Censored! 10 big stories the national news media ignore

[eauclaireliberal]

Censored! 10 big stories the national news media ignore

By Camille T. Taiara

In late July more than 600 people showed up in Monterey, Calif., to speak at a Federal Communications Commission hearing on ownership concentration in the news media. The participants were a diverse group, young and old, activists and workers, but they had a single consistent message: The mainstream news media have been doing a deplorable job of covering the day's most important stories.

That's no surprise: Consolidation of the media in the hands of a few corporate Goliaths has resulted in fewer people creating more of the content we see, hear and read. One impact has been a narrower range of perspectives. Another is the virtual disappearance of hard-hitting, original, investigative reporting.

"Corporate media have abdicated their responsibility to the First Amendment to keep the American electorate informed about important issues in society and instead serves up a pabulum of junk-food news," says Peter Phillips, head of Sonoma State University's Project Censored.

Every year researchers at Project Censored pick through volumes of print and broadcast news to see which of the past year's most important stories aren't receiving the kind of attention they deserve. Phillips and his team acknowledge that many of these stories weren't "censored" in the traditional sense of the word: No government agency blocked their publication. And some even appeared--briefly and without follow-up--in mainstream journals.

But every one of this year's picks merited prominent placement on the evening news and the dailies' front pages. Instead they went virtually ignored.

This list speaks directly to the point FCC critics have raised: Stories that address fundamental issues of wealth concentration and big-business dominance of the political agenda are almost entirely missing from the national debate. From the dramatic increase in wealth inequality in the United States, to the wholesale giveaway of the nation's natural resources, to the Bush administration's attack on corporate and political accountability, events and trends that ought to be dominating the presidential campaign and the national dialogue are missing from the front pages.

Here are Project Censored's 10 biggest examples of major stories that have been relegated to the most obscure corners of the media world. <<<
*continued at link*

[papau]

1. The 10 are all true - but # 6. Sale of electoral politics - BBV - is my #1

1. Wealth inequality in 21st century threatens economy and democracy

2. Ashcroft versus human rights law that holds corporations accountable

3. Bush administration manipulates science and censors scientists

4. High uranium levels found in troops and civilians

5. Wholesale giveaway of our natural resources

6. Sale of electoral politics

The Help America Vote Act required that states submit their blueprints for switching over to electronic voting systems by Jan. 1, 2004, and implement those plans in time for the 2006 elections. Some regions are already using the machines. But those who've bothered to look into the new systems are sending up serious warning flares. Critics say that if Americans don't want a repeat of the 2000 Florida election fiasco--on a much grander scale--the administration's plans must be halted in their tracks.

A switch to electronic voting might seem innocent enough at first--until you look at who's implementing it, and how. Indeed, the transfer represents the privatization of the voting process in the hands of a select few fervent GOP supporters who've insisted on keeping their operating systems and codes a trade secret--meaning they enjoy absolute control over the entire voting process, including ballot counting and oversight. There's no paper trail.

One prime example is Diebold, one of the nation's top electronic voting machine manufacturers, whose equipment was responsible for the Florida debacle. Diebold already operates more than 40,000 machines in 37 states across the country. Many of these are in Georgia, which in November became the first state to conduct an election entirely with touch-screen machines. Oddly enough, incumbent Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes lost to Republican candidate Sonny Perdue, 46% to 51%--"a swing from as much as 16 percentage points from the last opinion polls," Andrew Gumbel wrote in the U.K. Independent. In the same election, incumbent Democratic Sen. Max Cleland lost to his Republican challenger, Saxby Chambliss, thanks to "a last-minute swing of 9 to 12 points." And in and around Atlanta, 77 memory cards went missing or were otherwise temporarily unaccounted for before the votes they'd registered could be counted.

Gumbel continued: "The vote count was not conducted by state elections officials, but by the private company that sold Georgia the voting machines in the first place, under a strict trade-secrecy contract that made it not only difficult but actually illegal--on pain of stiff criminal penalties--for the state to touch the equipment or examine the proprietary software to ensure the machines worked properly."

Similar upsets occurred "in Colorado, Minnesota, Illinois, and New Hampshire--all in races that had been flagged as key partisan battlegrounds, and all won by the Republican Party," according to Gumbel.

The other top two electronic voting machine manufacturers, Sequoia and Election Systems and Software, are equally suspect. Several of their executives have troubling track records of corruption and conflict of interest. All three companies are prominent Republican Party donors.


7. Conservative organization drives judicial appointments


8. Secrets of Cheney's energy task force come to light


9. Widow brings RICO case against U.S. government for 9/11

10. New nuke plants: taxpayers support, industry profits

[patdem]

2. The voting issue is #1, otherwise the list becomes rinse and repeat

ad nauseatum. :grr: I totally agree with you!

[BlueEyedSon]

3. Here's the source

http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2005/index.html

[struggle4progress]

4. kick