Author: Project Censored

  • By Nolan Higdon and Mickey Huff

    A January 2023 publication from the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) spawned the latest round of spin and shifting baselines from Russiagate apologists. Russiagate refers to the claims that Russia meddled in and influenced the outcome of the U.S. election in 2016, had direct connections to Donald Trump and his associates, and worked to help defeat Hillary Clinton for the presidency. A recent article from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, written by investigative reporter Jeff Gerth, utilized exiting media reports, and “dozens of people at the center of the story—editors and reporters, Trump himself, and others in his orbit,” to conclude that the legacy news media inaccurately covered the connection between Russia and Donald J. Trump during his Presidency. While this may be news to some diehard Democrats and their allies in the “liberal” press, the media’s reporting failures on the matter were not missed by all.

    In addition to concluding Russiagate was a failure of the Fourth Estate, Gerth’s report reveals that rather than reckoning with their failures, many in the news media continue to avoid the topic altogether. Gerth explained that “my final concern, and frustration, was the lack of transparency by media organizations in responding to my questions. I reached out to more than sixty journalists; only about half responded.”

    The authors of this article know firsthand how badly some outlets want to memory-hole media failures surrounding Russiagate. Just this year, we had an editor of a prominent online news site (where we have been published many times) refuse to publish one of our articles because it rightly pointed out, inconveniently, that journalists Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald were accurate on many aspects of the Russiagate narrative, despite other criticisms and attacks the corporate media and the left have heaped upon them.

    One of the most egregious responses to the additional revelations published by CJR about the collapse of Russiagate came from Andrew Prokop of Vox. Prokop misused the concept of “revisionism” to claim that Russiagate “deniers” (whom he primarily identified as Gerth, Greenwald, and Taibbi) were spreading a “revisionist history” about the news media reports on Trump and Russia. To set up his faulty argument, Prokop had no choice but to admit that the “Trump as Manchurian candidate” theories, and “anything based on the Steele dossier (the opposition research report on Trump that engendered much of the Russiagate speculation),” “have not aged well,” especially the infamous “pee tape” – a story claiming that Russia was blackmailing Trump with a recording of sex workers urinating on Trump. However, from there the article is an exercise in projection, straw-person arguments, cherry-picking, and shooting the messengers. While Prokop rightfully acknowledges some reporting errors in the past, he engages in revisionism of his own while moving the goalposts on the overall claims regarding Russia, Trump, the 2016 election, and the aftermath. 

    Prokop creates a straw person argument by falsely claiming that critics ignore the origin of Russiagate so they can blame it all on Hillary Clinton. In fact, the very people Prokop refers to as “deniers” have confirmed the very same stories Prokop cites as the actual origin of Russigate: the social media posts from Russian sources, Trump’s personal attorney’s contacting the Russian government regarding a Trump Tower project in Moscow, and the Trump campaign’s decision to share publicly available polling data, as well as their interest in hacked Democratic emails and “dirt,” on then candidate Hillary Clinton.

    In addition to misrepresenting Russiagate critics’ arguments, Prokop engages in an act of projection by accusing them of rewriting history. Citing a claim made by the U.S. Government in their indictment of individuals suspected of hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee’s [DNC] server, Prokop concludes that we know “the Russian government really did intervene in the 2016 election by hacking leading Democrats’ emails and having them leaked” to WikiLeaks. However, Prokop ignores a later declassified interview revealing that Crowdstrike, the American cybersecurity technology company that the government credits with proving that Russia hacked the DNC emails, admitted, under oath, to the House of Representatives’ Permentant Select Committee on Intelligence that “we did not have concrete evidence that the data was exfiltrated (moved electronically) from the DNC [server].” Instead, all they had was “indicators.” Indeed, Crowdstrike reiterated this point on their website noting that they do not have “concrete evidence” that anyone “exfiltrated data and emails from the DNC network.” This indicates that any claim that Russia hacked the emails is infact doubtful if not baseless according to the available evidence, and far from as certain as Prokop would lead readers to believe. Indeed, several scholars, including the two of us and others at the media watchdog Project Censored, have acknowledged that Russia did in fact interfere, but with little discernable impact.

    Worse, Prokop’s inaccurate historical narrative assumes that the Russiagate nonsense stopped with the Steele Dossier and Manchurian candidate narratives in 2016, and any other questionable stories or narratives were responsibly introduced by the news media, but may have worked to create a misleading narrative. He explains this conclusion by noting “media coverage that is accurate and even arguably justified can create an unfair or misleading narrative, due less to the facts than to proportion, hype, tone, and implication.” This is the real attempt at revisionist history, from the legacy press and their apologists who keep spinning the story, and the root of a larger problem. Censoring those who challenged that narrative not for ideological reasons, but for journalistic ones.

    First, media companies actively tried to censor authors criticizing Russiagate. Taibbi noted that there were attempts by Rolling Stone to stymie his Russian criticism. Indeed, Taibbi and Greenwald, both of whom had consistently appeared in major news media outlets, stopped being invited as guests once they questioned the Russiagate narrative. We even experienced this firsthand as in 2018, we had to fight to even raise legitimate questions about Russiagate for a writing project with one of our publishers. Among the liberal class, even asking basic questions about the evil Trump/Putin axis was akin to heresy (and just for the record, we oppose them both).

    Second, while Prokop fairly mentions that some major media outlets debunked a few Russiagate stories, he ignores the litany of false or baseless stories the legacy news media propounded and perpetuated long after the election. These include, but are not limited to:

    Prokop’s analysis is problematic because it conflates journalism with legal inquiries. He justifies the continued Russiagate reporting by noting that there were suspicious statements, actions, and associations that hinted at a Trump-Russia connection (which we even wrote about in a previous book). Even if this is true, this demonstrates a grammar school level understanding of journalism. Legal officials may, and did, investigate the connection, but the press acted as if a connection was already known and they – along with Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller – were just in the process of finding it. They did not find any prosecutable smoking gun, nor did they report on alterative motives or interpretations because they believed the Russiagate narrative so strongly that they tailored all reporting to confirm their bias that Russiagate was real.

    Their fixation on the Russiagate narrative may have been motivated in part by careerism. Indeed, major Russiagaters like Nina Jankowicz received a prestigious position as the head of now defunct Department of Homeland Security Disinformation Governance Board and Rachel Maddow took home a $30 million contract mostly for spreading Russiaphobia, and turning Russiagate into a cottage industry at MSNBC.

    Conversely, those who criticized (not denied, criticized) the Russigate narrative repeatedly experienced personal attacks to silence their reporting. For example, reports came out that Taibbi was a former drug user, misogynist, and a “conservative” (which WAPO used as a pejorative term). Prokop also engaged in ad hominem attacks to undermine the credibility of Gerth’s analysis for CJR by pointing out errors in his previous reporting. However, this fallacious attack does little to demonstrate any inaccuracy in Gerth’s current analysis or the topic at hand. We learn in Journalism 101 that news outlets make errors, but to gain credibility they own up to them, they do not revise history. This is why news outlets tell audiences about corrections, and so-called mainstream journalists such as Michael Isikoff admitted that media reports were less than accurate on Russiagate. That is how one builds credibility. The opposite approach would be to hide errors or biased reporting, like the Washington Post did when it stealthily removed its claims that Taibbi was a “conservative.”

    More importantly, it is fallacious to assume that if a journalist makes one mistake, then everything they report is false. Prokop must know this firsthand as he claimed in 2015 that Trump’s candidacy would be good for Jeb Bush. Instead, Trump won the presidency, Bush gained no notable support from voters, and was forced to drop out of the race in February 2016. Prokop’s embarrassing miscalculation is no reason to discount everything he reports. Indeed, it illustrates that all reporting needs to be evaluated on its merits, not by attacking an author for some previous error. Good journalism does not need to keep changing or back-peddling claims to fit a pre-ordained conclusion, it just needs to follow the facts wherever they may lead. For Russiagate, maybe it’s time we relegate it to the dustbin of history, and stymie any reprise of such revisionist propaganda.

    The post From Russiagate with Love: Corporate Media Spin and Revisionist Reporting on Russia’s Alleged Meddling in the 2016 Election Continue appeared first on Project Censored.

    This post was originally published on Project Censored.

  • This week’s program focuses on the ongoing case of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. In the first half of the program, Mickey speaks with Gabriel and John Shipton, brother and father of Assange, about the forthcoming documentary, “Ithaka.” This film approaches the Assange case from the perspective of family members trying to win Assange’s freedom. Later in the program, journalist Kevin Gosztola discusses his soon-to-be published book on the Assange case, explains how it differs from other publications about the matter, and why his case matters so much for press freedoms around the world.

    Notes
    Gabriel Shipton is Julian Assange’s brother, and a professional film producer. John Shipton is the father of Gabriel and Julian. Information about the documentary, and their U.S. speaking tour, can be found here. Kevin Gosztola is the managing editor of ShadowProof. He has covered the Julian Assange legal proceedings in the UK from their beginning, as well as other press freedom and whistleblower cases dating back to Chelsea Manning. His new book on the Assange case, Guilty of Journalism, will soon be available from The Censored Press/Seven Stories Press March 7. Gosztola also writes at The Dissenter.

    The post Guilty of Journalism: New Documentary Film Ithaka and New Book on the Political Case Against Julian Assange appeared first on Project Censored.

    This post was originally published on Project Censored.

  • Censored Press Authors Making Waves

    Kevin Gosztola, author of Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange, spoke at the fourth sitting of the Belmarsh Tribunal, in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2023. Gosztola joined Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, Noam Chomsky, and other luminary members of the Tribunal in pursuing what Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman described as “justice for journalists who are imprisoned or persecuted, publishers, whistleblowers who dare to reveal the crimes of our governments.” You can listen to Kevin Gosztola’s Belmarsh testimony, on what he describes as the CIA’s conspiracy theory against Assange, here.

    Gosztola will also be a featured speaker at the Disruption Lab Network’s Smart Prisons conference, to be held in Berlin, March 24-26, 2023. Many events on the program, including the panel featuring lawyer Stella Assange (Julian Assange’s wife), Gosztola, and investigative journalist Stefania Maurizi, will be streamed for free. Check the event website for the full schedule and streaming information.

    Publishers Weekly recently reviewed Guilty of Journalism, calling it a “searing polemic against the U.S. government’s encroachment on the freedom of the press.” Guilty of Journalism will be published on March 7, 2023. You can order a copy for delivery now, directly from Project Censored and The Censored Press.

    There’s more pre-publication praise for Going Remote: A Teacher’s Journey, by Adam Bessie and Peter Glanting. Publishers Weekly listed Going Remote as one of its Top 10 Adult Comics and Graphic Novels for Spring 2023; PW also featured an interview with Bessie and an excerpt from Going Remote.

    Going Remote is scheduled for publication in April 2023, but keep your eyes on Project Censored’s website and social media

    Progressive Mag for Junk News excerpt

     to be the first to know when we have pre-publication copies of the book ready to ship.

    YES! Magazine published “A Young Person’s Guide to Spotting Fake News,” an excerpt from The Media and Me, ProjectCensored’s guide to critical media literacy for young people (and anyone else who cares about media democracy in action). The February/March issue of The Progressive features “Space Junk,” by Jen Lyons, Marcelle Swinburne, Sierra Kaul, Gavin Kelley, and Mickey Huff, excerpted from their “Junk Food News” chapter in State of the Free Press 2023.

    Looking to the future, we are thrilled to announce that The Censored Press has signed a contract with Omar Zahzah to publish his first book, Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital Colonialism in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle. Zahzah is a Lebanese Palestinian writer, poet, artist, independent scholar, freelance journalist, and organizer, who serves as the education and advocacy coordinator at Eyewitness Palestine. Terms of Service combines Zahzah’s investigative reporting with recent work on surveillance capitalism, technology, and society to expose how Big Tech repression of Palestinian media content furthers the Israeli colonial project—and what can be done to stop it. Terms of Servitude is scheduled for publication in 2024. Stay tuned here for more news about it.

    Through its publishing imprint, The Censored Press, Project Censored helps produce books—such Going Remote, Guilty of Journalism, The Media and Me, and Terms of Servitude—that challenge the establishment media’s narrow conceptions of who and what count as “newsworthy.” At a time when reactionary forces seek to ban books, your support of Project Censored helps us to publish radical titles such as these.


    Dispatches on Media and Politics

    The Project’s Dispatches series—cogent analyses of timely issues at the intersection of media and politics—started 2023 with a bang. In January, Nolan Higdon and Mickey Huff published Promoting Falsehoods and Marginalizing Truth-Tellers, a critical dissection of recent reassessments of the role that Russia played (or, did not play) in swinging the 2016 presidential election. Also that month, Higdon published The Professional Managerial Class Strikes Back!, about the development of what he described as “an apartheid system of faculty” in higher education, which prevents “faculty from uniting with each other, let alone students, to resist managerial coercion.”

    ChatGPT in the classroomIn February, Higdon and Allison Butler assessed the “shockwaves” sent through higher education by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a chatbot that can generate outlines, bibliographies, and well-formed essays. In STFU about ChatGPT, Higdon and Butler assess the fear that ChatGPT will lead to rampant academic dishonesty by students, noting that, although cheating is “nothing new,” critical media literacy provides educators and students alike with resources to make sense of the threats and benefits posed by this latest tech development.

