Customer Reviews

Censored 2008: The Top 25 Censored Stories of 2006#07 (Censored: The News That Didn't Make the News -- The Year's Top 25 Censored Stories)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is another great Project Censored Yearbook. This book contains important stories that are lergely overlooked by the mainstream media even though these stories have great relevance toward public policy and the future of America and the World. The Yearbook also contains articles on media analysis and updates of previous Project Censored stories.

Project censored is the brainchild of Dr. Carl Jensen, a former professor of Communication Studies at Sonoma State University, who in 1976 launched the effort to report the news of social and national significance not reported in the national-mainstream media. Every year, over 200 faculty and students pour over 700 underreported but important stories submitted by librarians, journalists, scholars et al. and select the top 25 to submit to a panel of judges before publication.

Censored 2008 is another magnificent book that every US citizen should read, including the social elitists and political conservatives who are, to no one's surprise, the staunchest critics of this effort.

How many Americans are aware that the $12 billion newly printed and shrink wrapped $100 bills flown to Iraq by Ambassador Paul Bremer are unaccounted for? During Bremer's questioning in February 2006, most news media were too busy covering the death of Anna Nicole Smith rather than airing the hearing on this important issue.

And how many US citizens are aware that the construction of the US Embassy in Baghdad with a price tag of over $700 million was awarded to a Kuwaiti company in a largely political decision as a show of appreciation to Kuwait for its support of the US invasion of Iraq?

Unfortunately, various 9/11 conspiracy theories were included in "Censored 2008", which, when put together would implicate the CIA, Larry Silverstein, the owner of the 3 collapsed WTC buildings, NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command), CNN, BBC and Bin Laden himself (colluding with the CIA?!). Two of Project Censored's esteemed judges resigned in protest as a result of the publication of these questionable theories in 2007.

Ignoring this hiccup, Censored 2008 and efforts like it are necessary in any society to publicize news that is either deliberately ignored or falsified. It is the job of the citizens of every country to dig deeper than what is fed to them through "for profit" news agencies to ensure democracy is not tampered with.

Incidentally, I found it peculiar that in the last chapter, Greg Guma accuses Walter Cronkite, "the most trusted man in America", of pandering to ratings. All the while, Cronkite's endorsement can be seen in the title section of Project Censored's web site. I guess project censored truly tells it like it is, but I doubt Mr. Cronkite read pages 355-356 ("The Power to Misinform") before he gave it his stamp of approval.

Warning: Reading too many pages of this book in one sitting can be depressing if you're not familiar with the evils that men do.

As always with the yearbooks of the Project Censored, the edition of 2008 contains a wealth of all important information (not disinformation) which the media monopolies, completely controlled by the few, refuse deliberately to divulge.
Initiatives, like the Project Censored, are the lighthouses of truly democratic news gathering. They are the necessary messengers of the really important facts, of the truth (what really happens and happened).
Regarding the anti-democratic media monopolies, which could flower after the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine (requiring that public broadcasters provide equal time to opposing viewpoints) by the Reagan administration, Ben Bagdikian states: `At issue is the possession of power to surround almost every man, woman and child in the country with controlled images and words in order to alter the political agenda of the country.'

The common theme of the 2008 yearbook is the systemic erosion of human rights, civil liberties and personal freedoms all over the world.
This edition is hitting extremely hard: `Corporate avarice interlocked with governmental police power is fascism and a police State in the making.'
It stresses the all importance for a democracy of a free internet. It points its finger at sometimes truly `astonishing' facts: there is no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11 (sic!), the `pulling' of the WTC 7 tower on 9/11 without being hit, the scandal of the intellectual property rights issue (`communities could find themselves forced to pay for patented plant varieties based on genetic sources from their own soil'!), the stolen 2004 elections ( the statistically impossible gap between the exit polls and the ultimate results) or the official denial of the link between global warming and hurricanes.
Among many others, important items are the use of deliberate fake news and misinformation.

All Project Censored books are a must read for all those who want to understand the world we live in.

The info in Project Censored's yearly reports is always mandatory reading for any informed citizen, but I really think this book is in the wrong format.

