Censored: The 10 Big Stories The National News Media Ignore
By Camille T. Taiara, TruthOut.org

In late July more than 600 people showed up in Monterey 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 has 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.

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

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

As the mainstream news media recite the official line about the nation's supposed economic recovery, a key point has been missing: wealth inequality in the United States has almost doubled over the past 30 years.

In fact, the Federal Reserve Board's most recent "Survey of Consumer Finances" supplement on high-income families shows that in 1998, the richest 1 percent of households owned 38 percent of the nation's wealth. The top 5 percent owned almost 60 percent of the wealth.

2. Ashcroft versus human rights law that holds corporations accountable.

For decades the United States has trained right-wing insurgents, toppled democratically elected governments, and propped up brutal dictatorships abroad ­ all in the interest of corporate profits. But rarely are the agents of repression ever held accountable for the tens of thousands of deaths and the brutal cycles of poverty, subjugation, environmental destruction, and violence they leave in their wake. Indeed, many foreign tyrants go on to enjoy plush retirement right here in the United States.

3. Bush administration manipulates science and censors scientists.

Tampering with data that threatens corporate profits is much more widespread under Bush than we've been led to believe. And the Environmental Protection Agency has emerged as one of the administration's primary targets.

One of the first White House moves ­ on the day Bush was inaugurated ­ was to fire engineer Tony Oppegard, the leader of a federal team investigating a 300-million-gallon slurry spill at a coal-mining site in Kentucky. "Black lava-like toxic sludge containing 60 poisonous chemicals choked and sterilized up to 100 miles of rivers and creeks," environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote in the Nation. The EPA dubbed it "the greatest environmental catastrophe in the history of the Eastern United States."

Bush then appointed industry insiders to top EPA posts in charge of mine safety and health.

4. High uranium levels found in troops and civilians.

Last year Project Censored included the United States' and Great Britain's continued use of depleted-uranium weapons ­ despite ample evidence of their acute health effects ­ among its top 10 underreported stories. Almost 10,000 U.S. troops died within 10 years of serving in the first Gulf War, researchers had found. And more than a third of those still alive had filed Gulf War Syndrome-related claims.

In study after study, research pointed to the use of depleted uranium in U.S. and British weaponry as the culprit. But authorities concentrated their efforts into obfuscating the problem ­ downplaying its reach, discrediting scientists and ailing military personnel, and erecting a smoke screen around the root causes of the "syndrome."

5. Wholesale giveaway of our natural resources.

Adam Werbach, executive director of the Common Assets Defense Fund and former Sierra Club president, reviewed the Bush administration's environmental policy record and came to a disturbing conclusion: the record is not only bad ­ it's "akin to an affirmative action program for corporate polluters," he wrote in In These Times.

Cheney's infamous, secretive, industry-laden energy task force produced what can be boiled down to two main recommendations, "lower the environmental bar and pay corporations to jump over it," Werbach wrote.

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.

7. Conservative organization drives judicial appointments.

Ever since the Reagan administration, the neoconservatives have pursued an aggressive campaign to stack the federal courts with right-wing judges. Their main vehicle: the Federalist Society of Law and Public Policy, an organization founded in 1982 by a small group of radically conservative law students at the University of Chicago.

The effort has been a resounding success. With the help of Republicans in Congress, 85 extra federal judgeships were created under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush; 9 were created under Clinton. Now 7 out of 12 circuit courts are antiabortion. Seven of the 9 Supreme Court justices are Republican appointees ­ and it's been 11 years since a post has opened up, meaning another right-winger or two could be appointed sometime soon. During Bush Sr.'s tenure, one White House insider boasted that no one who wasn't a Federalist ever received a judicial appointment from the president.

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

As the Bush administration continues to protect the iron wall of secrecy it's erected around Cheney's energy task force, at least two documents confirm long-standing suspicions that the administration's foreign policy is being driven by the dictates of the energy industry.

When Bush took office in January 2001, he said tackling the country's energy crisis would be a top priority. The United States faced nationwide oil and natural gas shortages, and a series of electrical blackouts were rolling across California. The president established the National Energy Policy Development Group and appointed former Halliburton CEO Cheney as its head.

One of the big issues on the table was oil, which accounted for 40 percent of the nation's energy supply and provided fuel for the vast majority of the country's transportation ­ as well as its expansive war machine. And for the first time in history, the United States had become reliant on foreign imports for more than 50 percent of its oil supply.

But rather than lay the groundwork for converting the economy to alternative, renewable sources, the task force's report, later released by Bush as the "National Energy Policy" report in May 2001, promoted a central goal of "mak[ing] energy security a priority of our trade and foreign policy." In other words, Cheney's group wanted to find additional sources of oil overseas and ensure U.S. access to that oil ­ whatever it took.

Documents recently obtained from the task force as the result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by public interest group Judicial Watch indicate Cheney and his colleagues had their sights on the black gold under the Iraqi desert well before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

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

As the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission, completed its first year, Ellen Mariani and her attorney held a press conference on the steps of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania to announce her own startling conclusions. Mariani, wife of Louis Neil Mariani, who died when terrorists flew United Airlines Flight 175 into the World Trade Center's south tower, had come to believe top American officials ­ including Bush, Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and others ­ had foreknowledge of the attacks, purposefully failed to prevent them, and had since taken pains to cover up the truth.

The administration, she argues in a federal lawsuit, allowed 9/11 to happen so Bush and company could launch their seemingly endless, global "war on terror" for their own personal and financial gain. The suit uses the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act ­ a law created to go after the Mafia ­ to charge the nation's leaders with conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and wrongful death.

10. New nuke plants: taxpayers support, industry profits.

If you thought nuclear energy was dead, think again: the Bush administration's energy bill ­ yet another product of Cheney's industry-stacked energy task force ­ provides taxpayer cash for companies that build new nukes.

A secretly crafted provision of the bill, released late on a Saturday night in November, offers energy companies as much as $7.5 billion in tax credits to build six nuclear reactors. This is in addition to almost $4 billion set aside for other nuclear energy programs.

"Nuclear power already has had 50 years of subsidy totaling over $140 billion," Nuclear Information and Resource Service's Cindy Folkers reported.

The administration also removed terrorism protection provisions included in the House version of the bill and reversed a previous ban on the export of enriched uranium, which may be used to construct nuclear bombs.

The press has been "woefully silent on the bill's nuclear provisions" Folkers and Michael Mariotte wrote in their update for Project Censored's new book, Censored 2005: The Top 25 Censored Stories. And while both Democrats and Republicans managed to defeat the version of the bill NIRS warned about last fall, supporters ­ particularly Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) ­ are still trying to push those provisions through, in some cases as riders on other bills. Estimates on the amount of tax credits being considered have since risen to "as much as $15 or even $19 billion."

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