    This month also saw the first longform article in the Dispatches series, Andy Lee Roth, avram anderson, and Mickey Huff’s Beyond Prior Restraint: Censorship by Proxy and the New Digital Gatekeeping. This in-depth article examines the closure of RT America, the EARN IT Act, and online censorship of LGBTQ content as examples of “censorship by proxy” and assesses how this relatively new form of censorship is driven by moral panics and advertising interests. “Beyond Prior Restraint” is excerpted from a chapter by Roth, anderson, and Huff to be included in Censorship, Digital Media, and the Global Crackdown on Freedom of Expression, edited by Robin Andersen, Nolan Higdon, and Steve Macek, which will be released later this year by the international publishing house Peter Lang.


    The Project Censored Show

    Recent episodes of the Project Censored Show, originating from KPFA in Berkeley, California, and rebroadcast on some fifty terrestrial radio stations across the US, have included Mickey Huff’s interview with independent journalists Kevin Gosztola and Sam Husseini, who discussed the democratic significance of whistleblowers and journalists, and Eleanor Goldfield addressing the true legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in conversation with Jacqueline Luqman, and the Biden administration’s “updates” to immigration policy, with Setareh Ghandehari from the Detention Watch Network.

    In a subsequent program, hosted by Huff, Alan MacLeod, a senior staff writer at MintPress News, described his recent investigative reports on the close, financially lucrative ties between Big Tech companies and the US military/security establishment. And Goldfield examined Germany’s push for more dirty coal, with Sasha Lorenz of the Lützerath Lebt movement. Eleanor also spoke with Coyotefrom the Defend Atlanta Forest movement to address the murder of forest defender Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán.


    Recent and Upcoming Project Censored Events

    10th Anniversary Celebration of Project Censored The Movie on March 16

    10th Anniversary Celebration of Project Censored The Movie on March 16

    Time flies. It’s been ten years since the premiere of Christopher Oscar and Doug Hecker’s award-winning documentary, Project Censored The Movie, at the 2013 Sonoma International Film Festival, and we’re still fighting to “End the Reign of Junk Food News.”

    To celebrate the film’s anniversary, the historic Sebastiani Theater in Sonoma, CA is presenting a double-feature screening of Project Censored The Movie with the premiere of United States of Distraction: Fighting the Fake News Invasion, on Thursday, March 16th. Narrated and edited by Abby Martin, United States of Distraction (2020) was shot and produced by Project Censored students.

    If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, come celebrate independent film-making and support Project Censored. Tickets include the screening of both films, a Q&A session, and a glass of wine; students with school ID will be admitted for no charge (wine not included). For more information about the program follow this link.

    The Media and Me in Vermont

    On Saturday, February 11, the Rockingham Free Public Library, in Bellows Falls, featured Ben Boyington discussing The Media and Me and the importance of critical  media literacy. Boyington was also featured on the February 8 episode of CT Politics.

    State of the Free Press 2023 in Illinois and California

    On February 8th, North Central College hosted a festive book launch featuring students and faculty who contributed to State of the Free Press 2023, including NCC student Kathleen Minelli, NCC alumna Shealeigh Voitl, and faculty members Steve Macekand Amy Grim Buxbaum. Among the sixty-some people in attendance was investigative reporter, editor, and publisher Geoff Davidian, one of Project Censored’s esteemed judges.

    Mickey Huff will discuss Project Censored’s State of the Free Press 2023 at The Avid Reader in Sacramento, at 2pm on February 25th.

    The post The February 2023 Newsletter appeared first on Project Censored.

    This post was originally published on Project Censored.

  • In the first half of the program, Shealeigh Voitl and Steve Macek a look at how corporate-media coverage has failed over the course of years to adequately inform the public of corporate interference in matters of environment and human health in a segment dedicated to Project Censored’s Déjà Vu news research. Mickey’s guests use this theme to examine issues ranging from microplastics pollution to water privatization to aggressive marketing of infant formula. In the second segment, Andy Lee Roth joins Steve Macek and Mickey to discuss former Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke. He’s being sued by an energy billionaire about statements made on the campaign trail. Is this action a new variety of SLAPP suit, meant to suppress open discussion of public issues (notably Dark Money in politics)? Tune in as Roth and Macek discuss their recent Truthout article and the influence of Dark Money in US politics.

    Notes:
    Steve Macek is Professor of Communications and Media Studies at North Central College in Illinois,
    and is co-coordinator of Project Censored’s Campus Affiliates Program. Shealeigh Voitl is Project Censored’s Editorial Assistant, a co-author of the “Déjà vu News” chapter in Project Censored’s annual media-review volume, and a journalism graduate of North Central College in Illinois. Andy Lee Roth is Associate Director of Project Censored, co-editor of the Project’s annual media-review volume, and co-coordinator of the Project’s Campus Affiliates Program. He has published widely on media issues. The Roth/Macek article about the Texas lawsuit can be found here.

    Music-break information:
    1)”Water Song” by Hot Tuna
    2) “Ride Across the River” by Dire Straits
    3) “Money” by Pink Floyd

    the Project Censored Show:
    Hosts: Mickey Huff & Eleanor Goldfield
    Producers: Anthony Fest & Eleanor Goldfield

    The post Censored Déjà Vu: Corporate Media’s Ongoing Failure to Cover Key Issues around Food Safety, Birthing, and Breastfeeding & Dark Money’s Pernicious Influence on Political Culture appeared first on Project Censored.

    This post was originally published on Project Censored.

  • Project Censored is pleased to publish the first long-form article in our “Dispatches from Project Censored: On Media and Politics” column. Authored by Andy Lee Roth, Avram Anderson, and Mickey Huff, the piece draws heavily from a chapter they contributed to the forthcoming book, Censorship, Digital Media, and the Global Crackdown on Freedom of Expression, edited by Robin Andersen, Nolan Higdon, and Steve Macek (Peter Lang). In this inaugural long-form piece, the authors take a deep dive into censorship by proxy, how it operates in contemporary American media, and what it means for media consumers. As we continue to develop our “Dispatches” column, we will include additional long-form pieces that offer in-depth reporting on the state of American media and how it intersects with politics.

    Please note: For reprints, please credit the piece as “adapted from the forthcoming Censorship, Digital Media, and the Global Crackdown on Freedom of Expression, edited by Robin Andersen, Nolan Higdon, and Steve Macek (Peter Lang).”

    Defining “Censorship by Proxy”

    Online restrictions—including content moderation, advertising blocklists, and enforcement of “community standards,”implemented by Big Tech platforms such as Twitter, TikTok, and Facebook—increasingly combine with government legislation to yield dangerous, but submerged threats to online freedom of information, not to mention the offline safety historically-oppressed or marginalized groups.

    Censorship has typically been treated as a matter of government control, with emphases in the United States on the role of the First Amendment and a host of legal precedents that establish limits on “prior restraint” by government. However, the rise of digital-era media giants—including Alphabet (which owns Google and YouTube), Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram), and Twitter—makes clear that media corporations now stand alongside government as commanding arbiters of legitimate discourse on public issues. “Google may not be a country, but it is a superpower,” Timothy Garton Ash wrote in Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World. Though Google, Facebook, Twitter and other media entities lack the formal legal authority of sovereign nation-states, “their capacity to enable or limit freedom of information and expression is greater than that of most states.”

    We explore these significant changes in the media landscape by developing the concept of censorship by proxy, which we define as restrictions on freedom of information 1) undertaken by private corporations, which 2) exceed the usual legal limits on governmental censorship, and 3) serve both corporate and government or third-party interests.

    The Example of RT America

    As an example of censorship by proxy, consider the demise of RT America, also known as Russia Today, which from 2010 until 2022 served as the US-based channel of the global, multilingual RT news network funded by the Russian government. On March 3, 2022, after the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and amidst a popular wave of anti-Russian sentiment in the United States, RT America shut down. Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist who hosted “On Contact” on RT America, wrote, “This was long the plan of the US government.”

    But, in fact, it was not the US government that shut down RT America. Instead, DirectTV, Roku, Sling TV and Dish—all corporate entities—effectively censored RT America by deplatforming the channel: On March 1, 2022, DirecTV dropped RT America from its services; the following day, Roku did the same; and, on March 4, Sling TV and its parent company Dish removed RT America their platforms.

    But Hedges’ analysis of the US government’s aims was not off-target. Well before Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the US government had placed restrictions on RT America and journalists working for it. In November 2017, facing legal pressure from the US Department of Justice, RT America had registered as a “foreign agent” under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). Although RT America, Qatari-owned Al Jazeera, and several Chinese state media outlets have been required to register under FARA, the BBC, Germany’s Deutsche Welle, and Canada’s CBC have not, leading some critics to suggest that the designation “has more to do with geopolitics than with journalism.”

    An intelligence assessment spurred the Justice Department’s pressure to register RT under the Foreign Agent Registration Act. A now-declassified January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) concluded that “Russia’s state-run propaganda machine” contributed to the Russian “influence campaign” to swing the 2016 presidential election in favor of Donald Trump. According to the ICA—which combined analyses by the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA—RT America’s programing highlighted “criticism of alleged US shortcomings in democracy and civil liberties” and was an important “messaging tool” in the “Kremlin-directed campaign to undermine faith in the US government and fuel political protest.”

    The Committee to Protect Journalists criticized the Justice Department for forcing RT to register as a foreign agent, describing this as a “shift in how the law has been applied in recent decades” and “a bad idea” that empowered governments to decide “what constitutes journalism or propaganda.” Journalists at registered outlets stated that “the stigma attached with registering” compromised their ability “to carry out normal journalistic activities,” the CPJ reported subsequently.

    The US government could have silenced RT America outright, but doing so would have prompted negative repercussions. An overt government decision to censor RT America would likely have generated not only widespread domestic criticism of the action as a violation of constitutionally-protected press freedoms, but also Russian blowback in the form of retaliation in kind against US-based news organizations operating in Russia.

    Instead, the decisions of a handful of US-based media service providers achieved the same end without any of the domestic or international political costs. This case exemplifies the phenomenon we describe as censorship by proxy. Because censorship by proxy can occur wherever the interests and powers of global corporations and national governments intersect, it is an international phenomenon.

    Returning to the case of RT America, note that, in addition to the groundwork laid by the Justice Department’s designation of the broadcaster and its journalists as registered “foreign agents,” the marked rise in anti-Russian public opinion following the Russian invasion of Ukraine also contributed to the news channel’s demise. DirectTV, Roku, Sling TV, and Dish each decided to drop RT America from their platforms in protest against the Russian invasion, and likely in response to public campaigns urging them to do so. The corporate deplatforming of RT America should be understood not only as a case of censorship by proxy, but also as a product of a “moral panic” in which the Russian news channel was cast as a “folk devil” and the media service providers that deplatformed it positioned themselves as defenders of established values.

    Moral Panics Prompt Censorship by Proxy

    Informed by pioneering studies in the sociology of deviance by Howard Becker, Stanley Cohen, and Stuart Hall, social scientists, media scholars use the term “moral panic” to describe social fears based on the belief that a stereotyped group or category of people threatens the values, safety, or interests of a community. These stereotypes often center on identities marginalized within the community or wider society, including, for example, race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, nationality, religion, or class.

    Despite the concept’s wording, moral panics are usually about politics as much as morality. This is especially so in contexts of social, political, or economic tension, when the manufacture of moral panic is useful because it can quickly and effectively produce social solidarity. Moral panics can rapidly convert outrage into political action. Notably, however, studies on a diverse range of moral panics, from the Salem witch trials in the 17th century to the “War on Drugs” in the 1980s and 1990s, demonstrate that political action in response to moral panics often serves to reinforce and expand the authority of groups already holding power.

    Our analysis shows how practitioners of censorship by proxy often participate in the construction or amplification of moral panics to justify restrictions on freedom of information. Political leaders and Big Tech platforms alike champion online safety—often with paternalistic calls to protect women and children—in the name of “cleaning up” online spaces, but the measures they propose often serve to muzzle legitimate political dissent, further marginalize already vulnerable communities, and divide members of the public by pitting, for example, the safety of children against freedom of information.

    How Censorship by Proxy Works: Content Moderation, Community Standards, and Advertising Blocklists

    Online censorship has been made more palatable through rebranding as “content moderation” or enforcement of “community standards,” undertaken by corporations as much as government agencies. Content moderation often leads to innocent content being flagged as harmful or explicit, which leads to the silencing of marginalized voices. Here we focus especially on LGBTQ+ content, but, under the guise of countering “fake news,” censorship by proxy also restricts progressive independent news outlets that depend on major media platforms for content distribution, advertising revenue, and fundraising.

