I hadn’t looked at this project before, so I approach the matter here for the first time. In the About section of the Project Censored site they say:
I don’t see anything substantially wrong with this in terms of concept and process, at least as stated here. The term “censorship”, while not an ideal choice because of the meaning it holds for some people, is not absolute: there are such things as partial censorship and self-censorship. If a story appears in a medium or more, that doesn’t mean it’s not been “censored” in some way, because the term also includes under-reporting and self-censorship as well as total 1984-style deletion of the whole or part.
It’s a bit pointless to carp about the fact that some of these stories are reported in media, when the project coordinators provide cites of such stories! Come on! Don’t miss the forest for the trees, folks. The authors go to some lengths to explain that these are stories that, in the analysis of a few hundred communications specialists involved in the project, ought to have received more media coverage owing to their relevance, importance, severity, etc. Again, this seems like a straightforward and pretty rational approach, and it’s openly stated.
Regarding the actual contents of this year’s project, I’m seeing what appear to be some decent cases put forward as well as some that I don’t know enough about to criticize. Starting at the top:
This is high-impact stuff, particularly the bits about exploiting developing or undeveloped countries. Also, I haven’t seen the media make much of an issue of the recent economic recovery in the US, in which corporate earnings soared while wage growth barely budged (a historical anomaly and grounds for serious concern, since it would appear the rich are getting richer and everyone else is not, at a time when earnings and wages usually grow in tandem). Whether the censorship involved corporate interests or an editorial decision to throw something at the audience more suited to its limited attention span I don’t know, but this material deserves attention.
Does this surprise anyone? Anyway, does someone who knows the details object to the case made here, and why? Again, this seems a story of clear relevance that one would expect to be widely reported.
A pretty straightforward case. This story was reported in a few media including New Scientist and BusinessWeek, but it seems to have died pretty quickly – personally I can imagine few more heinous offences than a political administration manipulating scientific work and results – this is an attempt to corrupt the very essence of scientific knowledge and the scientific method. Again, it is unclear what form of censorship is to blame here: editorial, self-censorship, or censorship involving the state. I’m not ruling any of them out.
Again, what would appear to be, on the surface, a story worthy of abundant coverage, especially given the noise and objections a few years ago after NATO attacked Serbia with munitions that included DU, and other (plentiful) noise about the hypothetical “Gulf War Syndrome”. If anyone wants to dispute the information alleged, I’d be glad to learn more about it.
Given the abominable environmental record of the administration – rivalled only by its iniquitous record in honesty – perhaps this and other stories were lost in the abundance of similar material. Or perhaps there are other reasons, such as the unhealthy media obsession with adventurism in Iraq and the focus on reminding everyone of 9/11 at home. Also on the page is this warning: “It will probably be years until we understand the full cost of what we’ve lost during the Bush Administration. Thousands of seemingly small regulatory changes; secret out of court settlements that have sacrificed endangered species and lax enforcement of existing laws, are only a few of the symptoms of the Administration’s liquidation of the commons.”
And so forth. I don’t have time to address them all, but I’m not seeing invalidating criticisms of this project so far in this thread, and I have spotted some goshdarn disingenuous ones. You may disagree with some of the Project Censored treatments, but I for one am glad there’s a body who analyzes and emphasizes relevant materials to determine whether they are under-reported or under-stated (even though I doubt this an exact science, better to have it than not).
Between me and my husband we make about 80K a year. We pay taxes on every single penny of it. I find that argument that you shouldn’t have to pay taxes on that same income if you inherited it from your Daddy absurd. Income is income. Getting it from a dead man shouldn’t mean anything different than if you got it from a nine to five job.
I haven’t a thimble’s worth of sympathy for the two percent of the population who inherit twenty times the average income that they haven’t worked a day in their lives to earn and then whine at having to pay taxes on such a windfall.
It says volumes about Republican priorities that this was on their list of things to abolish.
But your daddy already paid taxes on that pile o’ money. Why should it be taxed twice?
There were unpleasant side effects of the estate tax, too, namely family farms and businesses being liquidated because the heirs couldn’t pay the tax and keep the business profitable. This, too, led to job losses.
Let’s say I do a big job for you and you pay me $1 million. That income gets taxed. Now I turn around and take that same money (or what remains of it) and pay someone else to do a job for me. The money gets taxed again. The same money, taxed twice! DOUBLE TAXATION!!
Well, no. What’s being taxed in both instances is the transfer of wealth.
Now why should I get taxed when I WORK to earn my $1 million, but Joe Scion shouldn’t get taxed when he sits on his ass and INHERITS $1 million? Please explain the justice in that outcome. Which of us has contributed more to society?
As for family farms and businesses being sold to pay estate taxes, that is hogwash used to sell the repeal of the estate tax to the voting public.
