Censored!
By Camille T. Taiara
The San Francisco Bay Guardian
7-13 September 2005 Issue
Project Censored presents the 10 biggest stories the mainstream media ignored over the past
year.
Just four days before the 2004 presidential election, a prestigious British medical journal
published the results of a rigorous study by Dr. Les Roberts, a widely respected researcher.
Roberts concluded that close to 100,000 people had died in the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Most were noncombatant civilians. Many were children.
But that news didn't make the front pages of the major newspapers. It wasn't on the network
news. So most voters knew little or nothing about the brutal civilian impact of President George
W. Bush's war when they went to the polls.
That's just one of the big stories the mainstream news media ignored, blacked out, or
underreported over the past year, according to Project Censored, a media watchdog group based
at California's Sonoma State University.
Every year project researchers scour the media looking for news that never really made the
news, publishing the results in a book, this year titled Censored 2006. Of course, as Project
Censored staffers painstakingly explain every year, their "censored" stories aren't literally
censored, per se. Most can be found on the Internet, if you know where to look. And some have
even received some ink in the mainstream press. "Censorship," explains project director Peter
Phillips, "is any interference with the free flow of information in society." The stories
highlighted by Project Censored simply haven't received the kind of attention they warrant, and
therefore haven't made it into the greater public consciousness.
"If there were a real democratic press, these are the kind of stories they would do," says Sut
Jhally, professor of communications at the University of Massachusetts and executive director of
the Media Education Foundation.
The stories the researchers identify involve corporate misdeeds and governmental abuses that
have been underreported if not altogether ignored, says Jhally, who helped judge Project
Censored's top picks. For the most part, he adds, "stories that affect the powerful don't get
reported by the corporate media."
Can a story really be "censored" in the Internet age, when information from millions of
sources whips around the world in a matter of seconds? When a single obscure journal article can
be distributed and discussed on hundreds of blogs and Web sites? When partisans from all sides
dissect the mainstream media on the Web every day? Absolutely, Jhally says.
"The Internet is a great place to go if you already know that the mainstream media is heavily
biased" and you actively search out sites on the outer limits of the Web, he notes. "Otherwise, it's
just another place where they try to sell you stuff. The challenge for a democratic society is how
to get vital information not only at the margins but at the center of our culture."
Not every article or source Project Censored has cited over the years is completely credible; at
least one this year is pretty shaky.
But most of the stories that made the project's top 10 were published by more reliable sources
and included only verifiable information. And Project Censored's overall findings provide
valuable insights into the kinds of issues the mainstream media should be paying closer attention
to.
Material Below comes from Project Censored Website.
#13 Rich Countries Fail to Live up to Global Pledges
Sources:
Oxfam Press Release, December 6, 2004
Title: “Poor Are Paying the Price of Rich Countries’ Failure”
Author: Caroline Green
http://www.oxfam.org/eng/pr041206_MDG.htm
InterPress Service, OneWorld U.S., December 6, 2004
Title: “45 Million Children to Die in Next Decade Due to Rich Countries’ Miserliness”
Author: Jim Lobe
http://us.oneworld.net/article/view/99063/1/
Faculty Evaluator: Maureen Buckley, Ph. D.
Student Researcher: Paige Dumont
Forty-five million children will needlessly die between now and the year 2015, reveals the report
by Oxfam, “Poor Are Paying the Price of Rich Countries’ Failure.” According to this report, 97
million more children will be denied access to an education by the year 2015 and 53 million
more people will lack proper sanitation facilities. Ending poverty will require assistance on many
levels. For third world countries, economic growth is undermined by unfair trade rules. Without
finance and support, these countries will not be able to take advantage of global trade,
investment opportunities, or protect basic human rights.
Wealthy countries such as the U.S., Germany, Japan, and the UK have promised to provide a
very small fraction of their wealth to third world countries. By offering .7 percent of their gross
national income, they could reduce poverty and end the burden of debt that makes low income
countries pay up to $100 million per day to creditors. In the years 1960-65, wealthy countries
spent on average 0.48 percent of their combined national incomes on official development
assistance but by the year 2003 the proportion had dropped to 0.24 percent. Vital povertyreduction programs are failing for the lack of finance. Cambodia and Tanzania are among the
poorest countries in the world, yet they will require at least double the level of external financing
that they currently receive if they are to achieve their poverty-reduction targets.
Global initiatives to enable poor countries to develop provisional education and combat
HIV/AIDS are starved of cash. Despite the fact that HIV infection rates are rising in sub-Saharan
Africa, the global fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria is assured of only one quarter of
the funds that it needs for 2005. Poor countries continue to spend more paying back their
creditors than they do on essential public services. Low-income countries paid $39 billion in debt
payments and interest in 2003, while they received only $27 billion in aid.
Wealthy countries can easily afford to deliver the necessary aid and debt relief. For wealthy
countries such as the U.S. to spend merely 0.7 percent of gross national income on humanitarian
aid is equal to one-fifth of its expenditure on defense and one half of what it spends on domestic
farm subsidies. The U.S., at just 0.14 percent, is the least generous provider of aid in proportion
to national income of any developed country. By comparison, Norway is the most generous
provider at 0.92 percent. The U.S. is spending more than twice as much on the war in Iraq as it
would cost to increase its aid budget to 0.7 percent, and six times more on its military program.
Canceling the debts of the 32 poorest countries would be small change for the wealthy nations.
Millions of children are now in school in Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, and Zambia, thanks
to money provided by foreign aid and debt relief. Because of these relief funds, Ugandans no
longer have to pay for basic health care. A policy was implemented that resulted in an increase of
50 to 100 percent in attendance at Ugandan health clinics and doubled the rate on immunities.
History also shows that aid has been necessary in eradicating global diseases as well as
rebuilding countries devastated by war.
The wealthiest of nations have continuously signed international statements pledging to increase
foreign aid to 0.7 percent of their gross national income in order to eliminate the crippling debts
of third world countries. Repeatedly, they have broken their promises.