Among the news that the mainstream media didn’t bother to tell you, between the Laci Peterson trial and the Kobe Bryant bruhaha:
Item #24: Reinstating the Draft. “The Selective Service System, the Bush Administration, and the Pentagon have been quietly moving to fill draft board vacancies nationwide in order to prepare for a military draft that could start as early as June 15, 2005.”
Item #15: US Develops Leathal New Bio-weapon Viruses. “Scientists funded by the US government have developed a way to make pox viruses incredibly deadly. … The new virus kills all mice even if they have been given antiviral drugs along with a vaccine that would normally protect the victim from death.”
Item #11: The Media Can Legally Lie. “In February 2003, a Florida Court of Appeals unanimously agreed with an assertion by FOX News that there is no rule against distorting or falsifying the news in the United States.”
Item #6: The Sale of Electoral Politics. “Conflicts of interest exist between the largest suppliers of electronic voting machines in the United States and key leaders of the Republican Party. While the technical problems with the voting machines themselves have received a certain amount of coverage in the mainstream media, the political conflicts of interest, though well documented, have received almost none.”
And at the top of the list…
Item #1: Wealth Inequality in 21st Century Threatens Economy and Democracy. “…since the late 1970s wealth inequality, while stabilizing or increasing slightly in other industrialized nations, has increased sharply and dramatically in the United States. … this trend is not the result of some naturally occurring, social Darwinist ‘survival of the fittest.’ It is the product of legislative policies carefully crafted and lobbied for by corporations and the super-rich over the past 25 years.”
Plenty of stuff to chew over here, folks.
For instance, even the producers of the list note that the U.N.'s report on world weather was covered by big media outlets: “Mainstream media coverage: CNN July 3, 2003; USA Today October 29, 2003; The New York Times December 17, 2003”.
And there’s hardly been any shortage of coverage about global warming and possible connections to unstable weather conditions.
The report also makes it seem as though certain stories were not covered when in fact they were. I heard about the undercover officer in the “Peace Fresno” group in a nationally-distributed newspaper (probably the N.Y. Times).
What the “Project Censored” report seems to boil down to is “We don’t think people paid enough attention to these issues, so we’ll try and get new attention for them and our media conspiracy theories by alleging that there was Censorship.”
I don’t believe “censorship” has to be absolute.
Its probably the wrong word here, though. Maybe they should have used “downplayed” to refer to some quite major issued that were, well … downplayed.
Can’t see your problem with an attempt to give them a bit more exposure.
Well, “Important stories that were inexplicably ignored” might be more accurate, but I the censorship analogy is still valid - why do some things get discussed in the media and some not?
Let’s talk about these stories and why they were ignored.
Here are my own theories:
Reinstating the draft: nobody with family members that may need to go wants to think about this. Plus talking about it too much might seem unpatriotic.
The lethal viruses: Everybody knows that the United States is the leading producer of weapons of mass destruction in the world, and the only one to actually use these weapons on civilian populations (twice). Yet nobody wants to think about this unpleasant fact. There are some blind spots in the psyche of every nation, places you really don’t want to go.
The media can legally lie: I though this was old hat - how could you have a tabloid press if the newspapers were required to tell the truth?
The voting machines: this one I don’t understand. I would have thought that this would be a much bigger story than it appearantly is.
Income inequality: Talking about this might leave you open to accusations of fostering “class warfare”, or being a Marxist.
One would think that if this group has such a problem with the media being able to lie, they would not then turn around and report that Congress is actively considering reinstating the draft. The bunk about the draft being prepared to begin on June 15, 2005, is nothing but a straight-out, unadulterated lie.
“Weapons of mass destruction” were used as far back as ancient times, when the bodies of victims of communicable diseases were hurled into besieged towns. The Germans, soon followed by the British, utilized poison gas in WWI. Conventional saturation bombing of civilian targets was employed by various Allied forces in WWII (remember Dresden?). The Germans had their own WMD (i.e. the V-2 rocket) and other weapons of mass extermination. There’s strong evidence the Iraqis used poison gas against the Kurds.
Undoubtedly there’s much more, but these examples come immediately to mind.
By the way, the scare headline on the virus story “U.S. Develops Lethal New Viruses”, as an attempt to portray America as ready to use biological warfare is something beyond ludicrous. The authors express doubt about the rationale for virus studies (learning what is possible so it can be defended against), but way down at the end of their report you read “Buller and his team are currently working on a drug to resist the new viruses, but have so far been unsuccessful in making it 100% effective.”
I would agree that these (and other) stories have been downplayed. (Which is a better word.)
Meanwhile, we get round after round of coverage on the swift boat ads, and the Scott Peterson trial, and Michael Jackson…while issues which actually affect people’s lives and upon which the next election should turn get ignored.
My favorite underplayed story is the elimination of the estate tax, which effectively amounts to a huge transfer of wealth from the middle class to the upper class. Nobody in the media pays any attention to this, which drives me nuts. Instead, the media simply refer to “the Bush tax cuts” which, unexamined, sound like a good thing.
I wish Michael Moore would do a documentary on Republican noodling with the tax code. Might open some eyes.
In earlier years’ threads on “Project Censored” I have expressed that I agree with those who say the name itself is oversensationalized, and it seems to be more of a cryout from those who feel X or Y item did not get the attention they feel it deserved.