The threshold for incurring estate tax was on schedule to be $1 million. That is, unless an estate had a **net value ** of at least $1 million, there would have been no estate tax to worry about. I submit to you that if a family farm or small business had a net value exceeding $1 million, there would be no reason to sell it to pay taxes. It would be a simple matter of obtaining a loan against that net value and then repaying the loan out of business profits. There’s no reason anyone should have been forced to sell a farm or business to pay taxes. If anyone did so, it was a matter of choice, not necessity.
Before the estate tax was repealed it was on schedule to apply only to estates which exceeded $1 million in net value. What percentage of estates do you suppose exceed that value?
Besides which, I again ask: In what universe is it fair to tax someone who works to earn their millions, but not to tax one who sits on his ass and inherits his wealth? Income is income, I say. Tax it whether it is earned or inherited. (And yes, it should be taxed at a lower rate for those who earn it than for those who inherit it. The people who *earn * their income are contributing to society.)
It is a high figure when you’re talking about net value. Most businesses/farms have mortgages which reduce their net value below that figure.
Besides which, the first $1 million in net value didn’t get taxed. So you’re really talking about taxes only on the second million (and beyond). This means that it wouldn’t even be necessary to mortgage the first $1 million of net value of the inheritance to pay taxes. Total hogwash to say that the estate tax forced the sale of farms and businesses. If you contend otherwise, please provide concrete examples of how that happened.
So some experts think these stories “ought” to receive more coverage? Here’s a thought. Let’s exploit this weakness in the media (which is clearly due to its conservative bias) and start a few media outlets to report these stories. Since they have been scientifically proven by “communication specialists” to be under-reported, we are sure to make a killing. How much money would you like to put up in our new business venture?
Seriously… Do you think there is some massive conspiracy to cover up news stories that would sell newspapers? That businessmen are foregoing profits to keep all this stuff hush-hush? It just doesn’t make sense. There is simply no way to determine how much any given story ought to be reported. It doesn’t even make sense to ask that question, really. Ought to in what sense? If people were “smarter” and more interested in these things? If only they knew what was really good for them instead of just what they wanted?
You can test market and try to determine the level of interest in certain stories, but for a bunch of “experts” to sit in a room and decide what ought or ought not to be reported is not only laughable on the face of it, but smacks of paternalistic elitism of a very offensive sort.
I think you are confusing political opinion with objective facts. Most of the stories listed can be found right where they ought to be found-- in explicitly political magazines like The New Republic. Perhaps the mainstream media doesn’t report these stories because they are at least TRYING to be objective. Read your own post… it could easily be a page right out of the Democratic party platform. I don’t mean that to be offensive-- you are entitled to your political beliefs and I’d always give you the benefit of the doubt that they are sincerely held.
One of the big news stories that should have been censured but wasn’t , was that incredibly stupid duct tape defense.
The local TV station did a 6-minute report, showing me how to measure the windows and told me to have a flashlight. Never stated what I should do with the flashlight, I presume I could use it as a weapon.
I am now benefiting from the completely unjustifed glow of security, knowing 3-mil of plastic stands between me and a terrorist attack.
(underlining mine)
No, your earlier posts were correct when they stated that the limit was scheduled to go to $one million. In previous years it has been much lower.
I know of several cases where Grandpa left his farmland, which had been converted to growing timber, to his heirs. The timber could produce no income for a number of years, and the heirs weren’t in a position to make installment payments on a large tax debt with no additional income coming in. So they had to sell property that had been in their family, in some cases for several generations.
The only transfer of wealth that the estate tax did was transfer wealth that properly belonged to a family’s heirs into the gaping maw of the government.
Now, I don’t like to hit and run but the combination of my dialup modem and the slowness of this board as it recovers from the transfer may limit my further participation in this discussion. Or maybe not, who knows?
This is not relevant to my (admittedly first) look at this project, nor to the very project itself as I understood it. The alleged deficit in awareness on a news item is a measure of the impact (or potential) on society of certain current events matched against large media coverage thereof – one of the yardsticks used to make the comparison is news coverage in independent journals, media, newsletters, etc.
Your own question would seem to reinforce one of the points that Project Censored is making: that news censored or selected according to marketablity (and political acceptability, which is a subset of marketability) is precisely part of the problem! It is, unfortunately, an established tradition dating back in the US to the vicious newspaper wars of the 19th century between Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, and “yellow” journalism, or “tabloidism”, wherein newspapers sold based on increasingly sensationalist and partially false or entirely fabricated stories; marketing in action. The marketing department ought not to encroach on editorial affars, that is the golden rule of press objectivity.
Plus, there are media that are willing to take a look at thorny stories on topics that are not popular with most other media – the first one that springs to mind is the noble journalistic experiment, Salon.com, and on the mega-corporate side the BBC. The coordinators of Project Censored provide a list of independent media that they use in these endeavours, so they’re not leaving us high and dry wondering where it is they get their information from in their ivory tower.