I can get the info in this book from Project Censored website... so where's the value - other than the value inherent in supporting Project Censored to continue their work? But if that's what I wanted... why not just save the paper, and donate to Project Censored instead?

I'd like if this book was instead in coffee table book format... so people who come over could just pick it up, read one of the censored news stories, see some nice pictures/graphics/charts illustrating the points, and be shocked/amazed. This info is ground-breaking citizen journalism at it's best... but if you want my friends to stop thinking this is just another dry, academic, left-wing boring read like the other books on my book-shelf - then Project Censored should really change the format and make it into a Coffee Table book.

The 25-point format is perfect for this idea. So Project Censored: change this book into a coffee-table book, get activists to buy/distribute it across coffee-shops/tea-houses everywhere in America, and sit back and see the firestorm of discussion that develops.

This book is a MUST read for EVERYbody. Our freedoms are being taken away as we sleep. WAKE UP everyone and read what's really going on!

I was pleased with how quickly I received my order and that it was in good shape!!

Let me start by saying that I'm center-right politically. That said, I like to understand both sides of any argument, so I gave this book a try based on reviews. Here's what I think based on having read about a third of this thing before I just couldn't take anymore.

The title of the book should not be "Censored". It should be titled "Unreported". The reason that these stories have been ignored by both the liberal and conservative media is very simple ... THEY ARE NOT STORIES. Rather, they are the same old conspiracy theories repeated with an ultra-left wing slant. I don't mean liberal ... I mean ultra-left wing, as in fringe. These "journalistic watchdogs" accuse the center and right of everything except eating little puppies alive, although that accusation may be made later in the book. And, this nonsense starts pretty much from the beginning of the book as you read about how wonderful the world would be when the lights go out. What does that have to do with journalistic integrity? Here's a side question for all of you who think this would be great. How will you be making bicycles out of scrap cars in you don't have a blast furnace to melt the metal? But, I digress.

If you are an avid conspiracy theorist, run out and buy this book. If you want a true unbiased performance assessment of the media in our country and the world, look elsewhere and save your money. This book is nothing more than a divisive and polarizing ultra-left rant written by a bunch of liberal academics who've never done much more than sit around a campus and dream this nonsense up while their teaching assistants actually teach.

Ahh, another year, another collection of quasi-news sensationally described as "censored" by the corporate media. (It's always "corporate," even though one of the editors' favorite targets, the Associated Press, is actually a nonprofit. But I guess I'm splitting hairs here.)

Yes, there are some legitimate stories in these collections that, for a multitude of reasons -- the least likely of which is that mainstream media's corporate/Republican paymasters simply didn't like them -- never really gained their place in the national conversation.

The media are far from perfect. But to say that mainstream journalists haven't been doing their job -- as is the overarching point of these collections -- is disingenuous at best. To say so is leaving out the fact that the crusty ol' New York Times, Washington Post, CBS News and even -- gasp! -- USA Today have broken and given prominent, in-depth play to such important stories as warrantless wiretapping, Abu Ghraib, secret CIA prisons, national security letters and the telecoms' cooperation with the letters, etc., etc. Local newspapers such as The (Toledo, Ohio) Blade and The Times-Picayune of New Orleans have done outstanding work in their back yards and at the national level recent years, despite shrinking circulations and news staffs (a phenomenon that's the real overlooked story here, folks.)

This year's Censored edition is more ridiculous than usual in that, in the chapter updating the previous year's "censored" stories, is a section on Steven Jones, founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, a conspiracy theorist group. Apparently, one of his essays was included in the 2007 Censored edition (I missed out on that one. Darn it.), to the consternation of some of the very people involved in Project Censored. The way it's described in this edition, two of the project's judges resigned over the inclusion of the Jones essay. That alone should be enough for Project Censored, at the very least, to explain to us what the hell happened -- but instead, we're treated to a rehash of the WTC7 collapse conspiracy theory. That's their story, and they're sticking to it, I suppose, but it sounds to me like Project Censored has been doing a little self-censorship of its own.