    From Facebook to YouTube, the biggest social media platforms all engage in forms of content blocking that negatively impact LGBTQ people and communities. Due to a double-standard, the same algorithms that ban LGBTQ-themed hashtags and demonetize YouTube channels with LGBTQ content often permit or even promote homophobic and transphobic content. No overarching policy, much less any kind of government directive leads to these outcomes; instead, the marginalization or erasure of queer content online is a case of censorship by proxy that reflects—and reinforces—moral panic orchestrated by the religious right and embraced by many Republican politicians, as Katherine Stewart documented in The Power Worshippers.

    Under the guise of addressing hate speech, Facebook has applied strict real-name policies that prevent transgender people from using their chosen names and identities, blocked advertising with LGBTQ content or themes, while instituting criteria for “protected” and “unprotected” categories that promote homophobic and transphobic content. To moderate “adult” content, Instagram has deplatformed users, banned hashtags, and shadow-banned posts and ads with LGBTQ content. In efforts to manage bullying or harassment based on users’ “physical or mental condition,” TikTok has implemented moderation guidelines that outlaw LGBTQ content.  Twitter has implemented bans on “sensitive media” terms that restrict efforts by LGBTQ people to reclaim and take pride in slurs, because content moderation processes often disregard the poster’s intent. In January 2021, a federal judge dismissed a class-action lawsuit against YouTube, filed by LGBT content creators, who claimed that the video sharing platform had violated their First Amendment rights by censoring their content and demonetizing their channels. US District Court Magistrate Virginia DeMarchi ruled that, as private entities, YouTube and its parent company, Google, were not bound by the First Amendment, a ruling that received nearly no news coverage.

    Advertising Interests Drive Censorship by Proxy

    In a new wrinkle on how advertising interests shape the production and distribution of online content, advertisers now use “blocklists” to avoid having their products associated with content that they believe might damage their brands’ reputations with target consumers. The advertising blocklists employed by many prominent corporations to promote “brand safety” now employ artificial intelligence technology to scan for as many as 7,000 different words and phrases.

    A 2019 study by CHEQ, a cybersecurity business, found that “more than half (57%) of neutral or positive stories on major news sites are being incorrectly flagged as unsafe for advertising.” The impact of blocklists was most pronounced on LGBTQ-focused news outlets: 73 percent of the safe content in The Advocate and PinkNews was inappropriately flagged as unsafe for advertising, CHEQ found. The editor of PinkNews, Benjamin Cohen, told CHEQ that a lot of content gets blocked “for no legitimate reason.” Ad networks are “blocking content for the word ‘lesbian’ because they lazily think lesbian equals porn,” Cohen explained.

    Deprived of precious advertising revenue, LGBTQ+ media outlets become even more vulnerable to cuts, layoffs, and closures. Brand safety based on blocking keywords is “hurting minority voices, such as LGBT communities,” CHEQ concluded. Jerry Daykin, an ad exec and LGBTQ+ advocate, put it even more starkly, telling CHEQ, without more careful consideration of how advertising blocklists work, “We’ll continue to see minority voices squeezed out of media.”

    The EARN IT Act

    To clarify the potential scope of censorship by proxy, consider the EARN IT Act, introduced by Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) in early 2022. The bill proposes to establish a national commission to “develop best practices for interactive computer services providers (e.g., Facebook and Twitter) to prevent, reduce, and respond to the online sexual exploitation of children,” and also limits “the liability protections of interactive computer service providers with respect to claims alleging violations of child sexual exploitation laws.” The EARN IT Act would severely weaken Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which gives immunity from prosecution to electronic service providers for most user-posted content, a provision the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) cites as “the most important law protecting internet speech.”

    The 2022 EARN IT Act revived a 2020 version of the legislation, which lawmakers had dropped after it was strongly opposed by a number of organizations that promote press freedoms and digital rights, including EFF, Freedom of the Press Foundation, Article 19, and Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society. Both versions of the EARN IT Act build on a 2018 federal law known as FOSTA-SESTA, the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) and Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA). FOSTA-CESTA established an exception to Section 230, making online platforms legally liable for third-party content that promotes sex trafficking. As numerous critics have noted, FOSTA-SESTA has chilled online speech and restricted privacy rights in ways that disproportionately harm LGBTQ+ people, sex workers, and others who depend on internet privacy. FOSTA-SESTA led to the closure of Craigslist personals, the gutting of Tumblr after it banned all “adult” content, and new restrictions on Instagram, consequences that only begin to foreshadow the potential impacts of the 2022 EARN IT Act.

    While affirming the importance of curbing “the scourge of child exploitation online,” in February 2022, Article 19 and 48 additional organizations— including the American Civil Liberties Union, the EFF, the National Coalition Against Censorship, and PEN America—sent an open letter to the US Senate, opposing the EARN IT Act on the grounds that it “will actually make it harder for law enforcement to protect children. It will also result in online censorship that will disproportionately impact marginalized communities and will jeopardize access to encrypted services.”

    Opponents of the EARN IT Act foresee a dramatic expansion of liability under state laws if the EARN IT Act revokes the protections afforded service providers by Section 230, a watershed change that would lead service providers to engage in overbroad censorship of online speech. As Article 19’s open letter to the US Senate noted, these chilling effects would especially restrict “content created by diverse communities, including LGBTQ individuals, whose posts are disproportionately labeled erroneously as sexually explicit.”

    Critics of the EARN IT Act also decry it as a Trojan horse effort to erode end-to-end encryption, which helps internet users—including journalists, activists, and members of marginalized communities—keep their online data and communications private and secure. Online services would be likely to stop using end-to-end encryption because it is also considered a “red flag” for law enforcement officials investigating online child sex-abuse materials (CSAM). Although end-to-end encryption protects the freedom of expression and privacy of all internet users, it is especially important for members of LGBTQ+ communities. As LGBT Tech and the Internet Society have noted, strong encryption provides privacy for LGBTQ+ people while coming out and connecting, and it empowers transgender people “to safely use the Internet to find doctors and treatment during transitions.”

    Outside the United States, other nations have enacted or are pursuing similar laws. In January 2022, Australia enacted its Online Safety Act. According to the government, the law strengthens previous cyberbullying protections for children and adults and authorizes the nation’s eSafety Commissioner to “get the ‘worst of the worst’ content removed no matter where it’s hosted.” In March 2022, the Australian news site Junkee reported that the law’s “overly broad take-down powers” are threatening queer online spaces and “silencing LGBTIQ culture.” Comparable legislation, the Online Safety Bill, is under review in the United Kingdom, and subject to similar criticisms.

    Online Restrictions and Offline Repercussions

    Some worst-case consequences of what US legislation such as the EARN IT might lead to can be appreciated by reviewing the chilling effects of Russia’s 2013 “gay propaganda law.”

    In 2011, Russia established a federal law that restricted the distribution of “harmful” material among minors, including information that depicted violence, illegal activities, substance abuse, self-harm, or that might “elicit fear, horror, or panic in children.” After subsequent revisions to the law, in 2012 and 2013, legislation first enacted as a content rating system morphed into a sweeping law that criminalizes “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships” as a class of harmful content. As the Guardian reported at the time, the 2013 law “stigmatizes gay people and bans giving children any information about homosexuality.” In 2018, Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report that analyzed Russia’s 2013 “gay propaganda” law as “a classic example of political homophobia,” which “targets vulnerable sexual and gender minorities for political gain.” Based on in-depth interviews with sexual and gender minority youth and mental health providers and social workers in Russia, HRW found that the law not only limits sexuality education, but also has been used to shut down online information and mental health referrals for youth, exacerbated hostility toward LGBT people, and had a chilling effect on mental health professionals and others who work with LGBT youth.

    Although there has been global protest against Russia’s anti-LGBTQ policies, especially during the leadups to the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics and the Russian-hosted 2018 World Cup, much less attention has been focused on the role of the religious right in the United States in creating Russia’s anti-gay movement. As Mother Jones reported in February 2014, Russians have “adopted the kind of language the American religious right has long deployed to fight acceptance of homosexuality”—including terms such as “natural family,” “traditional values,” and “protecting children.”

    This was the result, Mother Jones reported, of the direct influence of the Illinois-based World Congress of Families, an umbrella organization for many of the most influential religious right groups in the US. “The rise of anti-gay laws in Russia has mirrored, almost perfectly, the rise of WCF’s work in the country,” Mother Jones reported in 2014. The Southern Poverty Law Center lists the WCF as a designated hate group, based on its anti-LGBTQ ideology:

    Though its origins are in the American Christian Right, the WCF has built a web of influence in different countries, providing a point of networking for global anti-LGBT forces… Its legacy includes the mainstreaming of the so-called “natural family” doctrine, one that has been used to curtail LGBT and reproductive rights across the world.

    The channels of influence between anti-LBGTQ interests in the United States and Russia run in both directions. As Mother Jones reported in 2014, “elements of the US religious right have come to see Russia as a redoubt in a global battle against homosexuality.”

    Inspired though it may by the Russian model, the crackdown on LGBTQ+ rights in the United States has developed through different channels. In Russia, the national government has spearheaded the crackdown; in the United States, media giants and state governments, spurred by anti-LGBT groups such as Project Blitz, have acted in concert to provide the one-two punch necessary to create what even establishment news outlets have reported as an “unprecedented” wave and “historic tally” of anti-LGBTQ legislation, as monitored by Blitz Watch. These dynamics exemplify a more complex and subtle variation of censorship by proxy.

    In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott ordered the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services to consider gender-affirming care for transgender adolescents child abuse; in Florida, Ron DeSantis signed into law a controversial Parental Rights in Education bill, dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by critics, which bans classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through third grade classrooms and requires any instruction on those topics to be age-appropriate and in accordance with state standards. Across the United States, educational gag orders—including 15 legislative bills in nine states and “sweeping book bans”—target speech about LGBTQ+ identities, PEN America reported in February 2022.

    These legislative efforts dovetail with restrictions on LGBTQ+ content online, including content moderation, community standards, and advertising blocklists administered by corporate platforms, including Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, as described in earlier sections of this article. From online content restrictions to offline curriculum regulations and other forms of exclusionary legislation, the United States is at risk of rivaling Russia in silencing LGBTQ+ voices and marginalizing LGBTQ+ identities.

    Three Strategies to Counter Censorship by Proxy

    The ability to censor is not limited to government agencies. Instead, corporate entities—including especially media giants such as Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter—exert profound influence on our channels of communication, controlling what members of the public are most likely to see—and what content and perspectives those audiences are unlikely to ever to come across, unless they actively seek them out.

    In the hope of spurring engagement with these concerns, we conclude with a brief overview of three possible remedies to online censorship by proxy.

    First, Design from the Margins (DFM) offers one promising approach for developing technology, apps, and online platforms that protect historically oppressed or marginalized groups. Developed by Afsaneh Rigot, a researcher affiliated with Article 19 and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, DFM originated from an effort to counter what Rigot has described as the “weaponization of social media, messenger, and dating apps.” By contrast, when technology is designed from the onset with the vulnerabilities of oppressed and marginalized users in mind, all users benefit from greater security. Rigot’s research has already led to significant improvements in the design of dating apps used by LGBTQ+ people in countries where authorities and non-state actors regularly target members of LGBTQ+ communities.

    Second, we ought to think creatively about how DFM principles might apply to media more broadly. There are promising overlaps between DFM and a number of the guidelines for ethical journalism advocated by the Society of Professional Journalists. Under the basic guideline, “Seek Truth and Report It,” for example, the SPJ includes guidance to avoid stereotypes, to label advocacy as such, and to support “the open and civil exchange of views,” even when those views might be deemed “repugnant” by some. A full discussion of the crossover between these principles of ethical journalism and a Design from the Margins approach goes beyond the scope of this concluding discussion. But, for now, we note that content moderation, community standards, and advertising guidelines, would likely look rather different in the future than they do now, if DFM principles served as foundations, rather than afterthoughts. Similarly, strong encryption—imperiled by legislation such as the EARN IT Act—protects vulnerable groups subject to systemic discrimination.

    US policy decisions will affect not only US users but also set precedents around the world. Those concerned with opposing global crackdowns on freedom of information and expression should lend their support to efforts to preserve end-to-end encryption online.

    Third and finally, critical media literacy—as championed by organizations such as Project Censored, the Critical Media Project, and the Propwatch Project, to name only a few—can help to raise public awareness about the extent of censorship by proxy, and to defuse the power of moral panics. Censorship is most powerful when it is invisible; moral panic is most inflammatory when heightened anxieties make it easier to draw conclusions that might be counter to logic. Informed by the basic principles of critical media literacy, members of the public are more likely to recognize censorship by proxy and less likely to be irrationally swayed by moral panic.

    Andy Lee Roth is a sociologist and associate director of Project Censored. He is coeditor, with Mickey Huff, of Project Censored’s State of the Free Press 2023, and a member of the Media Revolution Collective that wrote The Media and Me: A Guide to Critical Media LIteracy for Young People.

    Avram Anderson is an electronic resources management specialist at California State University, Northridge, and a member and advocate of the LGBTQI+ community researching LGBTQI+ censorship, in print and online. In addition to coauthoring The Media and Me, they also serve on the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Committee at the National Information Standards Organization (NISO).