Media bias is a most relevant factor, John, as we have seen in the entire Iraq affair – c.f. the reluctance of leading media to delve deep into the matter, and offering the public only the most superficial and bland information issued by the politicos orchestrating the entire affair with rather less than the acceptable minimum of honesty and openness. As a result the UN is unjustly vilified, dissenters from this pathetically inane view are labelled unpatriotic (what is this, China??), world leaders maintaining an evidence-based and justifiable stand are mocked, unilateralism is encouraged, countries are invaded, people die, WMDs are not found, etc., etc. It all worked toward a political goal, and this is a serious problem whether it was intentional or accidental (communications specialists skilled, connected, and foresighted enough to plan something like this are out there, but of course I do not know to what precise extent this actually happened; the discussion of how Bush and co manipulated the public and media is a fascinating one however).
There is no need for a conspiracy to observe this effect, although of course certain major media – for example FOX – have demonstrated their willingness to adopt a clearly biased position (would that count as a conspiracy of sorts?). Roughly speaking, a handful of companies own much of today’s TV, radio, print, and Internet media in the US, and compete fiercely among themselves through, it would seem, whatever means necessary. Do you disagree with the statement that “Market share, advertising dollars and political self-interest drive the corporate media agenda”? Because that is the very thrust of Project Censored. As alternatives they suggest greater emphasis on independent media removed from the circle and influence of the corporates, and I would further suggest legislation to block media from running information that is false or highly questionable (or at the very least a supreme executive body interested in quality of information such as the BBC Board of Directors).
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 allows any one corporation to own multiple media of any format (book, magazine, radio, TV, etc) in the same market area, and permits up to a third national market share. I don’t think it can be argued that this in any way bodes well for the future or casts a rosy tint on the present.
Of course there appear to be methodological hurdles to this approach, I mentioned as much in the previous post. The task is not however impossible as you make it out to be,although journalistic or communications experience may be required. I laid out the selection process in my earlier message. Here is the story nomination page of the project. I still see nothing wrong with it:
After nomination of stories closes, the Project “reviews the story submissions for coverage, content, reliability of sources and national significance” with the additional help of hundreds of university people. 25 stories are picked in this manner, and are then sent to the Project’s panel of judges to be sorted by order of importance.
The charge of “elitism” is not some kind of invalidating argument, it is about as meaningful and relevant as the accusation of being “unpatriotic” for criticizing the idiocy, claims, and choices of the current administration. Of course if a bunch of experts in a field get together and thrash a set of issues out it will be an “elitist” affair; what the heck else could it be? All formal disciplines work on the basis of elitism, that is what qualifications, experience, expertise, contributions, and reputations in a field are all about. I’d rather have a bunch of experts’ opinion on a specific matter than a layman’s any day.
Tell me why (for example) a series of stories exposing the way the Bush adminstration shamelessly manipulates science “ought” to belong exclusively in explicitly political magazines, when this is a matter of high importance to the entire country; whether the average reader in the street realizes it or not, it would seem to me the precise duty of any objective medium to educate and illuminate on such subjects, particularly in a democratic environment.
I appreciate the reasoning you provide above, but, with the exception of a few, the major media are not about being objective, they are about securing ratings, subscriptions, advertising, and (in several but not all cases) exercising a political view. All this simply doesn’t add up to an attempt to be objective.
Well, after four years, I must admit I am solidly in the “anyone but Bush” camp, so call it Democratic if you will; the issues in a discussion matter to me if they are accurate and applicable, it is utterly irrelevant which political side they fall on. If many of my views views match the Democrats’ as you say, it is possible that I am a Dem, but it is also possible that some Dem views are more objective than you give them credit…
However that is not the point, the issue here is valid criticisms of Project Censored. I don’t necessarily “agree” with all the Project stories – in particular, I have never been a fan of the estate tax in ANY country – but premature, hand-waving dismissals of sources or arguments do not belong in this forum, and in the particular matter of the estate tax the Bush administration has been known to eliminate taxes in a reckless manner that have left a number of economists seriously worried. So, opposed as I am to the estate tax, I would still want to know what if any negative impact its removal will have on the future economy, and I think everyone ought to read analysess of the issue. Whether the media story is anti-this or that is a superficial and cosmetic matter if its information is accurate and presented honestly, so I think that such issues ought not to be viewed as partisan, rather as essential required information for anyone with the privilege of a vote.
oops, the estate tax is not actually an item on Project Censored, I seem to have confused someone else’s post here. Still, the reasoning remains applicable as far as I can see.
Abe: I want to respond to your post, although I’ll do so in a general way rather than quoting it as it’s a very long post and I don’t want to just keep copying it over. Let me know if this presents any problems.
