Project Censored, a media research group at Sonoma State University, has released its annual list of news stories that have been “overlooked, underreported, or self-censored” by the country’s major national news media. The stories are reviewed each year by a panel of more than 200 Sonoma State faculty, students, and community members and ranked in terms of their social significance and over all importance.
The top 5 censored stories of 2004 to 2005:
- Bush Administration Moves to Eliminate Open Government
According to California Representative Henry Waxman (D), the Bush administration has “an obsession with secrecy” that has been revealed in its rewriting of numerous laws and regulations reducing public and Congressional scrutiny of its activities. The Bush administration has increased the number exemption claims for Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, reduced the number of fee waivers provided for FOIA requests, and has won a special exemption for the National Security Agency’s “operational files.” Similarly, in March of 2003 President George W. Bush signed an executive order expanded the use of the national security classification—a move that eliminated the presumption of disclosure, postponed or avoided automatic declassification, and reclassified some information—along with instituting other procedures that restrict access to government documents. - Media Coverage Fails on Iraq: Fallujah and the Civilian Death Toll
The media in the United States has largely reported the “official” government perspective on the two invasions of Fallujah—that they were necessary to fight “insurgents”—without reporting on the impact of the invasions on Fallujah’s pre-invasion population of 300,000 people. Estimates in December of 2004 suggested that one-third of the city was destroyed and that at least 6,000 civilians were killed. In addition, there have been consistent reports of aid workers being denied access to the city, the targeting of civilian infrastructure (for example water treatment plants and hospitals), and concern that the invasions represented a serious breach of humanitarian and international law and may even constitute a war crime. Similarly, the overall civilian death toll in Iraq, which some estimates place at 100,000, has been consistently ignored by the major media. - Another Year of Distorted Election Coverage
Despite a significant discrepancy between exit poll data and the actual vote count in the 2004 presidential election, the major media failed to investigate widespread claims of voting “irregularities.” The official vote count in the 2004 election had Bush winning by three million votes, but exit polls projected a victory margin of five million votes for John Kerry; an eight-million vote discrepancy that was much greater than the overall margin of error, which should have been under one percent. Instead, the official result differed from exit poll projections by more than five percent, a difference that has been called a “statistical impossibility.” - Surveillance Society Quietly Moves In
On December 13, 2003, President Bush signed the Intelligence Authorization Act which significantly increased funding for intelligence agencies, dramatically expands the definition of surveillable financial institutions, and authorizes the FBI to acquire private records of individuals suspected of criminal activity without judicial review. This legislation is only part of a series of measures that have raised concerns about increased government surveillance of citizens including the Real Id Act’s advocacy of electronic RFID-enabled national identification cards, the MATRIX and Total Information Awareness data-mining programs to track personal information, including purchases, to develop terrorist profiles, and the failure to eliminate controversial provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act. - United States Uses Tsunami to Military Advantage in Southeast Asia
While the major media widely reported on the tragedy and destruction resulting from the 2004 tsunami, there was little scrutiny of the both the United States distribution of aid and as well as the United States’ efforts to use the tsunami to secure a military advantage in the region. Following the tsunami the United States increased military alliances with regional powers and expanded its presence in Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and the Malacca Straits.
