PROJECT CENSORED 2000: Most overreported news stories ` San Francisco Bay Guardian, April 5, 2000 *Uncovered: Stories that should have been on the front pages *Censored by the Bay: Our picks for local censored stories The stories: 1. Multinational corporations profit from international brutality 2. Pharmaceutical companies put profits before need 3. Financially bloated American Cancer Society fails to prevent cancer 4. American sweatshops sew U.S. military uniforms 5. Turkey destroys Kurdish villages with U.S. weapons 6. NATO defends private economic interests in the Balkans 7. U.S. media reduces foreign coverage 8. Planned weapons in space violate international law 9. Louisiana promotes toxic racism 10. U.S. and NATO deliberately started the war with Yugoslavia Runners-up Junk food news -- The most overreported news stories of 1999: 1. Tinky Winky's sexuality 2. Pokemon 3. Y2K 4. The millennium 5. Pamela Lee Anderson's breasts 6. "Star Wars" 7. The Clintons 8. Columbine/teen shootings 9. The death of John F. Kennedy Jr. 10. George W. Bush's cocaine use (Selected by the members of the Organization of News Ombudsmen) ____________________________ Uncovered: Project Censored reveals the stories that should have been on the front pages in 1999 by Gabriel Roth The stock market is soaring. The Internet is delivering ever more consumer goods to your doorstep. The United States and NATO brought peace to the former Yugoslavia. The biggest issues facing the American people are a spike in gas prices and an adorable little Cuban boy. If the mainstream media are to be believed, global capitalism has nearly reached its final destination: an endless era of peace and prosperity, punctuated by thrilling plane crashes and touching celebrity deaths. Meanwhile, the magic of the marketplace hasn't done much for the millions in poor countries who are dying of curable diseases. For indigenous peoples who have the misfortune to live on top of fossil-fuel deposits, globalism has brought displacement, brutal repression, and sometimes murder. And what was the real goal of NATO's peacekeeping mission in the Balkans? "The dark side of capitalism -- that's something the American press doesn't tell us about," Project Censored director Peter Phillips says. "Stories about powerful people making decisions that impact billions of people's lives often don't get told by the media, because they're more interested in entertaining us than in keeping us informed." That's where Project Censored comes in. For 24 years Project Censored, based at California's Sonoma State University, has tracked the excesses and omissions of the media – investigating its biases by studying what it leaves out. Researchers comb alternative weeklies, fringe political rags, trade and medical journals, and special-interest newsletters to find the stories the American public needs to know but won't find in the New York Times. The stories they select are reviewed by a committee of journalists, academics, and media critics. The resulting list, "the year's top 25 censored stories," gets more frightening every year. Bottom line Censored is a tricky word. There are no government overseers in the editorial offices of the daily papers, blacking out sensitive facts (although until recently the White House did offer TV networks tips on how to punch up antidrug messages). And while it's certainly not unheard of for corporate czars to squelch tough stories at their media properties, it's not an everyday occurrence. Censorship in the mainstream media, say Project Censored's founders, operates on a more insidious level. Hard-hitting stories don't usually get spiked -- they never get written at all. "Sometimes they say the story's too complex for the American public to understand," says Carl Jensen, founder of Project Censored and now a professor emeritus at Sonoma State University's Department of Media and Communications Studies. "Sometimes it's lazy reporters -- the story's too difficult, it takes too much time. Sometimes it's blatantly threatening to the corporations that own the media: you won't find NBC doing stories on nuclear power when General Electric signs their paychecks." As Phillips puts it, "What we're seeing is the overlap between the government, the corporations, and the media -- which is now down to about a dozen corporations that are dominating all over the world. We can have 300 cable channels, but they're all coming from the same sources." And as media outlets are consolidated into fewer and fewer hands, one concern becomes increasingly important: the bottom line. Media companies more interested in profits than in content find they can save money by cutting editorial budgets. And every job cut from a newsroom makes it harder for that paper to put resources into tough, investigative stories. "As the consolidation of the media increases, financial support for newsrooms shrinks," Jensen says. "And with fewer dollars, you can't tell a writer, 'This is a big story; you can take six months.' That's just not viable. "It's not that people aren't interested. Project Censored -- the longest-running media criticism project in the world -- is proof that there is interest in these kinds of stories. The media companies say, 'We give the public what it wants,' but that's not true -- they give the public what they want to give the public, and the public doesn't know what the alternate stories are." It's a sign of Project Censored's success that the lists are widely discussed in the alternative press -- and frequently misunderstood. A couple years ago In These Times, which regularly has stories in the top 10, described the list as "the alternative Pulitzers." But whatever the writers and editors whose stories