    Mickey Huff is director of Project Censored, coeditor of the Censored yearbook series, and coauthor of United States of Distraction, Let’s Agree to Disagree, and The Media and Me. Huff teaches social science, history, and journalism at Diablo Valley College, and serves as executive producer and cohost of The Project Censored Show, the Project’s nationally syndicated public affairs program.

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  • By Nolan Higdon and Allison Butler

    ChatGPT has sent shockwaves through higher education, creating a moral panic about the threat that artificial intelligence (AI) poses to the classroom. As critical media literacy scholars, we are not panicking, and we do not think any educator should. Developed by OpenAI, ChatGPT is a chat bot released in late 2022. Industry insiders were amazed by the technology, with Microsoft quickly moving to integrate OpenAI features into its products.

    Among other functions, ChatGPT, currently offered as a free research preview, can write well-formulated essays on a series of topics. According to Inside Higher Ed, students are using it to generate outlines, bibliographies, and tutoring concepts. Meanwhile, educators are confirming cheating rings composed of students using ChatGPT. The ubiquity and effectiveness of ChatGPT has “alarmed” universities and led many professors to alter their syllabus and pedagogical approach.

    Much of the reports on ChatGPT serve to foster panic. For example, the New York Times warned that ChatGPT “hijacks democracy,” and Arab News claimed it will “deepen the disinformation crisis.” The reporting also suffers from a disaster movie-like understanding of AI, where the programs become sentient and overtake humanity and free will. In Machine Unintelligence, computer scientist Meredith Broussard reminds us that the autonomous AI popularized by films was abandoned by serious researchers decades ago. Indeed, Gary Smith refers to the public’s continued faith in the development of the film version of AI “The AI Delusion.”

    To quell the panic, it behooves us to remember that the machine learning possible today is dictated by human created algorithms. It is humans, not autonomous machines, who set the parameters for what AI can and cannot do. Digital technologies are not autonomous actors free from human influence and they are certainly not sentient. Rather, they are designed by humans and thus reflect and communicate the various biases, values, and self-serving interests of their creators.

    A critical media literacy lens reminds us that, rather than fret over academic dishonesty, it is more worthwhile to investigate what goes into building ChatGPT: The human element reveals the values of the larger society, including adherence to racism, sexism, and classism. For example, in 2022 when asked “whether a person should be tortured,” ChatGPT responded to yes if they’re from North Korea, Syria, or Iran. The xenophobic and jingoistic response illustrates how AI technology such as ChatGPT recreates the bias of its human creator. Furthermore, it threatens to compound class inequities by serving privileged students who can access the fast computer and high-speed internet necessary to utilize ChatGPT.

    ChatGPT is simply the latest tool in the the century’s long saga of academic dishonesty. While there are certainly instances where students cheat simply for the sake of cheating, students are more often driven to cheat when backed into a corner. For example, the contradiction of finding no time to study because they need to work in order to pay for college or the pressure of maintain a high GPA because that appears to be the route to professional and financial success, post-graduation.

    There are those who believe more tech is the solution, and have turned to a Princeton student generated app that claims to be able to determine if ChatGPT wrote a particular essay. Using technology to determine the veracity of technology may be helpful, but it leaves out the process of critical analysis of said technology.

    Our solution, and one way to dampen the moral panic, is for teachers to take a critical media literacy approach and bring ChatGPT in the classroom so that students can understand the threats and benefits it poses to their learning. ChatGPT presents a unique opportunity for teachers and students to build knowledge together; because the technology and its applications are brand-new to all of us, this is an opportunity to co-create understanding and, in working together, we may dampen both the fascination with the tech as well as the desire to use it for nefarious purposes. Utilizing the skills of critical inquiry fostered by critical media literacy, teachers and students can work together to analyze assignments. This may include presentations on their papers, the development of in-class outlines prior to writing, or a simple conversation about the content and structure of the assigned work. Such lessons serve two purposes: give students an opportunity to sharpen their understanding and provide educators with an opportunity to test students’ depth of knowledge about the essay they claim to have written.

    It is incumbent on educators to communicate to students the benefits and threats posed by the utilization of technology. As teachers, we know that to write well is to think well. While teaching our students this, we can also remind them that, while it is possible to attain a degree in higher education without attaining the broader knowledge linked to one’s own ability to think and write critically; students who use ChatGPT or engage in similar forms of academic dishonesty position themselves to achieve none of these indispensable life skills. Employing ChatGPT may provide one a pathway to a job that is quickly lost once the employer realizes they lack basic skills, thus, putting themselves in a position where they cannot pay the loans for the education they chose not to receive.

    We argue that ChatGPT is not something that educators should panic over, instead they should do what they have always done: Adapt to educate the citizens of an ever changing society. Cheating is nothing new, but how those in education make sense of cheating may need revision.

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  • This week, Eleanor Goldfield addresses two radical frontline fights thousands of miles apart but deeply connected through their visions and struggles for a livable and just future. Eleanor sits down with Sasha Lorenz from the Lützerath Lebt movement to discuss the recent literal bulldozing of people’s lives for the sake of some 280 million tonnes of brown coal. Sasha outlines the context of this struggle in Germany’s dirty push for more coal mining amidst greenwashing campaigns and continued capitalist and colonialist enterprises. In the second segment, Coyote from the Defend Atlanta Forest movement joins the show again to discuss the recent murder of forest defender Manuel “Tortuguita” Teran. The situation on the ground and in the trees in Atlanta, and both of our guests, leave us with messages of real and growing hope – the kind that can not be stifled by coal ash or murdered by police brutality. All this and more coming up this week on the Project Censored Show.

    “You Don’t Miss Your Water Till Your Well Runs Dry” – by Rising Appalachia

    Image by Niek Verlaan from Pixabay

    The post Germany’s Dirty Push for More Coal Mining and the Recent Murder of Forest Defender Manuel “Tortuguita” Teran appeared first on Project Censored.

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  • On this week’s program, Mickey welcomes back author and media critic Alan MacLeod for the hour. MacLeod describes the close ties between the major Silicon Valley technology companies and the US military/security establishment. Among the examples he cites lucrative government contracts given to some of Elon Musk’s companies (Starlink); the cooperation of Facebook, Twitter and other web giants in suppressing critical opinions (“censorship by proxy”); and multiple instances of U.S. intelligence officials moving into high-ranking executive positions at the tech companies often to allegedly curate “mis- and disinformation.” They discuss what’s being called the “military-entertainment complex” and note that some video games, notably Activision’s “Call of Duty,” are designed to inculcate pro-intervention, jingoist attitudes in the young people who play these games, which function as a form of propaganda or mass psy-op in support of US/NATO wars.

    Notes:

    Alan Macleod, Ph.D., is a senior staff writer at MintPress News, and the author of two books on journalism.  He writes extensively about media bias, propaganda, censorship, and fake news.

    Image by Jan Vašek from Pixabay

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  • By Nolan Higdon

    The increasing shift to remote work in higher education has threatened the power and influence of the professional managerial class (PMC). In response, the PMC are throwing everything at the wall from baseless claims about work productivity to coercive policies to cement their power over faculty. Coined by John and Barbara Ehrenreich, the PMC are an influential cultural group who hold advanced degrees, are considered experts, manage other people and their wealth, and shape dominant culture and public policy.

    The proliferation of the PMC in higher education resulted from the shift to neoliberal managerialism in the 1970s which sought to maximize efficiency by entrenching corporate structures and competitive meritocratic processes in higher education. From 1993 to 2009, there was a 60% increase in administrative positions in higher education. As a result, many institutions spend more on administration, student services, and academic support than on instruction. The administrative bloat has negatively impacted students in two critical ways: increased tuition and instruction from overworked and underpaid faculty.

    Much has been written about how the PMC’s approach to higher education has led to outlandish increases in tuition. For example, by the mid-20th century states like California were offering free tuition for its residents. Between 2004 to 2013, the tuition of California universities doubled. Between 2002-2022, there was a 175% national increase in in-state tuition costs for public universities.

    However, less attention has been paid to the other impacts neoliberal managerialism has had on students and the classroom: the development of an apartheid system of faculty. There are two groups of faculty in higher education. The first group—tenured/tenure-track (TT) faculty, derive security, salary, and benefits, while the other type of faculty, known as non-tenured part-time (NTPT) faculty, also known as adjunct, do not. NTPT faculty, which are disproportionately women and people of color, experience precarity, low wages, poverty, and a dearth of benefits. Given that NTPT faculty positions are cheaper for school budgets, the PMC reduced TT positions and increased NTPT from one-third of all faculty in the 1980s to two-thirds by 2021.

    Many NTPT faculty exhaust themselves commuting between multiple campuses to try to string together a living. One instructor reported that they taught 16-hour days—80-hour weeks—on seven campuses for 25 years. My recent peer-reviewed study found that when queried if they would recommend a career in higher education to students, NTPT responded in the negative: “No. I actively discourage it,” “Absolutely not—why waste time and money until you finally learn what’s going on & become disillusioned?,” “Not unless you recognize that you will be underpaid and under-appreciated,” “NO. It is a long slog to get a PhD and even then the job scarcity and precariousness,” “Fuck no,” “NO, NO!!,” “No. The future is even more contingency and I would not recommend this path to others,” and “HELL NO.” Rather than sympathize or support them, NTPT faculty report that their PMC and TT colleagues are “abusive,” “ruthless,” “exploitative,” “oppressive,” “aloof,” “removed” and “entitled slackers.”  An NTPT explained “some pity us, others are contemptuous of us, and some are our de facto employers.”

    For many NTPT faculty, pandemic measures offered an opportunity to escape hustle culture, so they could rest, improve their mental health, and better serve their students. Furthermore, it gave them more time and opportunity to be involved in campus affairs given that meetings were remote. Indeed, studies have made clear that faculty and students overwhelmingly prefer for the majority of courses to be offered remotely. Almost three-fourths of students prefer to have online course offerings. After decades of educational rhetoric and studies about a “student centered classroom” and “student led campus,” one would think that the PMC would let students dictate course modalities, but they would be wrong.

    Although studies showed that workers were more productive when they worked from home, survey data showed that managers believed that working remotely was decreasing workplace productivity. This cognitive dissonance in neoliberal managerialism is a response to pandemic measures revealing that the majority of PMC positions are what David Graeber referred to as “Bullshit jobs.” Bullshit jobs are pointless and psychologically destructive. A recent study titled “What’s that smell? Bullshit jobs in higher education” chronicles how administrative bloat engendered numerous bullshit jobs in higher education.

    During the shelter in place, educators and their students were able to collaborate on a constructive learning environment, and the PMC had little or anything to do with the learning process. Indeed, even though the majority of their tuition goes to the PMC, ask the average student the name of their favorite administrator and you will probably receive a blank stare.

    In higher education and private industry, the PMC recognized that their lack of purpose was exposed, and moved swiftly to force people back to the physical workplace where they continue their charade.

    The return to campus is certainly motivated in part by higher education’s dependence on the revenue that comes from having students in-person – such as food, drink, housing and related campus purchases – to maintain administrator bloat. Regardless, the burden of returning to physical work, while the pandemic still raged through the Omicron and Delta variants, was on NTPT faculty. TT faculty have protections and rights to choose their modality, which poverty stricken NTPT faculty do not. As a result, at risk of their health, NTPT faculty, as the majority of faculty, were often the one’s returning campus. The PMC recognized their lack of power in forcing TT to work and that is why many threatened to further increase NTPT positions and reduce TT positions. In addition, the PMC has taken to threatening all faculty by abandoning remote meetings and creating policies that punish faculty by utilizing sick days if they do not attend the in-person meetings.

    While there has been a series of labor actions in higher education more recently, the apartheid system of faculty continues to prevent faculty from uniting with each other, let alone students, to resist the managerial coercion.

    Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

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  • Monthly Supporters Empowered Project Censored in 2022

    Project Censored accomplished a lot in 2022. We published two new books, The Media and Me and State of the Free Press 2023, produced 47 original episodes of the Project Censored Show, co-hosted an international conference on critical media literacy education (the 3rd annual Critical Media Literacy Conference of the Americas), provided hands-on training for five student interns, and hired Shealeigh Voitl, a Project Censored alumnae from North Central College, as the Project’s new editorial associate—to name just a few of the year’s highlights.

    We could not have accomplished any of this without the extraordinary support of our monthly subscribers. We want to start 2023 by thanking each of you for your support!

    As online censorship and shadow banning becomes more and more common, your direct support of the Project’s work becomes more important than ever. If you are not already a monthly contributor, please consider doing so today. For as little as ten dollars a month, the cost of a fancy cup of coffee, you can support the Project in a way that truly makes a difference.


    More Coverage for State of the Free Press 2023 and The Media and Me

    The American Prospect featured the top “Censored” stories from State of the Free Press 2023 in a two-part article, titled “Billionaire Press Domination,” published on January 2nd and 3rd, 2023. Meanwhile, independent newsweeklies across the country, from The Inlander in Spokane, Washington, to C-Ville in Charlottesville, Virginia, continue to amplify the yearbook’s clarion call on the threats posed by consolidated media, controlled by a handful of elite owners, and the counterforce provided by independent journalism that serves the public interest.

