Mickey Huff and Andy Lee Roth
We are pleased to thank everyone who has contributed to Project Censored over the past thirty-eight years. For those who contributed directly to this year’s volume, we offer our sincere gratitude and pay our due respects:
To the courageous independent journalists who continue to investigate and report real news: without you, the Project would be impossible. To the faculty evaluators and student researchers at our college and university affiliates across the country: as the eyes and ears of Project Censored, you help us keep up with the cutting edge of independent journalism. To the authors in Censored 2015: your contributions inspire us to look ever deeper into the key issues covered in the Top 25 stories, and you help us grow and nurture a public discourse that is so lacking from our political and corporate media culture. To our national and international judges: your dedication and expertise assures that our Top 25 list includes only the best, most significant independent news stories each year.
To our stalwart allies at Seven Stories Press in New York, including Dan Simon, Veronica Liu, and Jon Gilbert. The entire Seven Stories crew—Stewart Cauley, Liz DeLong, Amy Hayden, Ruth Weiner, Silvia Stramenga, Ian Dreiblatt, Jesse Ruddock, and Heather McAdams, as well as interns Benjamin Rowen, Magali Roman, and Rio Santisban-Edwards—has our deepest respect and appreciation for your steadfast commitment to publishing the Project’s research.
To Josh MacPhee of Just Seeds, whose artwork makes Censored 2015 a book we would be pleased to have judged by its cover.
Carl Jensen, founder of the Project, continues to inspire us with his pioneering vision and critical questioning of the status quo. Peter Phillips stirs us to action, engaging everyone he meets—and especially those who work with him—in his ongoing and tireless efforts to promote media freedom and a people’s democracy in service of human liberation. The members of the Media Freedom Foundation’s board of directors (listed in the next section) continue to provide organizational structure and invaluable counsel. You keep us on course in pursuing Project Censored’s mission.
Christopher Oscar and Doug Hecker, of Hole in the Media Productions, and Mike Fischer with the Fischtank Picture Company, have created a brilliant vehicle for sharing Project Censored’s message with new audiences. Project Censored: The Movie—Ending the Reign of Junk Food News toured the film festival circuit last year, earning numerous awards. Through their ongoing efforts, the documentary is now available for download and purchase, making the film’s crucial message even more accessible to communities and classrooms across the country and around the world.
We are grateful to our friends and supporters at Pacifica Radio, especially KPFA in Berkeley, California. The Project Censored Show, coming up on its fourth year on air, continues to broadcast live every Friday owing to the skills and dedication of our amazing producer Anthony Fest and control room operators Kirsten Thomas, Rod Akil, and Erica Bridgeman. We are also grateful to former Pacifica executive director Arlene Engelhardt and former KPFA interim general manager Andrew Phillips. Last but not least, we also wish to thank all the volunteers who support the overlapping missions of Project Censored and Pacifica.
Adam Armstrong is our extraordinary webmaster. He maintains our online presence at projectcensored.org, as well as our sister sites, including dailycensored.com and proyectocensurado.org. We could not reach our increasingly global Internet audience without his great skills and dedication to our shared cause. To Adam, we give our highest cyber salute.
Perhaps the most fun part of producing the book each year is looking over the volume’s Top 25 stories and subsequent chapters and selecting editorial cartoons that further accentuate their significant yet underreported messages. We thank the inimitable Khalil Bendib, whose brilliant artwork and creativity again add vigor and edge to our annual volume.
We are grateful to Abby Martin, host of Breaking the Set on RT and founder of Media Roots; Michel Chossudovsky at Global Research; Rob Kall of Opednews.com; the good people of the Union for Democratic Communications; Stephen Lendman; Ken Jenkins; Allan Rees of No Lies Radio; the Social Justice Committee at the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists; and Jacob Van Vleet and everyone at Moe’s Books in Berkeley, California—each of whom help the Project to reach a broader audience.
