Massive Iraqi Death Toll Ignored by Tabloid Culture

[laststeamtrain]

MEDIA-US: Massive Iraqi Death Toll Ignored by Tabloid Culture
By Marie-Helene Rousseau

NEW YORK, Nov 4 (IPS) - The year is 1994. Pictures of Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley cover the pages of prominent U.S. newspapers and magazines. Yet hidden from national view is the attempted elimination of the Tutsi ethnic group in Rwanda.

When news of pop stars and their marriages and divorces takes precedence over stories about the Iraq War or privacy concerns in an age of increasing security measures, U.S. citizens are faced, as described by the director of Project Censored, "with a truth emergency".

To address this emergency, Project Censored, a non-profit media project within the Sonoma State University Foundation, each year compiles 25 stories which they say have been neglected by the mainstream media. Since 1976, when Carl Jensen founded the research facility, these stories have comprised a yearbook of controversial stories that have gone largely unread and underreported.

The organisation, now headed by Peter Phillips, a professor of sociology at Sonoma State University, works with students and faculty of SSU to review and select which of the 700-1,000 annually submitted stories make the final cut. A panel of judges that includes noted writers Noam Chomsky and Susan Faludi then ranks the 25 stories in order of importance.

How do they determine what constitutes "censorship"? An explanation on ProjectCensored.org states, "We define Modern Censorship as the subtle yet constant and sophisticated manipulation of reality in our mass media outlets." ...http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=44579

[IndyOp]

1. Peace. We will never have peace until we embrace painful truth. (n/t)

[Breeze54]

2. Thank You for posting this needed article !

:hi:

""We define Modern Censorship as the subtle yet constant and sophisticated manipulation of reality in our mass media outlets.""

:kick: & Recommended