    Early in 2023, Kevin Gosztola of Shadowproof hosted Mickey Huff and Andy Lee Roth live on Shadowproof’s YouTube channel for a discussion of “censorship by proxy,” what happened to the Department of Homeland Security’s ominously named Disinformation Governance Board, and how Elon Musk’s management of Twitter exposes more widespread and deeply-rooted issues in the US media landscape.

    Salon recently published The “Copaganda” Epidemic: How Media Glorifies Police and Vilifies Protesters, by Robin Andersen, excerpted from the News Abuse chapter in State of the Free Press 2023.

    Themes from Project Censored’s most recent yearbook have also been the topic of interviews hosted by Corporations and Democracy (KZYX), the Global Research News Hour (CKUW), Letters & Politics (KPFA), The Zero Hour, Rising Up with Sonali (KPFK), the WhoWhatWhy podcast, and additional independent public affairs programs too numerous to list here.

    Allison Butler, one of the co-authors of The Media and Me, had several interviews this past month including on the Art of Advocacy,  The Curious Man podcast, and the David Pakman Show to discuss the importance of critical media literacy education for young people.

    Finally, Mickey Huff and Nolan Higdon appeared on The Chris Hedges Report on The Real News Network to discuss their recent book Let’s Agree to Disagree, which addresses the decline in media literacy and public debate in the US and what we can do about it. Mickey also appeared on Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson discussing the importance of critical thinking and open dialogue in democratic societies. The program airs across the country on Sunday Morning television.


    The Project Censored Show

     

    Elon Musk Twitter

    For the final 2022 episode of The Project Censored Show Mickey Huff interviewed Nolan Higdon about Elon Musk and Twitter, and the official declassification of more JFK documents; and Huff and Andy Lee Roth looked back at some of the past year’s most important but underreported news stories, as featured in State of the Free Press 2023.

    The climate crisis and the fossil fuel industry’s obstructionist practices were the topics of a special edition of the radio show that featured NASA scientist James Hansen, pioneering climate-change writer Bill McKibben, and Canadian environmental journalist Geoff Dembicki, who were interviewed by artist M. Annenberg in December as part of an environmental-art exhibition at New York’s Ceres Gallery.

    Eleanor Goldfield hosted a program focused on two human rights issues, the US military presence in Africa and infant mortality in the United States. Eleanor interviewed Rose Brewer, a professor of African American and African Studies at the University of Minnesota, about the movement to get the US military out of Africa, and Sam Sewell, a midwife and reproductive rights activist, who discussed failures in the US system of health care that especially impact African American mothers. Eleanor’s interviews with Rose Brewer and Sam Sewell can also be viewed on the Project Censored YouTube channel.


    Just Around the Corner: New Publications from the Censored Press

    Guilty of Journalism Kevin GosztolaLook for Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange, by Kevin Gosztola, which will be published by The Censored Press and Seven Stories Press on February 21, 2023. And, looking ahead to March, Going Remote: A Teacher’s Journey, by Adam Bessie with illustrations by Peter Glanting, drops on March 14, 2023. Publishers Weekly has already published a prestigious starred review of Going Remote. Stay tuned for more exciting news about Going Remote in the near future!

    In the meantime, our publishing partner, Seven Stories Press, is currently offering fantastic deals on the Ebook versions of The Media and Me, our new book on critical media literacy, and State of the Free Press 2023. The Ebook version of The Media and Me is now on sale for just $5.39, and State of the Free Press 2023 is discounted to $7.79 when you order either book directly from Seven Stories. Both of these publications are great for the classroom and come with expert accompanying teaching guides. Grab a bargain and support independent book publishing at the same time!

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  • It was recently Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and some may have noticed the US empire and its racist, capitalist, and imperialist cheerleaders were also cheerleading for Dr. King. If this made you angry, confused, or just curious as to what Dr. King’s legacy actually is in the context of US empire, you’re in the right place. Eleanor Goldfield hosts this week’s program and begins by speaking with Jacqueline Luqman to discuss Dr. King’s real legacy, what got him killed, what’s missing from the story, and how we can truly honor Dr. King. Next, Setareh Ghandehari from Detention Watch Network joins the show to walk listeners through the Biden administration’s “updates” to immigration policy, which as Setareh points out, are hardly updates but rather a continuation of right-wing, xenophobic, anti-immigrant and also failed policies that will cause immeasurable harm to thousands. All this and more coming up now on this week’s Project Censored Show.

    Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

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  • The Washington Post’s coverage of a January 2023 study arguing that the post-2016 coverage of Russia election meddling may have been overblown, reveals a corrosive trend in legacy news media where the personalities and outlets that perpetuate inaccurate or false news are rewarded, and the truth-tellers who expose legacy media lies are marginalized and ostracized.

    The Washington Post cited a newly published academic study from the New York University Center for Social Media and Politics that concluded there was no evidence that the content suspected of being generated from Russia meaningfully impacted voters in the 2016 election. The authors wrote “we can’t find any relationship between being exposed to these tweets and people’s change in attitudes.” However, the Post was quick to point out that the study focused on Twitter and there was still the possibility that Russian content on other platforms such as Facebook (now Meta) could have tilted the election. However, there is no solid evidence to confirm such a claim and other previous studies by media scholars Emil Marmol and Lee Major, as well as Nolan Higdon of Project Censored, found Facebook’s reach was also minimal. They were not alone.

    The study the Post referenced was hardly revelatory as even more researchers had drawn the same conclusion as early as 2016. Harvard University’s Yochai Benkler and his colleagues pointed out there was no empirical evidence that online content shifted electoral votes in 2016 and noted that cable news proved to be arguably far more influential. All of these studies found that the content from Russia was minimal in scope and influence when compared to the digital content disseminated by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton’s multi-million dollar presidential campaigns, which were further boosted by billions of dollars in free coverage from legacy media. Meanwhile, seasoned journalists such as Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and Aaron Maté noted the flimsy sources and baseless claims so-called “mainstream” media were relying on to convince audiences that Russia tilted the election. Rather than analyze these arguments, corporate media outlets just shot at the messengers.

    Still, other researchers ignored these aforementioned studies and sources and relied on unsubstantiated evidence to make irrational claims that Russia was responsible for Trump’s electoral victory, often straining credulity. A study from Columbia University argued that data from betting markets “confirms” Russian trolls tilted the 2016 election. The authors argued that changes in betting markets around the holidays, when trolls presumably took a break from propagandizing to gamble, demonstrated that it was Russia who tilted the election. Equally absurd, historian Katherine Jamieson Hall argued that Russia influenced the news media cycle by releasing Hillary’s emails, which distracted from an Access Hollywood tape exposing Trump’s sexism and misogyny. Hall’s analysis seems to imply that Russian trolls dictate news media focus, not the seasoned editors and staff at these much-vaunted institutions.

    When confronted with conflicting research, however, the legacy news media overwhelmingly chose to perpetuate the story that Trump’s Electoral College victory was due to Russian interference. For example, over a six week period in 2017, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow covered Russia more than all other stories combined, turning it into a cottage industry as we noted in our book, United States of Distraction. The pervasive coverage by Maddow and others in legacy media laid the groundwork to justify numerous other false and baseless stories that claimed Russia had put a bounty on U.S. soldiers, infiltrated Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign, hacked a Vermont power plant, fabricated evidence on Hunter Biden’s laptop, and utilized a video recording of Trump being urinated on a by a sex worker as blackmail. All this from the same media outlets warning the public about the spread of “fake news.”

    Legacy media’s Russia nonsense not only misinformed audiences, it distracted from substantive investigations into the failures of Clinton’s campaign, the successes of Trump’s, and the ways in which the Democratic Party and FBI were actually some of the most powerful forces meddling in the 2016 election. Yes, Russia meddled, too, but to nowhere near the extent or effect according to the evidence.

    While journalists who pointed out the vapid reporting on Russia were erased from legacy media when not being attacked (Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Abby Martin, and Aaron Maté), Russia fear-mongering luminaries such as Maddow secured a $30 million annual deal with MSNBC. Having truth-tellers removed to make more room for propagandists is not new; it is the norm for legacy media. For example, in the 1990s, when Gary Webb of the San Jose Mercury News exposed the CIA’s involvement in drug trafficking, a story legacy media was reticent to report, they attacked Webb (who was “let go” by the newspaper) leading to the destruction of his career and end of his life. Similarly, those who perpetuated the lies connecting Iraq to 9/11 and weapons of mass destruction in 2002 and 2003 were rewarded with continued lucrative legacy media careers (Judith Miller, Thomas Friedman, and almost any news anchor on national network or cable news for that matter), while those who challenged them were ostracized as conspiracy theorists (Phil Donahue, Jessie Ventura, Michael Moore), even though the latter were correct. Further, the entire decade-long attack on Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, including CIA plans to assassinate him, is further evidence that those who dare to expose the corruption and lies of the U.S. Empire, including the failures of the Fourth Estate itself, will pay a heavy price.

    Another consequence of all this is that it further makes audiences so ignorant about the existence of journalists outside legacy media that they either do not know about their reporting or disregard them altogether. For example, the revelations from the late 2022 and 2023 Twitter Files was largely dismissed by legacy news media and its audiences because it came from independent reporters outside the establishment press, like Matt Taibbi, who offered well-sourced evidence that disproved legacy media’s claims about topics around government collusion and censorship, Russiagate, and the COVID-19 pandemic response.

    The result is that audiences are uninformed or ill-informed. That was made abundantly clear last year, when George Santos won a seat in the House of Representatives while lying about nearly everything–where he attended high school and college, his finances, being Jewish (saying he was Jew-ish), having employees shot at the Pulse night club, founding charities, and his relatives’ dying in the 9/11 attacks and the Holocaust. Although Santos ran in New York, a state known as the media capital of the world, the legacy media did not expose these lies until after the election and Santos was already taking office. This journalistic malpractice is especially concerning given that it was a small local newspaper, The North Shore Leader, that exposed Santos’s lies before the election, when it really mattered, but no one bothered to notice. Apparently, the legacy media, whose outlets refer to themselves as “the place of politics” and “the best political team on television,” never considered that politicians might lie to get into office. This is curious given that they were acutely aware of Trump’s thousands of falsehoods, but it’s easier to blame Santos, not themselves, for audiences’ ignorance about the waning veracity of newly elected congressman’s claims. This was a major failure of the establishment press, and another example of why we desperately need local, independent journalism dedicated to telling the truth.

    What is clear is that even through the legacy news media may eventually get a story right, it takes too long and the damage they inflict by perpetuating falsehoods results in an uninformed and misinformed public. Rather than wait for the legacy media to utilize its massive resources, power, and access to get a story right, audiences would be wiser to turn to the journalists (Brihana Joy Grey, Lee Fang, Ken Klippenstein, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Abby Martin, Alan MacLeod, and Aaron Maté), and media organizations (like those highlighted by Project Censored) with a track record of getting things right. You can usually tell who they are because they do not appear in legacy media unless they are being attacked.

    The post Promoting Falsehoods and Marginalizing Truth-Tellers: WaPo’s Revelations About Russiagate Reporting Failures Typify Legacy Media Failures appeared first on Project Censored.

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  • Kevin Gosztola returns to the program to explain the latest developments in the Julian Assange extradition case. Although Assange remains in a UK prison, there have been political developments elsewhere in the world that may influence the outcome of the case, including in Assange’s home country, Australia. He and Mickey also address the Twitter Files and note key differences between how these are being handled. Gosztola then reminds listeners of some of the documents Assange brought to light via WikiLeaks over the years and what his prosecution means for free press principles.

    Later in the show, independent journalist Sam Husseini speaks with Mickey about working to uncover the truth when both politicians and corporate media circumvent or suppress it. Husseini notes an unwillingness among reporters to ask tough but important questions about major topics. Among the examples he cites include the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the nuclear weapon ban treaty from a Trump/Putin press conference in Helsinki, and the possible origin of the coronavirus in a Wuhan lab. He notes how these and other pertinent questions are either not asked, or become distorted into a Trump-vs-Democrats type of argument that is then often dismissed.

    Notes:

    Kevin Gosztola is the managing editor of Shadowproof. He has covered the Julian Assange legal proceedings in the UK from its beginning, as well as other press-freedom and whistleblower cases. His new book on the Assange case, Guilty of Journalism, will soon be available in bookstores. Gosztola also curates the newsletter for The Dissenter and co-hosts the “Unauthorized Disclosure” podcast.

    Sam Husseini is an independent journalist whose work can be found at husseini.substack.com. He has also worked at the Institute for Public Accuracy, the media watch group FAIR, and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and been published in The Nation, Counterpunch, and elsewhere.

    Music-break Information:
    1) “Glad / Freedom Rider” by Traffic
    2) “Blowin’ In The Wind” by Neil Young
    3) “Abacab” by Genesis

    the Project Censored Show:

    Hosts: Mickey Huff & Eleanor Goldfield
    Producers: Anthony Fest & Eleanor Goldfield

     

    Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

    The post The Importance of Whistleblowers and Independent Journalists in Free Society- Kevin Gosztola and Sam Husseini appeared first on Project Censored.