make the list might think, Project Censored isn't an award. It's not designed to reward excellence, although it does bring attention to worthy stories. This year's list is distinctly international in focus: In half the stories on the top 10, the action takes place outside the United States. Indeed, one of the top 10 stories, from the American Journalism Review, details the decline in foreign coverage in the American press. "Abuses that occur globally are told to the American people from a P.R. perspective," Phillips says. "We rarely hear more than one side of what's going on." Left out? "Is this a left-wing, ideological thing?" a reporter for a mainstream daily paper once asked me about Project Censored. It's a fair question. The stories selected for the top 10 frequently focus on the misdeeds of big corporations in pursuit of profits. Jensen strenuously denies that the project is politically motivated. "These aren't left-wing commie stories; these are important stories that affect people's lives," he says. "We search the right-wing media as well as the left -- but right-wing stories get more coverage. Conservative columnists get more exposure than liberal ones." Project director Phillips answers more tersely: "It doesn't matter if you're a Democrat or a Republican or a socialist or a libertarian. If you're sleeping on a radioactive bed frame, you're going to get cancer, and the American Cancer Society isn't going to help you." Some leftist journalists, too, have raised questions about the project. David Bacon, a reporter who covers labor and immigration, accuses Project Censored of ignoring working-class people's issues. "What Project Censored looks at is stories about corporate crimes and government misdeeds -- stories the mainstream press won't cover," Bacon says. "That's a positive contribution. But they see the news very much as the mainstream media sees it -- the things that are newsworthy are the movements of the rich and powerful. What's not on the radar screen are movements from below. The most censored stories in America today are about what working people do, the conditions in working-class communities, and how working-class people fight to change those conditions -- and those stories rarely make the Project Censored list." Phillips, for his part, says Bacon has identified a blind spot in the alternative press as a whole. "David has a legitimate point in that even the alternative press doesn't cover labor and social-activist stories as much as it could," he says. Jensen also points out that grassroots stories are usually local in nature and are thus excluded by Project Censored's national emphasis. Others say the point of Project Censored isn't what stories get chosen. "The reason Project Censored is so important is less the list of stories and more the process of looking at what popular news coverage is following and what it's missing," says progressive economist Julianne Malveaux. As one of Project Censored's expert judges, Malveaux says, she typically advocates for stories that focus on low-income communities: she's pleased that stories about sweatshop workers in Kentucky and environmental racism in Louisiana made this year's list. "But the reason I stay involved is because the whole notion of how news gets spun is so important," she says. "People are inclined to say, 'I read it in the paper' without raising questions about the filters through which the news comes." Following are Project Censored's top 10 stories for 1999. 1. MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS PROFIT FROM INTERNATIONAL BRUTALITY On the morning of June 3, 1997, in the Indian fishing village of Veldur, police broke down the door of Sadhana Bhalekar's house, dragged her naked from her bath, beat her in the street, and arrested her. Bhalekar had committed no crime. But her husband was one of the chief opponents of a local power plant -- a plant owned by U.S.-based Enron Corporation. And Enron paid the wages of the cops who beat Sadhana Bhalekar. This ugly alliance between a Western energy company and a repressive third world state is far from unique. Around the world multinational power companies are fattening their profits by participating in brutal abuses of human rights. Energy companies routinely deny they're involved in violent crackdowns. But eyewitnesses and press accounts tell a different story. When Indonesian soldiers violently crushed an insurgent movement on the island of Aceh, Mobil Oil provided the bulldozers that dug the mass graves. According to press accounts, Burmese forces killed, tortured, and raped villagers along the route of a natural gas pipeline built by the French company Total and the U.S.-based Unocal -- then conscripted other villagers into slavery to build the pipeline. In public statements and goodwill-oriented ad campaigns, big business argues that its investments in developing countries promote human rights. As international economic activity increases, this argument runs, totalitarian states become more vulnerable to international pressure. But there's no evidence that "constructive engagement" has any positive impact for anyone but the corporations and their shareholders. As oil companies increase their investments in Nigeria, the state steps up its brutal campaign of repression: activists who protest oil exploitation are routinely murdered by military police. And since signing a deal with Chevron in 1993, Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbaev has cracked down on independent media and political opponents. Whatever the corporate apologists may say, when Western companies make deals with abusive regimes, Western governments become less likely to demand reform. Last year the Dutch