Colleagues and staff at Diablo Valley College provide Mickey with tremendous support and informed dialogue. Thanks to Hedy Wong, history department cochairs Matthew Powell and Melissa Jacobson, Greg Tilles, Manual Gonzales, Katie Graham, Nolan Higdon, Jacob Van Vleet, Adam Bessie, David Vela, Lyn Krause, Steve Johnson, Jeremy Cloward, Amer Araim, Mark Akiyama, and Dean Obed Vazquez, along with current and former teaching assistants and interns Marcelle Levine, Sam Park, Jen Eiden, Ellie Kim, Bryan Brennan, and Jagnoor Grewel. Mickey would also like to thank all of his classes for the inspiration they provide, as they are a constant reminder of the possibilities of the future, and of how privileged we are as educators to have such an amazing role in contributing to the public sphere.
The generous financial support of donors and subscribers, too numerous to mention here, literally sustain the Project. This year we are especially grateful to Chris Giuntoli, Sergio and Gaye Lub, Dave Nelson, Steve Outrim, Basja Samuelson, T. M. Scruggs, Mark and Debra Swedlund, John and Lyn Roth, Jonathan Ullman, and Elaine Wellin. A special grant from The Rex Foundation, received just as Censored 2015 went to press, will help us consolidate and expand our campus affiliates program.
On a personal note, we are indebted to and thankful for the love and support of our families and close friends, as they oft make sacrifices behind the scenes so we can continue to do the work we do.
Finally, we are grateful to you, our readers, who cherish and demand a truly free press. Together, we can make a difference.
MEDIA FREEDOM FOUNDATION/PROJECT CENSORED BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Carl Jensen (founder), Peter Phillips (president), Mickey Huff, Andy Lee Roth, Bill Simon, Elaine Wellin, Derrick West, Kenn Burrows, Nora Barrows-Friedman, Abby Martin, and T. M. Scruggs
Project Censored 2013–14 National and International Judges
JULIE ANDRZEJEWSKI. Professor Emeritus of Human Relations and cofounder of the Social Responsibility Program, St. Cloud State University. Publications include Social Justice, Peace, and Environmental Education (2009).
ROBIN ANDERSEN. Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University. Author or editor of four books including A Century of Media, A Century of War (2006), and dozens of articles. She writes frequently for the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR).
OLIVER BOYD-BARRETT. Professor emeritus of Bowling Green State University–Ohio and of California State Polytechnic University–Pomona. Publications include The International New Agencies (1980), Contra-Flow in Global News (1994), The Globalization of News (1998), Media in Global Context (2009), News Agencies in the Turbulent Era of the Internet (2010), Hollywood and the CIA (2011), and Media Imperialism (2014).
KENN BURROWS. Faculty member for the Institute for Holistic Health Studies, Department of Health Education, San Francisco State University. Director of the Holistic Health Learning Center and producer of the biennial conference, Future of Health Care.
ERNESTO CARMONA. Journalist and writer. Chief correspondent, Telesur-Chile. Director, Santiago Circle of Journalists. President of the Investigation Commission on Attacks Against Journalists, Latin American Federation of Journalists (CIAP-FELAP).
ELLIOT D. COHEN. Professor and chair, Department of Humanities, Indian River State College. Editor and founder, International Journal of Applied Philosophy. Recent books include Technology of Oppression: Preserving Freedom and Dignity in an Age of Mass, Warrantless Surveillance (2014); Theory and Practice of Logic-Based Therapy (2013); and Philosophy, Counseling, and Psychotherapy (2013).
JOSÉ MANUEL DE-PABLOS. Professor, University of La Laguna (Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain). Founder of Revista Latina de Comunicación Social (RLCS), a scientific journal based out of the Laboratory of Information Technologies and New Analysis of Communication.
GEOFF DAVIDIAN. Investigative journalist and editor, The Putnam Pit (Cookeville TN) and MilwaukeePress.net. Publications include the Milwaukee Journal, Reuters, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Globe and Mail (Toronto), the New York Daily News, Albuquerque Journal, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and the Vancouver Sun.
LENORE FOERSTEL. Women for Mutual Security, facilitator of the Progressive International Media Exchange (PRIME).
ROBERT HACKETT. Professor, School of Communication, Simon Fraser University. Codirector of News Watch Canada since 1993; cofounder of Media Democracy Day (2001) and openmedia.ca (2007). Publications include Expanding Peace Journalism (coedited with I. S. Shaw and J. Lynch, 2011), and Remaking Media: The Struggle To Democratize Public Communication (with William K. Carroll, 2006).