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  • With the U.S. having a military presence in nearly every African nation, Rose Brewer, a Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of African-American and African Studies at the University of Minnesota and member of the Black Alliance for Peace, makes the case for “U.S. out of Africa.” Brewer faults the Congressional Black Caucus for failing to challenge the military-industrial complex’s agendas either at home or abroad. Then, why do why African American women die in childbirth at a much higher rate than white women? In examining this question, Sam Sewell, a midwife and reproductive rights activist, points to many biases and failures in the American system of health care. Both of these human rights stories, and their broader themes, lack significant in-depth coverage by the corporate media in the U.S. Eleanor Goldfield hosts this week’s program and shines a light on these important underreported topics.

    Notes:

    Rose Brewer is a Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of African-American and African Studies at the University of Minnesota, and a member of the Black Alliance for Peace. Sam Sewell is a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) practicing in the Washington DC area. She’s been a board member at NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia, and at the Arlington Commission on the Status of Women.

    Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

    The post The Case for “U.S. Out of Africa,” and the High Childbirth Mortality Rate of African American Women appeared first on Project Censored.

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  • The first Project Censored Show of 2023 is devoted to climate change, and the oil industry’s obstruction of policies that would seriously confront the climate crisis. The speakers on the program are former NASA scientist James Hansen, pioneering climate-change writer Bill McKibben, and Canadian environmental journalist Geoff Dembicki. They were interviewed in December by artist Marsha Annenberg, in conjunction with an environmental-art exhibition at New York’s Ceres Gallery.

    Notes:

    Dr. James Hansen was for many years the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and is now at Columbia University. Author Bill McKibben’s 1989 book, “The End of Nature” was the first book on climate change for the general reader. Journalist Geoff Dembicki is the author of “The Petroleum Papers,” a compilation of oil industry documents showing the industry’s efforts to confuse the public about the causes of climate change.

    Image by Kanenori from Pixabay

    The post Climate Change and the Oil Industry’s Obstructionist Policies appeared first on Project Censored.

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  • Plenty of Publicity for State of the Free Press 2023 and The Media and Me

    State of the Free Press 2023December marks a first for Project Censored and its publishing imprint, the Censored Press: Not one, but two of our books drop this month, with State of the Free Press 2023 available now and The Media and Me arriving officially on December 27th. Both titles are available now directly from Project Censored.

    We’ve been busy promoting these two great titles.  Allison Butler has appeared on the Karen Hunter Show, the Keen On podcast, and, with Nolan Higdon, on Teaching Matters to discuss The Media and Me, with forthcoming interviews scheduled for The Curious Man podcast, the David Pakman Show, Getting Smart, and the Art of Advocacy.

    Andy Lee Roth appeared on Rising Up with Sonali, hosted by Sonali Kolhatkar, and Corporations and Democracy, with Annie Esposito and Steve Scalmanini. Kolhatkar and Roth discussed how dark money threatens to undermine democracy and the public’s trust in government, as well as the corporate news media’s failure to cover global inequalities when it comes to the causes and consequences of the climate crisis. Mickey Huff was a guest on Davey D’s syndicated program Hard Knock Radio with educator Andreas Jackson to discuss the state of our billionaire press and the importance of critical media literacy in fighting big tech surveillance and censorship. Mickey also appeared on The Zero Hour, hosted by R.J. Eskow.

    Independent newsweeklies across the US are starting to cover the Top “Censored” Stories from State of the Free Press 2023. So far the Boulder WeeklySanta Fe Reporter, and Random Lengths News have each run Paul Rosenberg’s feature story, “The Billionaires’ Press Dominates Censorship Beat.” Please let us know if you see State of the Free Press 2023 featured in your local newsweekly!

    And, as the December newsletter goes to press, Truthdig is featuring “Space Junk,” an excerpt from State of the Free Press 2023’s Junk Food News chapter, by Jen LyonsSierra KaulMarcelle SwinburneGavin Kelley, and Mickey Huff.


    New Classroom Resources for Educators

    New Classroom Resources for Educators

    For educators and their students, both State of the Free Press 2023 and The Media and Me are  supported by teaching guides that provide an overview of each book’s main themes, topics for discussion, and activities and exercises that teachers and self-directed learners can use to engage more deeply.

    Micah Card, a doctoral student in Education at University of California, Santa Cruz who is also a certified early childhood education mentor teacher, wrote the teaching guide for The Media and Me.

    Andy Lee Roth, PhD, who co-edited the latest Project Censored yearbook, authored the teaching guide for State of the Free Press 2023.

    Each teaching guide, along with a variety of classroom-tested resources for hands-on lessons in critical media literacy, can be downloaded from the Project Censored website here.


    The Media and Me Book Launch, Hosted by City Lights

    On Saturday, December 3rd, City Lights hosted the authors of The Media and Me for an all-day online symposium, titled “The Media and Us: Critical Media Literacy and Engaged Politics,” based on the book. The program, hosted by City Light’s Peter Maravelis, featured sessions on representation and access, engaging teachers and young people, critical thinking, digital literacy, advertising, and journalism. Each session will eventually be available on demand from the City Lights Books YouTube channel. Stay tuned for updates on coverage of the City Lights event on C-SPAN’s Book TV series.


    The Project Censored Show

    Recent episodes of the Project Censored Show have featured Eleanor Goldfield’s interview with army veteran and investigative reporter Mike Prysner, who discussed his reporting on the sordid past of Florida governor Ron DeSantis. In the same episode, Eleanor also spoke with  professor, artist, and activist Adam Broomberg. Broomberg drew on his experience growing up in South Africa under apartheid to address the Israeli occupation of Palestine. As a fellow Jew, he offered strategies to address the topic of Zionism within Jewish families.  Mickey Huff featured a segment with Aaron Good, discussing Good’s latest book, American Exception: Empire and the Deep State, and the roots of the Russia-Ukraine-NATO conflict, which trace back to the United States’ rise to global dominance in the aftermath of the Second World War. In that episode’s second half, Eleanor spoke with Chris Garaffa, co-host of the CovertAction Bulletin podcast, about the prospects for stronger net-neutrality protections in the months ahead, as well as the broader issue of how to “democratize the internet.”

    Medea Benjamin and Chris HedgesThe latest programs featured in-depth interviews about the war in Ukraine and what the corporate media fail to cover. Mickey was recently in conversation with two of the country’s best-known peace advocates, Medea Benjamin and Chris Hedges, each of whom has just published an anti-war book. Another episode focused even more specifically on the war in Ukraine and prospects for peace as Eleanor hosted activist Phil Wilayto of the Odessa Solidarity Campaign while Mickey shared excerpts from a talk by Medea  Benjamin, which he hosted in Berkeley, CA for KPFA on December 1st.

     

     


    New Validated Independent News Stories

    Even as State of the Free Press 2023 is just hitting the bookshelves, students and faculty participating in Project Censored’s Campus Affiliates Program are already identifying and vetting candidate stories for the next Censored yearbook.

    Follow the Validated Independent News link to find the Project’s coverage of how segregation by field of study limits college students’ educational and job opportunities, Google hiring former CIA employees to fill influential company positions, and a landmark study of how oil and gas drilling affects maternal health—plus more than a dozen additional exemplars of independent journalism on pressing issues that have been marginalized, distorted, or ignored by corporate news outlets.

    These first VINs of the 2022-2023 cycle have been identified, vetted, and summarized by students from Salisbury UniversityLoyola Marymount UniversityCalifornia State University  East Bay, and University of Massachusetts Amherst, as participants in the Project’s Campus Affiliates Program, which provides hands-on training in critical media literacy to students on college and university campuses across the United States.


    Still More Publications! Project Censored on Media Policy and the Twitter Files

    In case you missed it, Truthout published an article by Project Censored’s Steve Macek and Andy Lee Roth, titled Can We Trust Corporate Media Outlets to Report on the Laws Set to Govern Them? Macek and Roth examined the spuriously-named Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, the 2022 EARN IT Act, and corporate media efforts to oppose FTC regulation of surveillance advertising as three examples of the corporate media’s consistent failure to inform the public adequately about media policy.

    In the newest article in Project Censored’s Dispatches series, Nolan Higdon turns a critical eye on the corporate news media’s paltry, hyper-partisan coverage of the Twitter Files. In Hunting the Twitter Files, Higdon writes that the lack of substantive coverage is “rooted in the legacy media’s fears over the broader implications of the story” and its business model, which requires framing every story in terms of “left versus right, blue versus red” politics.

    Reagan+HaynieAnd, finally, the Communications Department at Loyola Marymount University featured a profile of Reagan Haynie, a senior majoring in communications at LMU, about her experiences working with Project Censored.  In Fall 2022, Reagan worked as the Project’s student intern and, prior to this semester, she researched and vetted story #7 in State of the Free Press 2023, about conflicts of interest posed by the Gates Foundation’s funding of news outlets, journalism training programs, and press associations around the world.

     

    The post THE PROJECT CENSORED NEWSLETTER December 2022 appeared first on Project Censored.

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  • In the first half of today’s program, Mickey speaks with Project Censored’s Andy Lee Roth about some of the “Top 25” censored / under-reported news stories, as well as the common characteristics of these stories. Later in the show, Nolan Higdon and Mickey examine some of the developments since Elon Musks’ takeover of Twitter. They also discuss the recent declassification of another batch of JFK-assassination documents, and what they show about federal officials’ relations with the press.

    Notes:
    Andy Lee Roth is Associate Director of Project Censored, co-editor of the Project’s annual volume of censored stories, and co-coordinator of the Project’s Campus Affiliates Program. He has published widely on media issues. Nolan Higdon is a university lecturer in media studies and history. He’s also the author of “The Anatomy of Fake News,”

     

    Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

    The post The Twitter Takeover of Elon Musk, Declassification of More JFK Documents, and The Top 25 Most Censored Stories of the Year appeared first on Project Censored.

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  • Mickey, Eleanor and their guests spend the hour examining the background to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, going back to the eastward expansion of NATO, the 2014 Ukraine coup, and other factors. Their guests, both long-time peace activists, make the case for a cessation of arms shipments to Ukraine, and a negotiated end to the war. In the first half of the show, Eleanor interviews Phil Wilayto. Then we hear excerpts of a conversation Mickey had with Medea Benjamin at a KPFA-FM / Project Censored event in Berkeley, CA earlier this month.

    Notes:
    Phil Wilayto is cofounder of Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice and Equality, as well as the Virginia Prison Justice Network. He’s also coordinator of the Odessa Solidarity Campaign , and the author of several books, including Notes from Iran.

    Medea Benjamin co-founded both the women’s peace organization Code Pink and the fair-trade group Global Exchange. Her recent books, include Inside Iran and Kingdom of the Unjust. Her latest book is War in Ukraine, co-authored with Nicholas Davies, and published by OR Books.

    Music-break information:
    “Blasting Cap” by Preston Reed

    Image by Peace,love,happiness from Pixabay

    The post The War in Ukraine and Prospects for Peace with Phil Wilayto and Medea Benjamin appeared first on Project Censored.

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  • This edition of the Project Censored Show we feature two of the country’s best-known peace advocates, each with a new book out. First, Medea Benjamin discusses the Russia-Ukraine conflict, emphasizing aspects that US corporate media are not covering. Then we hear a rebroadcast of a September interview with author Chris Hedges, where he related some of the stories told in his new book, “The Greatest Evil Is War.”

    Notes:

    Medea Benjamin co-founded both the women’s peace organization Code Pink and the fair-trade group Global Exchange. Her recent books, include “Inside Iran” and “Kingdom of the Unjust.” Her latest book is “War in Ukraine,” co-authored with Nicholas Davies, and published by OR Books. Chris Hedges is a former New York Times foreign correspondent and a prolific author. His latest book, “The Greatest Evil Is War,” is based on interviews with dozens of victims of war, including wounded veterans, families of soldiers, and civilian survivors of battle.

    The post What The US Corporate Media is Not Covering in the Russia-Ukraine Conflict appeared first on Project Censored.

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  • In this episode of the Project Censored Show, your host Eleanor Goldfield discusses war and fascist violence – from the very personal history of a presidential candidate to the streets of Hebron. She first sits down with army veteran and investigative reporter/producer Mike Prysner to discuss his latest work digging into the sordid past of Ron DeSantis, a man whose path to state (and possibly soon to be federal) power has been paved with horrific war crimes and torture, which up until now he has been able to avoid consequences. She then sits down with professor, artist, and activist Adam Broomberg to discuss his personal relationship with apartheid – from growing up in South Africa to now battling the state of Israel, on behalf of , but not least of all, for his fellow Jews. Broomberg compares the apartheid states of his youth and his present, and discusses how to broach the topic of zionism within your Jewish families.

    Song: Bahrek Gaza by Mohammed Assaf

    Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

    The post The Sordid Past of Ron DeSantis Revealed / The Delicate Topic of Zionism and Apartheid appeared first on Project Censored.

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  • Mickey opens this week’s program in conversation with Aaron Good; they examine the post-WWII U.S. rise to global dominance, and how that underlies many of our current events, notably the Russia-Ukraine-NATO conflict. In the second half of the show, Eleanor Goldfield speaks with Chris Garaffa about the prospects for stronger net-neutrality protections in the months ahead, as well as the broader issue of how to “democratize the internet.”

