Top 25 Censored News Stories in the US Media

Project Censored is a Sonoma University-based initiative currently in its thirty-first year. Each year, it selects twenty-five stories from hundreds of possible candidates which did not make it into the mainstream media. The selection criteria is based on their relevance to American public and their implications at home and abroad. By publishing these stories, the project aims to give them 'the light of day they might otherwise never have seen.'

Project Censored 2007: Top 25 Censored News Stories Covering the Years 2005-06

#1 Future of Internet Debate Ignored by Media
#2 Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technologies to Iran
#3 Oceans of the World in Extreme Danger
#4 Hunger and Homelessness Increasing in the US
#5 High-Tech Genocide in Congo
#6 Federal Whistleblower Protection in Jeopardy
# 7 US Operatives Torture Detainees to Death in Afghanistan and Iraq
#8 Pentagon Exempt from Freedom of Information Act
#9 The World Bank Funds Israel-Palestine Wall
#10 Expanded Air War in Iraq Kills More Civilians
#11 Dangers of Genetically Modified Food Confirmed
#12 Pentagon Plans to Build New Landmines
#13 New Evidence Establishes Dangers of Roundup
#14 Homeland Security Contracts KBR to Build Detention Centers in the US
#15 Chemical Industry is EPA’s Primary Research Partner
#16 Ecuador and Mexico Defy US on International Criminal Court
#17 Iraq Invasion Promotes OPEC Agenda
#18 Physicist Challenges Official 9-11 Story
#19 Destruction of Rainforests Worst Ever
#20 Bottled Water: A Global Environmental Problem
#21 Gold Mining Threatens Ancient Andean Glaciers
#22 $Billions in Homeland Security Spending Undisclosed
#23 US Oil Targets Kyoto in Europe
#24 Cheney’s Halliburton Stock Rose Over 3000 Percent Last Year
#25 US Military in Paraguay Threatens Region

For censored news covering the years 2006-2007, see here.

As to what may explain this censorship, the book "Manufacturing Consent" (1988) by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky may be a good place to start (here and here). To these authors, the mechanism of media (self) censorship, that is, the question of 'how' it happens, automatically or otherwise, could be explained through the logic of free market capitalism. Media groups work like corporations. The survival of the fittest is the rule in a free, competitive capitalist market where your profits determine your success. And if that means compromising on quality and integrity, so be it. The logic of the free market also dictates that the media corporations grow larger and eat up their rivals by either buying them out or outperforming them before their counterparts could do the same to them. This environment makes it very difficult for small, independent media outlets to survive. Over time, in the US, this market logic has resulted in a relatively concentrated network of major conglomerates and corporations (here). They standardized news, they set the agenda, their profit interests filter what gets on air and what does not. And, it is through this mechanism, media censorship happens. But more than that, the media actively constructs or 'manufactures' public apathy and/or 'consent'.

According to the two authors, there are five filters that determine what gets on the air. The filters explain the mechanism, of how media censorship happens in a systematic and automatic fashion in an otherwise varied groups of news outlets. They are a) Ownership of media, b) Funding sources, such as advertisments, c) Sourcing of news, d) Flak or negative responses to media content, from various groups and think tanks, e) Anti-ideologies, such as anti-communism, anti-terrorism.

I can't do justice to their argument in this limited space. But I hope you found this (rough) introduction helpful. Read more about the media filters here. Also check out Agenda-Setting and Framing theories on mass media.

Watch Chomsky elaborating on agenda-setting, on media selling audience to other corporations, on media coverage of the US war on Vietnam, and more, here. An interesting point he makes toward the end of the first clip is that George Orwell, the author of the famous novels, Animal Farm and 1984, thought that his ideas in these novels about the control of knowledge, propaganda, and totalitarianism could as well apply to democratic systems.