KEVIN HOWLEY. Professor of Media Studies, DePauw University. Author of Community Media: People, Places, and Communication Technologies (2005); and editor of Understanding Community Media (2010) and Media Interventions (2013).
CARL JENSEN. Professor Emeritus, Communication Studies, Sonoma State University. Founder and former director of Project Censored. Author of Censored: The News That Didn’t Make the News and Why (1990–96), 20 Years of Censored News (1997), and Stories that Changed America: Muckrakers of the 20th Century (2002).
NICHOLAS JOHNSON.* Professor, College of Law, University of Iowa. Former commissioner, Federal Communications Commission (1966–73). Author of How to Talk Back to Your Television Set.
CHARLES L. KLOTZER. Founder, editor, and publisher emeritus of St. Louis Journalism Review and FOCUS/Midwest.
NANCY KRANICH. Lecturer, School of Communication and Information, and special projects librarian, Rutgers University. Past president of the American Library Association (ALA), convener of the ALA Center for Civic Life. Author of Libraries and Democracy (2001) and Libraries and Civic Engagement (2012).
DEEPA KUMAR. Associate professor, Media Studies at Rutgers University. Author of Outside the Box: Corporate Media, Globalization and the UPS Strike (2007) and Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire (2012). She is currently working on a book on the cultural politics of the war on terror.
MARTIN LEE. Investigative journalist and author. Cofounder of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, and former editor of FAIR’s magazine, Extra! Director of Project CBD, a medical science information service. Author of Smoke Signals: A Social History of Marijuana, The Beast Reawakens and Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties and Beyond.
DENNIS LOO. Associate professor of Sociology, California State University Polytechnic University–Pomona. Coeditor (with Peter Phillips) of Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush and Cheney (2006).
PETER LUDES. Professor of Mass Communication, Jacobs University Bremen. Founder in 1997 of German initiative on news enlightenment, publishing the most neglected German news (Project Censored, Germany); and editor of Algorithms of Power: Key Invisibles (2011).
WILLIAM LUTZ. Emeritus Professor of English, Rutgers University. Former editor of The Quarterly Review of Doublespeak. Author of Doublespeak Defined (1999); The New Doublespeak: Why No One Knows What Anyone’s Saying Anymore (1996); Doublespeak: From Revenue Enhancement to Terminal Living (1989); The Cambridge Thesaurus of American English (1994).
SILVIA LAGO MARTINEZ. Professor of Sociology, Universidad de Buenos Aires; Codirector, Gino Germani Research Institute Program for Research on Information Society.
CONCHA MATEOS. Faculty in the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (Madrid). Journalist for radio, television, and political organizations in Spain and Latin America. Coordinator for Project Censored Research in Europe and Latin America.
MARK CRISPIN MILLER. Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Author, editor, activist.
JACK L. NELSON.* Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Graduate School of Education, Rutgers University. Former member, AAUP Academic Freedom Committee. Author of seventeen books, including Critical Issues in Education, 8th ed. (2013) and about 200 articles.
PETER PHILLIPS. Professor of Sociology, Sonoma State University. Director, Project Censored, 1996–2009. President, Media Freedom Foundation. Editor or coeditor of fourteen editions of Censored. Coeditor (with Dennis Loo) of Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush and Cheney (2006).
NANCY SNOW. Professor of Communications, California State University–Fullerton and adjunct professor of Communications and Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Author/editor of seven books, including Information War: American Propaganda, Free Speech, and Opinion Control Since 9/11 (2003).
SHEILA RABB WEIDENFELD.* President of D. C. Productions, Ltd. Emmy Award-winning television producer. Former press secretary to Betty Ford.
ROB WILLIAMS. President of the Action Coalition for Media Education (ACME), teaches media, communications, global studies, and journalism at the University of Vermont, Champlain College, and Saint Michael’s College. He has authored numerous articles on media and media literacy education, as well as coedited an anthology entitled Most Likely To Secede (2013) about the Vermont independence movement.
*Indicates having been a Project Censored Judge since 1976