Well, heck, yeah, I normally do believe that a lot of the stuff on their lists is worthy material that did not get the atention I think it should have, because the editors were more interested in what sensational story will sell papers or ad time. Though sometimes they also include things that even I am left wondering why the heck is it so important.
But looking at this year’s list, I am… underwhelmed. A LOT of its contents looks to me like it was NOT ignored, nor even particularly “downplayed” – just not headlined as sensationally as they would like. Cheney’s Energy Task Force shenanigans, the Bush Administration’s disregard for inconvenient science, Wal-Mart’s less-than-admirable social policies, the reactivation of the Draft Boards, DU contamination, the hijinks behind buying the Diebold voting machines, loss of privacy for the sake of security, how info on Iraq is carefully filtered, etc. … some of this is stuff that has been reported in mainstream news outlets, some of it even adequately so IMO (but, then again, I’m someone who reads the inside of the newspapers, and the commentary magazines, and watches the more policy-wonkish panel-debate shows). It just wasn’t whipped into major scandal.
Regarding this one, Selective Service boards aren’t exactly a new thing. They’ve been in place for years.
The fact that there were vacancies can be accounted for by the fact that, with no draft in over thirty years, filling them wasn’t seen as a high governmental priority. The boards are staffed by unpaid volunteers, after all.
It’s clear that, in a system that depends upon quick activation of the Guard and Reserves for regional conflicts, these boards will be needed, quickly, in the event that the United States or one of its allies is ever attacked by a greater power, and we’re pulled into a broader conflict.
In such an environment, vacancies can’t be excused anymore.
I’m a firm believer in our country’s defense. Accordingly, I have volunteered as a Selective Service local board member for a large county in Northern Virginia - the county I call home.
Let’s just hope my term as a volunteer is a nice easy one, and that I’ll just wait in standby 'til I die.
Again, thanks for your service, Mr. Moto. And our best to Mrs. Moto and the twins.
Which pretty well sums up my lack of concern with this list, which gets brought up every year.
The above isn’t really a story, it is a political opinion. And “I don’t think enough mainstream new media propangandize for the Left” is not exactly synonymous with “This important and unquestionable story has been censored by the Evil Government!”
And, of course, as Jackmanii points out, it is hard to take accusations of censorship seriously about stories that are covered by CNN, USA Today, and the New York Times.
The alternative being what? A law that requires all media to report only the “truth”. Think about the implications for that if you want a frightening scenario.
I take issue with the proposal to reinstate the draft. It is simply not going to happen. I am willing to get a tattoo to that effect. On the other hand, I will feel so stupid if I am wrong after the Lefties have warned us about it for so long.
You should take issue with it, Paul in Saudi. Reinstatement of the rdraft requires congressional approval, and I don’t think any president would get that short of a major war.
I’ll pass along the good thoughts, Shodan. Mrs. Moto is getting closer to her due date.
Nah. It’s just that damned conservative media bias that everyone “knows” about.
Considering how many threads have been openned in this forum alone about reinstating the draft (happens everytime a news article surfaces), I don’t see how anyone can take that articel seriously.
For the record… I think Scott did it, but that he’ll be acquitted.
I’ve just done a bit of reading about this, but this case seems to center around the fact that Fox wanted some quotes from Monsanto (the chemical corporation) in a story about baby formula. The reporters thought Monsanto’s statements were false, so they refused to put them in the story. They got fired and sued.
I hate to say it, but lacking the details of this case, it seems that Fox might have actually been trying to be “fair and balanced.” I’m open to correction here, but the idea that this story means that court said the media “is allowed” to lie by including demonstrably false statements in a news story is preposterous. Are other media outlets going to be dragged into court for playing that clip of Bill Clinton saying, “I never had sexual relations with that woman?” God knows if the media were prohibited from reporting that lie, these Project Censored whackos would explode with indignance.
From what I understand about the case, the evidence obtained by the reporters was fairly damning, but Fox insisted that they present the information in a manner that would leave the viewer with the impression that it was all just a “he said/she said” mess and that it was impossible to work out the truth.
I should say that I agree with Mr. Moto’s take on the draft story. They are filling the draft boards as a contingency against the possibility that we might be drawn into another war while our troops are stretched thin. Just a prudent move, I think, and not a precursor to an already-planned draft.
I have also volunteered for draft board service, by the way. In the event a draft is instated, I shall do my best to make sure it will not be a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.
The estate tax was nothing but legalized thievery, and its death was long overdue. It didn’t just tax the “upper class”, you know.
A person worked all his life to accumulate something he wished to leave to his heirs. Then the confiscatory rates of the estate tax generally forced the heirs to liquidate his property in order to pay the tax.
The estate tax seized property that rightfully should have gone to the deceased person’s heirs and put the resulting money into the government’s coffers.
If anything deserves an unpleasant afterlife, it would be the estate tax.
This is the reporters’ website giving details and court documents related to the suit. It’s interesting reading.
The story was supposed to be about Bovine Growth Hormone. Basically, the reporters wanted to air a story about it, and allege that FOX kept making them water it down. This led to a big dispute, their dismissal and the filing of a lawsuit.