Report from the Media Freedom Foundation President
This report details some of Project Censored’s daily work and highlights from the past year’s efforts on behalf of media democracy in action.
The Media Freedom Foundation (MFF) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation that sponsors Project Censored and all its various programs. MFF has an eleven-person board of directors that is responsible for monitoring the budget and setting policy for our operations. Mickey Huff is director of Project Censored and has overall responsibility for its day-to-day management. Associate director Andy Lee Roth serves in a similar administrative capacity, with a focus on the development and maintenance of the campus affiliates program. Together they coordinated the production of Censored 2015.
Since its founding by Carl Jensen at Sonoma State University in 1976, Project Censored has worked with students and the public—through radio, television, film, books, and the Internet—to promote public understanding of the crucial roles that free speech and a free press play in making democratic government possible. Free speech and a free press are necessary to democracy. Without these, people cannot truly participate in making the decisions that shape our lives and our communities.
Project Censored has both critical and affirmative aspects. On the critical side, we expose and oppose news censorship. Affirmatively, we promote independent investigative journalism, media literacy, and critical thinking. We strive to achieve our mission in numerous ways.
Since 1993, we have researched and written an annual book of the top censored news stories and media analysis. Our book Censored is published annually by Seven Stories Press, an independent book publisher in New York City.
Since 2010, we have produced a weekly one-hour program, The Project Censored Show, for Pacifica Radio, which airs live from Berkeley, California, every Friday at 1:00 P.M. PST on KPFA 94.1 FM and online at KPFA.org. Our affiliate stations include WBAI (New York); WPFA (Washington DC); WPRR (Grand Rapids MI); KSKQ (Ashland OR); KFCF (Fresno CA); WRFN (Radio Free Nashville in Nashville TN); Progressive Radio Network; No Lies Radio; and various other Pacifica radio stations around the country. Please ask your local public/ nonprofit radio station to air our weekly shows. See projectcensored.org/radio-archive for a listing of our shows and guests.
We currently have eighteen college and university campuses participating in the annual review of news stories. The network of professors, students, and community members who contribute to our affiliate research program is a cornerstone of the Project’s mission to educate students and the public in media literacy and the crucial role that a free press plays in democracy. We started the affiliates program five years ago, as we began to separate the Project from its original home campus at Sonoma State University. Our affiliates program is not only a model of how we can all be the media, it is also a unique contribution of the Project: as far as we know, no other media watchdog organization in the US has a larger, more systematic student training program than Project Censored. Faculty from additional college and university campuses have expressed interest in joining our affiliates program, and with enhanced funding we anticipate expanding this program to include additional campuses. A generous grant from the Rex Foundation, awarded in May 2014, gives our campus affiliate program a welcome boost.
Throughout each year, students and faculty at our affiliate campuses produce Validated Independent News Stories (VINS), news stories from independent sources on topics ignored by corporate media. Students and faculty identify, research, and vet these stories. (For more on this, see the Note on Research and Evaluation in Chapter 1.) We post VINS that pass the vetting process on the Project Censored website. These stories become the nominees for the Project’s annual Top 25 list of the most important censored or underreported news stories. Teaching college classes and working with students to learn about alternative news outlets is a major part of our efforts to create a more media literate society. We invite faculty and students at campuses not yet affiliated with Project Censored to join us.
Adam Armstrong continues as webmaster for all of the MFF/Project Censored websites, including our Spanish-language site at proyectocensurado.org. Unique views on our sites run some 400,000 each month with millions of monthly hits. Adam also manages the Daily Censored blog—dailycensored.com—which now features more than fifty regular contributors, posting original news stories and opinion pieces. Adam is a vital member of our team.
We have also been touring communities around the nation screening our award-winning documentary film, Project Censored The Movie: Ending the Reign of Junk Food News. Six years in the making, the film was written, directed, and produced by Doug Hecker, a Project Censored alum, and Christopher Oscar, with editing by Mike Fischer. The film has won awards, including Best Director of a Documentary and Best Editing of a Documentary at the 2013 Madrid International Film Festival, as well as being honored as the Most Viewed Film at the 2013 Sonoma International Film Festival. The film is a vehicle through which we hope to engage people who do not already know about the Project from our books or website. The film is also is an excellent resource for high school and college teachers to use in their classrooms and is available to download, to own or rent, at projectcensoredthemovie.com. (See the final page of this book for more details.)