    Aaron Good is the author of “American Exception: Empire and the Deep State,” a new book from Skyhorse Publishing. He also hosts a podcast titled “American Exception.” He holds a Ph.D from Temple University. In the tradition of Peter Dale Scott, Aaron’s writing emphasizes the role of a ‘deep state’ (a powerful, secretive, unelected governing force) in history. Chris Garaffa is co-host of the Covert Action Bulletin podcast, and is a frequent radio guest on issues of technology and surveillance.

    Music-break information
    1) “Ride Across the River” by Dire Straits
    2) “Voyager” by the Alan Parson Project

    the Project Censored Show:
    Hosts: Mickey Huff & Eleanor Goldfield
    Producers: Anthony Fest & Eleanor Goldfield

    Image by Yatheesh Gowda from Pixabay

    The post The Post-WWII U.S. Rise to Global Dominance/Prospects for Stronger Net-Neutrality Protections appeared first on Project Censored.

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  • How do we at Project Censored identify and evaluate independent news stories, and how do we know that the Top 25 stories that we bring forward each year are not only relevant and significant but also trustworthy? The answer is that every candidate news story undergoes rigorous review, which takes place in multiple stages during each annual cycle. Although adapted to take advantage of both the Project’s expanding affiliates program and current technologies, the vetting process is quite similar to the one Project Censored founder Carl Jensen established more than forty years ago.

    Candidate stories are initially identified by Project Censored professors and students, or are nominated by members of the general public who bring them to the Project’s attention. Together, faculty and students evaluate each candidate story in terms of its importance, timeliness, quality of sources, and inadequate corporate news coverage. If it fails on any one of these criteria, the story is deemed inappropriate and is excluded from further consideration.

    Once Project Censored receives the candidate story, we undertake a second round of judgment, using the same criteria and updating the review to include any subsequent, competing corporate coverage. We post stories that pass this round of review on the Project’s website as Validated Independent News stories (VINs).

    In early spring, we present all VINs in the current cycle to the faculty and students at all of our affiliate campuses, and to our panel of expert judges, who cast votes to winnow the candidate stories from several hundred to twenty-five.

    Once the Top 25 list has been determined, Project Censored student interns begin another intensive review of each story using LexisNexis and ProQuest databases. Additional faculty and students contribute to this final stage of review.

    The Top 25 finalists are then sent to our panel of judges, whose votes rank them in numerical order. At the same time, these experts—including media studies professors, professional journalists and editors, and a former commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission—offer their insights on the stories’ strengths and weaknesses.

    Thus, by the time a story appears in the pages of State of the Free Press, it has undergone at least five distinct rounds of review and evaluation.

    Although the stories that Project Censored brings forward may be socially and politically controversial—and sometimes even psychologically challenging—we are confident that each is the result of serious journalistic effort and deserves greater public attention.

    The post A NOTE ON RESEARCH AND EVALUATION OF CENSORED NEWS STORIES appeared first on Project Censored.

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  • Hundreds of incarcerated women in Maryland have been denied access to prerelease programs, which provide job opportunities and other vital re-entry services, Eddie Conway and Mansa Musa reported for the Real News Network in February 2022. Their report detailed the trajectory of Maryland’s Gender-Responsive Prerelease Act, which would mandate the development of a dedicated prerelease facility for incarcerated women. The act was initially vetoed by Governor Larry Hogan in May 2020, and although the state legislature voted to override Hogan’s veto, funding to construct the women’s facility remained in jeopardy.

    According to Out For Justice—a grassroots organization that advocates for reform of policies that adversely affect successful reintegration into society—Maryland maintains nine separate prerelease and minimum-security facilities for men, but none for women. Although one in ten women at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women is qualified for prerelease, as many as 30 percent of these women have not been assigned work opportunities.

    Nicole Hanson-Mundell of Out For Justice told the Real News Network how prerelease programs provide women within eighteen months of release with crucial opportunities to resume working, reconnect with family, and reestablish access to medical and mental health services.

    In 2021, the state legislature appropriated $1.5 million for the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services to construct a women’s prerelease facility. However, as Hanson-Mundell described, Robert L. Green, the head of Maryland’s Department of Corrections, “decided not to spend” the money the state legislature had allocated for the facility’s construction. “That money went back into the general fund,” she explained, because the prerelease facility “is not a priority for the Department of Corrections.”

    In April 2022, Maryland Matters reported that, after a two-year struggle to secure funding, the state legislature “passed a capital budget measure to funnel $2 million toward the planning and construction of a women’s pre-release center.” The article quoted Out For Justice’s Hanson-Mundell: “There is still more investment needed and much more work to do, but we believe our coalition and committed lawmakers will keep us moving forward.”

    Prior to this success, up-to-date news coverage regarding the lack of women’s prerelease facilities in Maryland had been scarce. In January 2020, the Washington Post covered efforts to convert the Brockbridge Correctional Facility, a former maximum-security prison, into a “comprehensive prerelease, reentry, and workforce development facility” for both men and women. At the time, women’s advocates maintained that the coed design was unlikely to meet women prisoners’ needs and reflected gender discrimination. That same month, the radio station WAMU, a Washington, D.C., NPR affiliate, produced a similar report.

    A key element in the Real News Network’s report is its emphasis on organizers’ repeated efforts to encourage Maryland officials to follow through with the Gender-Responsive Prerelease Act, despite opposition from the governor and corrections officials. In February 2020, the editorial board of the Baltimore Sun advocated for more services to help incarcerated Maryland women transition back to society, but the Sun’s editorial did not acknowledge the efforts by state senator Mary Washington, state delegate Charlotte Crutchfield, Out For Justice, the Maryland Justice Project, and others to shepherd this bill into law.

    Eddie Conway and Mansa Musa (Charles Hopkins), interview with Nicole Hanson-Mundell, “‘It Is Torture’: Women in Maryland’s Prisons Have Nowhere to Turn,” The Real News Network, February 14, 2022.

    Student Researchers: Thomas Gruttadauria, Kate Horgan, and Lydia Jankowski (University of Massachusetts Amherst)

    Faculty Evaluator: Allison Butler (University of Massachusetts Amherst)

    The post #25 Injustice for Incarcerated Women in Maryland after State Defunds Prerelease Facility appeared first on Project Censored.

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  • The pandemic has compounded a host of systemic issues in the United States, including food insecurity in Indian Country. In an interview for High Country News, Brian Oaster spoke with the Native American Agriculture Fund’s CEO Toni Stanger-McLaughlin (Colville) to learn more about the special January 2022 report “Reimagining Hunger Responses in Times of Crisis.” Supply-chain problems during the pandemic caused extreme delays in usual deliveries, meaning many went without access to basic necessities. In response, various Native organizations and self-governing communities are using data sovereignty to obtain federal funds that could transform local agricultural infrastructure.

    “For the first time, we’re going to take ownership of our data, and also the messaging and how the data is going to be interpreted,” said Stanger-McLaughlin.

    The Native American Agriculture Fund (NAAF) partnered with the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative (INAI) and the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) to research and develop the report in an effort to educate Congress about the importance of local agricultural production in indigenous communities. The report discovered that Native households go hungry at vastly higher rates than their white counterparts do. About 48 percent of more than 500 indigenous respondents shared that “sometimes or often during the pandemic the food their household bought just didn’t last, and they didn’t have money to get more.”

    NAAF, INAI, and FRAC discovered that Native communities more often turn to their tribal governments for help rather than access benefit cards, which are useless in rural areas where there are no nearby food stores. Farm-to-family direct sales became an increasingly popular way of acquiring food during the pandemic. Since the shift to producing and selling locally, instead of selling to stockyards, which then sell to processing plants, there have been reductions in transportation and storage costs. NAAF hopes that prioritizing Native-driven data collection will ultimately empower tribes that have waited too long on Washington leaders to make the right calls.

    “We’re asking tribes to reach out and engage with us if they’re applying for federal funding, to use our work as a model of how we can all come together and actually leverage private and federal funding and expand and unify our mission, which is to feed our communities,” said Stanger-McLaughlin.

    Food insecurity has shown up in many recent corporate news headlines, most often related to global havoc inflicted by the pandemic or climate change. In August 2020, the New York Times covered food deserts among members of the Navajo nation; in December 2021, the Washington Post reported on farmers adapting indigenous peoples’ sustainable farming efforts amidst dire water shortages. However, one noticeable gap in all corporate coverage is indigenous communities’ work to develop innovative solutions to historic inequity.

    Brian Oaster, interview with Toni Stanger-McLaughlin, “The First Answer for Food Insecurity: Data Sovereignty,” High Country News, February 11, 2022.

    Student Researchers: Emily Inman, Emma Stankiewicz, Maria Trifiro, and Kristina Vartanian (University of Massachusetts Amherst)

    Faculty Evaluator: Allison Butler (University of Massachusetts Amherst)

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  • In an August 2021 piece published simultaneously in four independent media outlets (Southerly, Drilled News, WWNO, and Energy News Network), environmental journalist Sara Sneath reported that the US Department of Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) underreported offshore oil and gas worker fatalities from 2005 to 2019. BSEE’s narrow reporting criteria excluded nearly half the offshore deaths that occurred, grossly distorting the level of danger inherent to the job.

    The BSEE was created in response to BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010—the largest oil spill in US history—in an effort “to improve safety and enforce environmental regulations in the offshore oil and gas industry.” However, Sneath explained, BSEE’s “inconsistent and missing data, as well as loopholes that allow some fatalities to go unreported, make the offshore industry appear safer than it really is.”

    In an analysis of BSEE data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, Sneath determined that “nearly half of known offshore worker fatalities in the Gulf of Mexico from 2005 to 2019 didn’t fit BSEE’s reporting criteria.” The agency excludes “offshore fatalities that occur in state waters,” “deaths that occur while workers are in transport to offshore facilities,” and “deaths that happen on offshore platforms that aren’t work related . . . even though the remoteness of offshore platforms makes it more difficult to seek medical attention.”

    More alarming is the fact that the fatality rate appears to be rising. Sneath reported that “even with missing data on fatalities, the number of reported deaths in 2019 is more than the previous five years combined, despite a drop in the number of people working offshore.” A “shrinking workforce is one reason that the job is dangerous.” Sneath quoted Mathew Shaffer, a Houston-based lawyer who represents offshore workers: “We see injuries because there wasn’t enough crew. . . . A lot of those injuries are caused by the lack of manpower.”

    Although corporate media, including the Washington Post, covered the Trump administration’s efforts to weaken offshore drilling regulations, none have reported this story. Following a massive pipeline leak off the California coast in October 2021, the Los Angeles Times published a related story about inadequate inspections of critical infrastructure. It noted that “critics in both the public and private sectors have been particularly harsh in their assessment of what they see as BSEE’s failures to act as a robust regulative authority.”

    Sara Sneath, “Offshore Oil and Gas Fatalities Underreported by Federal Safety Agency,” Southerly, August 18, 2021.

    Student Researchers: Vincent Santilli and Noah Orser (SUNY Cortland)

    Faculty Evaluator: Christina Knopf (SUNY Cortland)

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  • The federal government disburses four times as much money for roadways as for public transit, a long-standing imbalance that has deprived the nation’s poorest of basic mobility for decades, Basav Sen reported for the Institute for Policy Studies website, Inequality.org. Since 1990, the urban roadway system has grown by nearly 70 percent. At the same time, public transportation systems have accumulated an estimated $90–$176 billion in maintenance and repair backlogs.

    According to Sen, this disparity disproportionately impacts Black and Latino communities, where personal vehicle ownership rates are much lower than in majority white communities. “Transportation policies prioritizing private vehicle use leave the poor and people of color behind,” Sen reported.

    The bias favoring automobiles in transportation policy is a result of corporate lobbying influence. “For the oil and gas industry in particular,” Sen reported, “highway-centric transportation is a gift that keeps on giving.” Political contributions by the oil and gas industry totaled $140 million in the 2020 election cycle alone, with hundreds of millions more since 2012.

    In an August 2021 article for Vox, Gabby Birenbaum argued that, although the recent bipartisan infrastructure bill provided substantial funding for transit, the boost in federal funding was not enough to undo nearly fifty years of deferred maintenance. Full investment could “unlock a new era for transit,” Birenbaum wrote, including increased public transportation services, expansion to new areas, and clean energy fleets. “But such an investment would need to be several times what has been allocated,” she noted.

    As Lawrence Carter pointed out in a June 2021 article for Unearthed, the outsize influence of the oil industry on US politics not only produces negative socioeconomic impacts, it also damages the environment. A senior lobbyist for Exxon told one of Unearthed’s undercover reporters the company “had been working to weaken key aspects of President Joe Biden’s flagship initiative on climate change, the American Jobs Plan.” As Unearthed revealed, ExxonMobil targeted a number of moderate senators, seeking to influence them to “scale back the plan’s ambition by scrapping the tax hikes that would pay for it.”