Firstly, I would say that even though the articles cited are rather political in nature, I probably was too quick to say they are or should be relegated to politically biased mags. In fact, I can’t actually think of any of those stories that I haven’t read about in my local paper (SJ Mercury News), either on the front page or close to it. So, it would seem that the “problem” here from the Project’s point of view is that these stories aren’t repeatedly reported.
So what exactly is the source of the “problem” here:
Do we have** freedom of the press** in this country? If not, I’d like to see the argument that we don’t-- ie, that the government is in any significant way controling the press.
Do we have a **monopolistic **situation in the media world? You don’t come out and say it but you hint that this might at least be partially true. However, I haven’t seen a valid argument from that stondpoint. And, in the age of the internet, it becomes virtually impossible to control the flow of news monopolistically. If there are barriers of entry for new media outlets to enter the market, I’d like to know what they are. Perhaps there are some financial barriers to enter the TV market, but “the media” is so much broader than just that.
Is it a **demand **problem? This seems most likely the case. The Project is, in a sense, complaining that the media is not offering people what they don’t seem to want in the first place. However, given that there is freedom of the press, and no monopolistic situation, this seems no different than complaining that the grocery store doesn’t carry your favorite flavor of ice cream. Or, to hit closer to home, that there isn’t a “liberal Rush Limbaugh”. Go out and create one-- no one is stopping you.
We all might bemoan the situation of the Scott Peterson trial squeezing out more “relavent” news stories, but what is the solution? Force feed people the news stories some think tank believes we should pay attention to? (This, by the way is what I meant by “paternalistic elitism”, which you misquoted as simply “elitism” in your post.)
In short, if the problem is that there is some real barrier to these stories getting out, then by all means let’s do something about it. But if the problem is just that people aren’t interested, what do you propose we do?
It’s only lying if you do it on purpose. For all I can tell, they’re just misinformed and have leaped to a dumb conclusion that they failed to check out properly. You can call the Project’s writing “stupid, unprofessional, crappy journalism,” but we don’t know that it’s a lie. I don’t know if it’s a lie, or ever was a lie, or is simply a misinterpretation caused by partisanship and fear. In any event, bad job by Project Censored.
Watch the BBC world news a couple of times, and see what a news telecast should look like. Serious, thoughtful, and in-depth coverage of actual issues.
The problem in the US is that the market dictates coverage. I know those of you who worship at the altar of the great god THE MARKET don’t see that as a problem. But it is a problem. It’s a problem because a market-oriented press dumbs down its stories, looks for sound bites reather than analysis, gives us raw meat rather than real issues (e.g. the Swift Boat controversy), and drowns out real news with tabloid stories (Scott Peterson).
In a perfect world, the press serves a pseudo-governmental function, as a check on those in power and a source of unbiased information for voters. Market-driven news programs undercut this ideal.
Maybe it’s a problem without a solution. Offhand, I can’t think of one.
This is exactly right. The news business is not just business. It’s an essential part of a working democracy. For decades, the news divisions of the television networks were isolated from competition – and that’s the way it should be. That’s also why non-news companies ought to be barred from owning major news outlets.
If this were the real concern, then it would have been easy enough to exempt family farms from the tax. The fact that there are so few family farms left and that other government policy so heavily favors the agricongomerates who are buying out all the family farms proves that this is a red herring.
You completely lost me here. Can you explain how competition is bad, and flesh out your plan to solve this “problem” in more detail. Also explain how your plan would not violate the 1st Amendment.
Back to the draft–the one significant thing I gleaned from the “censored stories” list that I never recall seeing mentioned: extending the draft to age 34.
And, yes, I know this would require Congressional approval, it’s not law yet, blah blah, but this is the director of the SSS making a recommendation–not some chump columnist at a newspaper, or something. Govt. officials, and legislators, often listen to a program director’s recommendations.
Not reality yet, but a disturbing trend to keep an eye on. I know that my wife and I would both be highly alarmed to see the SSS registration age raised to 34.
How major, exactly, would this current war need to get, Mr. Moto? The president already got congress’s approval to fund this war without, we now see, a whole lot of good evidence. How hard would it be for him (or Kerry) to get their approval to staff this war, too?
I’m willing to call them uninformed for merely reporting that a bill in Congress to reinstate the draft could come up for a vote. There is such a bill, but zero chance its coming up for a vote. (Why don’t they report that a bill to create a single payer health care system could come up for a vote, too?)
But going to lengths to state a specific day that the draft might begin is not only misinformed and wrong, but it indicates that the authors have done enough research on the subject to dig up “facts” to scare their readers with, and during that process, they should have realized that the whole story is bunk. Malicious use of unsubstantiated facts does, in my book, indicate that one’s pants are on fire.