The Project Censored team is regularly invited as speakers to community events, college campuses, academic conferences, and independent bookstores worldwide. We address the issues of media censorship, propaganda, and the importance of truthful, independent media in society. To arrange for a member of our speaking team to come to your community or campus see projectcensored.org/speakers.
These efforts and others too numerous to list are part of our annual activities at Media Freedom Foundation/Project Censored. We currently do all of this on less than $100,000 a year. In addition to annual revenues from book sales and royalties, our primary financial support comes from individual donors around the world. A developing support option has been for donors to pledge five dollars or more per month. Currently, over 225 folks act as vital monthly contributors, giving five to thirty dollars a month online. Please consider making a monthly pledge at projectcensored.org. If you are affiliated with a nonprofit foundation or can make a larger gift in support of one or all of our activities, we would sincerely appreciate hearing from you.
At present, 90 percent of our operating budget comes from the support of individual donors, supplemented by book and DVD sales. We accomplish a lot with a little. Our modest budget—augmented by the tireless commitments of numerous volunteer supporters—allows us to maintain our current operations. However, as we hope to have communicated here, we are poised to expand our reach and our influence—via improved distribution of the new documentary, greater promotion of our annual book series, and, most of all, expansion of our campus affiliates program.
Promoting freedom of the press, highlighting media bias, and opposing news censorship—Project Censored is among the longest-running media watchdog organizations in the United States. Our track record and reputation is well established. Furthermore, we know of no other organization that systematically provides students the kind of direct and hands-on training in media literacy and critical thinking skills that Project Censored does.
We ask you to please support us financially as you are able, and to remember us in your estate planning.
Peter Phillips, PhD
President, Media Freedom Foundation/Project Censored
June 2014
PO Box 571
Cotati, CA 94931
(707) 874–2695
peter@projectcensored.org
How to Support Project Censored
NOMINATE A STORY
To nominate a Censored story, send us a copy of the article and include the name of the source publication, the date that the article appeared, and page number. For news stories published on the Internet, forward the URL to mickey@projectcensored.org; andy@projectcensored.org; and/or peter@projectcensored.org. The deadline for nominating Censored stories is March 15 of each year.
Criteria for Project Censored news story nominations:
MAKE A TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION
Project Censored is supported by the Media Freedom Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. We depend on tax-deductible donations to continue our work. To support our efforts on behalf of independent journalism and freedom of information, send checks to the address below or call (707) 874–2695.
Donations can also be made online at www.projectcensored.org.
Please consider helping us fight news censorship and promote media literacy.
Media Freedom Foundation
P.O. Box 571
Cotati, CA 94931
mickey@projectcensored.org
andy@projectcensored.org
peter@projectcensored.org
Phone: (707) 874-2695
ANDY LEE ROTH is the associate director of Project Censored. He has coedited four previous editions of Project Censored’s yearbook, in addition to contributing chapters on Iceland and the commons (Censored 2014), the Military Commissions Act (Censored 2009) and news photographs depicting the human cost of war (Censored 2008). His research on topics ranging from ritual to broadcast news interviews and communities organizing for parklands has also appeared in journals including the International Journal of Press/Politics; Social Studies of Science; Media, Culture & Society; City & Community; and Sociological Theory. He reviews books for YES! Magazine. He earned a PhD in Sociology at the University of California–Los Angeles and a BA in Sociology and Anthropology at Haverford College. As of fall 2014, he teaches sociology at Pomona College and serves on the boards of the Media Freedom Foundation and the Claremont Wildlands Conservancy.
MICKEY HUFF is director of Project Censored and serves on the board of the Media Freedom Foundation. To date, he has edited or coedited six volumes of Censored and contributed numerous chapters to these works dating back to 2008. Additionally, he has coauthored several chapters on media and propaganda for other scholarly publications, most recently Flashpoint in Ukraine from Clarity Press (2014). He is currently professor of social science and history at Diablo Valley College in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he is cochair of the history department. Huff is cohost with former Project Censored director Dr. Peter Phillips of The Project Censored Show, the weekly syndicated public affairs program that originates from KPFA Pacifica Radio in Berkeley CA. For the past several years, Huff has worked on the national planning committee of Banned Books Week, working with the American Library Association and the National Coalition Against Censorship, of which Project Censored is a member. He is also a longtime musician and composer. He lives with his family in Northern California.
For more information about the editors, to invite them to speak at your school or in your community, or to conduct interviews, please visit projectcensored.org.