    Although some commercial news outlets such as Bloomberg have discussed how lack of funding for public transportation adversely affects the economy, the extent of the problem is significantly underreported by the establishment press. Independent outlet Common Dreams covered Sen’s Inequality.org report, and the magazine Popular Science mentioned Sen’s work in a story about “unsustainable cities,” but none of the nation’s most prominent news media appears to have reported his findings. Absent widespread public awareness of these issues, the political influence of the oil industry will continue to shape transportation policy in ways that worsen existing inequalities.

    Basav Sen, “How the U.S. Transportation System Fuels Inequality,” Inequality (Institute for Policy Studies), January 27, 2022.

    Gabby Birenbaum, “The Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill Provides Historic Funding for Transit. It’s Not Enough,” Vox, August 23, 2021.

    Lawrence Carter, “Inside Exxon’s Playbook: How America’s Biggest Oil Company Continues to Oppose Action on Climate Change,” Unearthed, June 30, 2021.

    Student Researcher: Zach McNanna (North Central College)

    Faculty Evaluator: Steve Macek (North Central College)

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  • To address inequities in technology access highlighted by the shift to remote learning since the onset of COVID-19, school districts across the United States have doubled the number of laptops and tablets provided to students, according to a study published by the Center for Democracy & Technology in September 2021. The problem, Nir Kshetri reported for The Conversation, is that “the vast majority of schools are also using those devices to keep tabs on what students are doing in their personal lives.”

    Software programs—including Bark, Gnosis IQ, and Gaggle—monitor students’ technology use, including emails and private chats, with the promise of alerting school officials to hazards such as cyberbullying, drug use, or self-harm. As Jessa Crispin wrote in the Guardian, “It’s not clear whether students are going to benefit from this surveillance, or if it is merely going to reduce schools’ liability.”

    The surveillance tools used by schools cause students “emotional and psychological harm” and “disproportionately penalize minority students,” Kshetri reported.

    Surveillance makes students more cautious about what they say or search for online, potentially discouraging “vulnerable groups, such as students with mental health issues, from getting needed services,” he noted. Tech-based surveillance especially impacts Black and Hispanic students, who are more likely to depend on school-issued devices and also more likely to be flagged for use of offensive language, due to biases in artificial intelligence programs. Surveillance tools also affect sexual and gender minorities: Gaggle, a program used by many schools, has flagged “gay,” “lesbian,” and other LGBTQ terms, ostensibly to track online pornography and protect LGBTQ students from bullying.

    The establishment press has not adequately covered the privacy concerns raised by widespread use of surveillance technologies embedded in school-issued devices. In April 2020, the Washington Post published an article titled “School Closures Prompt New Wave of Student Surveillance,” but this article focused specifically on software used by colleges and universities to monitor students taking exams. In September 2020, the New York Times published a “Here to Help” column, “How to Protect Your Family’s Privacy During Remote Learning,” but its advice focused on concerns such as the “proactive role” of teachers in “building a safe space for students” and parents discussing with their children “when and how often to use the camera.” The Wall Street Journal published “How to Detect Your Child’s Emotional Distress Before the School’s AI Does.” These articles make no mention of specific software programs used to monitor students or how they hinder student privacy and development.

    In May 2022, the Federal Trade Commission issued a policy statement on its intent to increase enforcement of educational technology vendors’ responsibilities under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, a development the Center for Democracy & Technology lauded as “an important step toward improving privacy for students.”

    Nir Kshetri, “School Surveillance of Students via Laptops May Do More Harm than Good, The Conversation, November 9, 2021 (updated January 21, 2022).

    Jessa Crispin, “US Schools Gave Kids Laptops During the Pandemic. Then They Spied on Them,” The Guardian, October 11, 2021.

    Student Researchers: Abigail Ariagno, Eliza Kuppens, and Ava Mullin (University of Massachusetts Amherst)

    Faculty Evaluator: Allison Butler (University of Massachusetts Amherst)

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  • Despite the national poverty rate making its largest upward jump in recorded history, Hannah Dreyfus reported for ProPublica that states had stockpiled $5.2 billion in undistributed funds from the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program (TANF). Her report was part of a collection of articles published by ProPublica in 2021 that detailed the regulations allowing widespread denial of assistance and explored their impact on those in need.

    Hannah Dreyfus reported in a December 2021 article that the number of approved applications for access to TANF funding has been cut in half since 2010 as guidelines to qualify become increasingly exclusionary, while reserved TANF funds have more than doubled in the same time period.

    Dreyfus profiled Bonney Bridgforth, a single mother of four children, who was forced to work at just a dollar above Maine’s minimum wage while pursuing her associate’s degree to meet the “employment” qualification for TANF funding. However, Bridgforth was notified that her family no longer met the “deprivation” standard to receive aid after her estranged husband was released from prison. Dreyfus observed that “the same year Bridgforth was kicked off TANF, Maine was sitting on $111 million in unspent welfare dollars.”

    Bridgforth’s story illustrates a larger problem stemming from the fallout of a 1996 welfare reform law passed by the Clinton administration allowing states to withhold assistance. The 1996 law awards states an up-front block grant each year, intending for the money to go toward helping the poor meet their basic needs. However, as Eli Hager explained in a December 2021 ProPublica article, states are allowed to spend this money in any manner they see fit, as long as it meets one of four very broad criteria.

    Hager spoke with Arianna Bermudez about her experience with the state of Arizona, which “spent some of the same welfare funding that it could have used to provide her with direct assistance to instead help pay for a child protective service investigation into her emotional state.” In a September 2021 article for ProPublica, Hager revealed that state investigators forced mothers to disclose information about their sexual histories as a condition of receiving aid.

    Some state officials argue that the decline in applications for TANF money means states are moving families out of poverty. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has overwhelming data to suggest the opposite. Adita Shrivastava and Gina Thompson’s February 2022 study shows that the TANF-to-poverty ratio hit an all-time low in the program’s twenty-five-year history amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The corporate media have helped states maintain their billions in undistributed welfare funds as a well-kept secret. Outside of a single January 2022 NPR story and coverage by independent journals such as Consortium News, which ran Dreyfus’s original article, there has been no real coverage of the 1996 law allowing states to collect federal welfare funding without using it for its essential purpose. PBS NewsHour has covered Hager’s reporting about TANF’s many failures as a safety net for poor women.

    Eli Hager, “A Mother Needed Welfare. Instead, the State Used Welfare Funds to Take Her Son,” ProPublica, December 23, 2021.

    Eli Hager, “These Single Moms Are Forced to Choose: Reveal Their Sexual Histories or Forfeit Welfare,” ProPublica, September 17, 2021.

    Hannah Dreyfus, “States Are Hoarding $5.2 Billion in Welfare Funds Even as the Need for Aid Grows,” ProPublica, December 29, 2021.

    Adita Shrivastava and Gina Azito Thompson, “Policy Brief: Cash Assistance Should Reach Millions More Families to Lessen Hardship,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, February 18, 2022.

    Student Researcher: Zach McNanna (North Central College)

    Faculty Evaluator: Steve Macek (North Central College)

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  • Severe lack of infrastructure contributes to a “digital divide” in many southern states that most impacts rural Black Americans, according to an October 2021 study produced by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies (JCPES). Avi Asher-Schapiro and David Sherfinski of the Thomas Reuters Foundation News and Javeria Salman of the Hechinger Report published pieces on this “digital divide” and the extent of its impact on Black Americans’ lives and well-being.

    Dominique Harrison, the JCPES study’s author, told Asher-Schapiro and Sherfinski in October 2021 that “despite constant conversations about rural access to broadband in the US, most of it is focused on white rural residents.” Harrison’s study found that, across 152 counties in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, Black Americans were ten times more likely not to have internet access than white Americans in those same counties. Specifically, 38 percent of Black Americans in those counties reported that they lacked home internet access, while only 23 percent of white Americans in those same areas said the same.

    The lack of infrastructure and financial resources available to these areas contribute to this digital divide. Hazel Levy of the University of Florida told the Hechinger Report that there were “actually access allocation issues. . . . That’s not simply these access gaps that just naturally happen, that access is actually allocated.”

    Salman’s Hechinger Report article outlined the historical background to these current access gaps. As she reminded readers, Depression-era federal housing policies denied mortgage guarantees to majority-Black neighborhoods by classifying them as “high risk,” a practice known as redlining. Researchers from the University of Florida who examined the links between disparities in current broadband access and past discriminatory federal housing policies found that “despite internet service providers reporting similar technological availability across neighborhoods, access to broadband in the home generally decreases in tandem with historic neighborhood risk classification.”

    Inadequate access to broadband can have dire consequences. Nicol Turner Lee, the director of the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution, explained to Asher-Schapiro and Sherfinski that lack of broadband access “undermines everything [for the underserved], from those seeking jobs to those seeking public benefits to healthcare access—it’s the whole nine yards.”

    Asher-Schapiro and Sherfinski noted that President Biden’s infrastructure bill earmarks $65 billion for expanding broadband access, making it “the biggest broadband investment in our history to close the digital divide,” according to Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO). On November 15, 2021, Biden signed the $1 trillion infrastructure bill into law.

    Although many news outlets have reported on America’s digital divide, corporate news sources, such as the New York Times and CNN, have not addressed the deep historical roots of disparities in broadband access. The Chicago Sun-Times published a May 17, 2022, commentary about digital redlining of Chicago’s Black neighborhoods. But no big corporate news organizations appear to have covered digital redlining affecting Black communities in the South, even as it relates to the infrastructure bill.

    Avi Asher-Schapiro and David Sherfinski, “‘Digital Divide’ Hits Rural Black Americans Hardest,” Thomson Reuters Foundation News, October 6, 2021.

    Javeria Salman, “Racial Segregation Is One Reason Some Families Have Internet Access and Others Don’t, New Research Finds,” The Hechinger Report, October 14, 2021.

    Student Researchers: Payton Blair, Milan Spellman, and Emmanuel Thomas (Loyola Marymount University)

    Faculty Evaluator: Kyra Pearson (Loyola Marymount University)

    The post #19 Poor Infrastructure, a Legacy of Discriminatory Redlining, Inhibits Rural Black Americans’ Internet Access appeared first on Project Censored.

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  • On October 5, 2021, the NATO Association of Canada (NAOC) sponsored a forum on what panelists described as the “weaponization of brain sciences” to exploit “vulnerabilities of the human brain” in service of more sophisticated forms of social engineering and control. As Ben Norton reported for the Grayzone, “with its development of cognitive warfare strategies,” NATO has added a new, sixth level to the five operational domains—air, land, sea, space, and cyber—that the alliances’ member nations have previously sought to control.

    The NAOC panel discussion was part of NATO’s Fall 2021 Innovation Challenge, hosted by Canada, which sought to enlist the expertise of private entrepreneurs and academic researchers “to help develop new tactics and technologies for the military alliance,” Ben Norton reported. (The NAOC, he noted, is technically a nongovernmental organization, but “its mission is to promote NATO.”)

    One panelist, Marie-Pierre Raymond, who represented the Canadian Armed Forces’ Innovation for Defense Excellence and Security Program, stated that “the rapid evolution of neurosciences as a tool of war” hinges on developments in artificial intelligence, big data, and social media. Raymond encouraged corporate interest in NATO’s Innovation Challenge by telling potential applicants that successful innovators would receive “national and international exposure,” cash prizes, and access “to a market of 30 nations.” Another panelist, Shekhar Gothi, a military officer who works with Canada’s Special Operations Force Command, assured corporate investors that “all innovators will maintain complete control of their intellectual property.” As Norton noted, panelists representing NATO interests sought to ensure corporations that their shareholders would “continue to profit” from NATO’s “imperial endeavors.”

    The panel’s focus was guided by a 2020 NATO-sponsored study titled “Cognitive Warfare” and authored by François du Cluzel, who manages the NATO Innovation Hub and was one of the event’s featured speakers. According to du Cluzel’s report, the objectives of cognitive warfare are “to make everyone a weapon” and “to harm societies,” rather than simply targeting an enemy’s armed forces. Furthermore, cognitive warfare is “potentially endless since there can be no peace treaty or surrender for this type of conflict.” For these reasons, “the human mind is now being considered as a new domain of war.” Du Cluzel emphasized that militaries “must work more closely with academia to weaponize social sciences and human sciences and help the alliance develop its cognitive warfare capacities,” the Grayzone reported. The Grayzone’s article also noted that NATO’s desire to develop means of cognitive warfare came “at a time when member states’ military campaigns are targeting domestic populations on an unprecedented level.”

    Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the establishment press in the United States has published or broadcast hundreds of reports focused on NATO and the many contentious aspects of its role in that conflict. Many of these reports include explanations of NATO’s goals, organization, and history. However, as of this book’s publication, not one major US news outlet appears to have reported on NATO’s efforts to develop its member nations’ capacity for cognitive warfare, including the 2020 NATO study and the October 2021 NAOC panel.

    Ben Norton, “Behind NATO’s ‘Cognitive Warfare’: ‘Battle for Your Brain’ Waged by Western Militaries,” The Grayzone, October 8, 2021.

    Student Researcher: Cem Ismail Addemir (Illinois State University)

    Faculty Evaluator: Steve Macek (North Central College)

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