government reversed its long-standing criticisms of China's human rights record -- shortly before Royal Dutch Shell signed a $4.5 billion contract with the Chinese government. And after Enron won a grant from the government of Turkmenistan, the White House stated: "Turkmenistan is committed to strengthening the rule of law and political pluralism." That came as news to Turkmenian president Saparmurad Niyazov, who told reporters, "We do not have any opposition parties." Arvind Ganesan, http://www.igc.org/dollars/1999/223ganesan.html "Corporation Crackdowns: Business Backs Brutality," Dollars and Sense, May/June 1999. For more information, go to http://www.hrw.org, call (202) 612-4329, or e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2. PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES PUT PROFITS BEFORE NEED These are good times for the pharmaceutical industry. Drug companies rack up the largest legal profits of any business, and they're growing fast. That growth stems in large part from a new wave of so-called lifestyle drugs: medications that target nonlethal ailments such as baldness, wrinkles, and impotence. But while Pfizer and Merck and their rivals are raking in billions from rich, old, bald guys who have trouble getting a hard-on, they've abandoned billions of people for whom access to drugs is a matter of life and death. In 1998 6.1 million people died of malaria, tuberculosis, or acute lower-respiratory infections. Those diseases are all preventable and curable. But their victims live in tropical third world countries, and developing, manufacturing, and distributing medicine that would save their lives simply doesn't pay. Almost all the important malaria drugs were developed by U.S. military researchers, anxious to protect their occupying armies. When U.S. soldiers left Vietnam, research into malaria cures effectively ended. Not one of the 24 largest drug companies has an in-house malaria research program -- leaving the world vulnerable to a potential strain of malaria resistant to every existing drug. French researchers found that, of 41 drugs used to treat tropical diseases, none were discovered in the 1990s. Meanwhile, the industry concentrates its fantastic resources on meeting rich Westerners' every imaginable need. In 1993 total world spending on malaria, including government programs, came to $84 million. Five years later U.S. consumers alone spent more than 10 times as much -- $1 billion -- on drugs for their pets, including medications to treat depression, Alzheimer's, and "separation anxiety" in dogs. Thanks to the industry's considerable clout, government has been missing in action when it comes to regulation. In fact, it's been giving away the store -- handing over the marketing rights to government-developed medicines to private corporations and asking nothing in return. Until that changes -- until the government demands, say, that a drug company develops and distributes a new malaria treatment in exchange for another multibillion-dollar patent -- the needs of the poor will continue to rank far behind the whims of the rich. Ken Silverstein, http://www.thenation.com/issue/990719/0719silverstein.shtml "Millions for Viagra, Pennies for the Poor," the Nation, 7/19/99. For more information contact Doctors Without Borders at (212) 679-6800. 3. FINANCIALLY BLOATED AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY FAILS TO PREVENT CANCER The American Cancer Society is the world's largest secular charity, with assets in the hundreds of millions if not billions. It takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year from ordinary Americans who hope their donations will help fight cancer. Most of that money --some 60%-- will go to "operating expenses," including generous salaries for ACS executives. Only 25% will go to medical research or direct caregiving programs. But ACS is more than a bloated, wasteful bureaucracy. It's playing an active role in the fight against cancer -- and it's squarely on the side of the makers of carcinogens. ACS's approach to cancer is one of damage control. It pushes diagnosis and treatment at all costs -- but it refuses to discuss the causes of cancer or ways we might prevent it. It won't say a word against the companies that pour toxic chemicals into our food, air, and water. In fact, the ACS has opposed regulations restricting cancer-causing hair dyes, food additives, air pollution, pesticides, breast implants, and medicines. And the society has done very well by kowtowing. ACS takes in serious money from the mammography, pesticide, and pharmaceutical industries -- then advocates policies that make those funders very happy. It pushes young women to get breast exams, although the hazards of radiation from those exams are well documented and the benefits to premenopausal women are sketchy. It mounted a vigorous defense of the pesticide industry after a documentary on the dangers of pesticides aired on PBS. And it uses its clout to squelch funding requests from researchers studying alternative cancer therapies -- thereby protecting the profits of the makers of cancer drugs. The society has denied that its industry connections constitute a conflict of interest. Until ordinary Americans call for far-reaching reform, the ACS will continue to be a tool of industry. Last year the Cancer Prevention Coalition called for a boycott of the ACS; thanks to the dearth of media coverage, few people heard about it. Samuel S. Epstein, http://www.preventcancer.com/cpc/ACS.htm "American Cancer Society: The World's Wealthiest 'Nonprofit' Institution," International Journal of Health Services, Vol. 29, no. 3, 1999. For more information go to http://www.preventcancer.com <cont'd>
