Walsh presented evidence that the CBS reporter-producer based in Peshawar was not an objective journalist, but a mujahideen partisan who favored one guerrilla commander and in effect "served as his publicist." She also reported that the CBS correspondent tried to set up an arms deal between the guerrilla leader and a New Jersey arms manufacturer. Walsh went on to show that the correspondent influenced other journalists' reporting of the war by feeding them disinformation. In a May l990 interview with "The Progressive", Walsh tells of secret meetings between editors at the "Wall Street Journal" and, Walsh believes, communications with "CBS News" which finally led to the Journal's decision to kill the story and her own decision to resign from the paper. The "Columbia Journalism Review" offered to publish her story and Walsh accepted. But the article that finally appeared, according to Walsh, changed the central point of her story: "That 'CBS News'...failed to provide truthful and comprehensive coverage of the Afghan war."

9. Toxics in your tank [PCBs and Toxic Waste In Your Gasoline.] [Source: "Common Cause Magazine," Jul/Aug 1989, "Toxic Fuel," by Andrew Porterfield.]

It costs a lot--as much as $1,000 a drum--to get rid of toxic waste like PCBs and solvents legally. So someone could make some money by taking these toxics off the hands of companies that need to get rid of them and hiding them someplace they weren't supposed to be--like your gas tank. In the July/August issue of "Common Cause" magazine, Andrew Porterfield revealed the otherwise unreported story that federal investigators had found an oil transport company in Buffalo, N.Y. operating just such a scheme. Among other, similar cases, they found at least five million gallons of hazardous waste solvents in gasoline sold in Texas ("It was clogging up a lot of carburetors") and toxic wastes mixed with oil sold to refineries in Oklahoma. In New York in 1983, investigators found apartment houses, schools and hospitals that had unknowingly bought heating oil contaminated with toxic waste which produces toxic fumes like dioxin when burned. A bill currently in Congress would tighten federal policing of waste disposal in order to try to stop this practice.

10. Big bad bird business [The Chicken Industry and the National Salmonella Epidemic.] [Source: "Southern Exposure," Summer 1989, "Chicken Empires," by Bob Hall, and "The Fox Guarding the Hen House," by Tom Devine.]

If you're eating more poultry now because you figure it's healthier than red meat, think again. More and more sick chicks are showing up in super-markets these days, contaminated with salmonella bacteria (in a quarter to more than half the chicken sold, according to various estimates) as a result of speedup in the chicken factories and simultaneous easing up of federal inspection (another gift to you from the Reagan administration). In the Summer 1989 issue of "Southern Exposure" magazine, Bob Hall and Tom Devine put together the big bird picture that hasn't been shown elsewhere in the media. A huge growth in demand for chicken has spurred the development of Perdue, Holly Farms, Tyson and other giant chicken companies, which turn out chickens faster and faster by speeding up, not only the birds' life cycle, but also the factory production process, almost doubling the number of birds each worker processes each minute. The increase in contaminated chicken, and a resulting national epidemic of food poisoning, are caused first by that processing speed. Formerly, for example, chickens contaminated by feces or factory dirt were discarded--now they are washed together with all the other chickens, thus spreading the contamination through the washing liquid that has become known in the industry as "fecal soup." But where are the government inspectors to blow the whistle? In the last ten years the U.S. Department of Agriculture has reduced their numbers, issued new, relaxed inspection guidelines, reprimanded inspectors who report health problems and suppressed written reports of contaminated meat illegally approved. Now the department is even replacing inspectors with chicken company employees it authorizes to issue the USDA stamp of approval--not surprisingly, companies have fired some who took their job too seriously. This new chicken business has produced, not only sick chickens, but also sick and injured workers--the industry's rate of illness and injury is one of the highest in the country. "Southern Exposure" reports that a 1987 expose on "60 Minutes" sparked some national coverage, but since then the issue has not been followed. Meanwhile the USDA is asking for further reductions in inspections and increases in the speed of the chicken line.

#############################################################################

The Project Censored "The Ten Best CENSORED Stories of 1989" also contains the following:

A national panel of media experts selected the top ten "censored" stories of 1989 from a group of 25 submitted to them by researchers in a seminar in censorship at Sonoma State University. The 25 stories were selected from 500 nominations.

OTHER CENSORED STORIES OF 1989

The other 15 under-reported stories of 1989 were:

11. How the Federal Emergency Management Agency Failed the Nation 12. The Secret Pan Am 103 Report the Media Ignored 13. The U.S. in Poisoning the Rest of the World with Banned Pesticides 14. The U.S. Presence is Destroying the Environment in Central America 15. Media Reliance On Conservative Sources Debunk Myth of Liberal Bias 16. Faulty Computers Can Trigger World War III 17. RICO and SLAPP Lawsuits Endanger Free Speech Rights 18. NASA Lied To Get Plutonium Payload Into Space 19. U.S. Congress Ignored Soviet Plea for Nuclear Test Ban 20. The Oppression and Exploitation of Native Americans 21. How the U.S. and the Media Propagandized the War on Drugs 22. The Profitable Revolving Employment Door Between the EPA and the Polluters 23. Sellafield: The Largest Source of Radioactive Contamination in the World 24. The National Parks are in Serious Trouble 25. The Plaintive Case for Animal Rights

WHAT IS PROJECT CENSORED?

The primary objective of "Project Censored" is to explore and publicize the extent of censorship in our society by locating stories about significant issues of which the public should be aware, but is not, for one reason or another. Thereby the project hopes to stimulate responsible journalists to provide more mass media coverage of those issues and to encourage the general public to demand mass media coverage of those issues or to seek information from other sources. The essential issue raised by the project in the failure of the mass media to provide the people with all the information they need to make informed decisions concerning their own lives and in the voting booth. "Project Censored," an annual nationwide media research project, was created in 1976 by Dr. Carl Jensen, Professor of Communications Studies, for a seminar in mass media at Sonoma State University. Sonoma State University, one of the 20 California State Universities, is a small bu innovative liberal arts and sciences institution located 50 miles north of San Francisco. The Communication Studies Department provides students with a critical as well as practical perspective of the mass media. It offers a B.A. degree in Communication Studies and a Certificate Program in Jouranlism.

DO YOU KNOW OF ANY CENSORED STORIES?

You can help the public learn more about what is happening in its society by nominating stories you feel should have received more coverage by the mass media. The story should be current and of national social significance. It may have received no media attention at all, appeared in the back pages of your newspaper, or in a small circulation magazine. To nominate a "best censored story of 1990," just send us a copy of the story including the source and date. The deadline is November 1, 1990.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Carl Jensen, Ph.D. Director Project Censored Sonoma State University Rohnert Park, California 94928 707/644-2149

-- daveus rattus

yer friendly neighborhood ratman

KOYAANISQATSI

ko.yan.nis.qatsi (from the Hopi Language) n. 1. crazy life. 2. life in turmoil. 3. life out of balance. 4. life disintegrating. 5. a state of life that calls for another way of living.