Censored 2012: The Top Censored Stories and Media Analysis of 2010-2011 (Censored: The News That Didn't Make the News -- The Year's Top 25 Censored Stories) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

I have been into Project Censored for a little less than a year now, and Censored 2012 is even better than Censored 2011. The only part I did not like about 2011 was the 9-11-01 conspiracy theory about the explosives in World Trade Center 7. For that reason, 2012 beats out 2011 just by a hair.

In my view, one cannot be truly media literate without reading Project Censored. They teach us all about propaganda, junk food news, and the political economy of mass media like no others; drawing off of written works by Aldous Huxley, Neil Postman, Edward Hermans, and many others. Never again will you interpret the media messages you consume the same way after you read the work of Project Censored.

Onto Censored 2012 itself, let us take a look:

Section 1- Censored News and Media Analysis.
Each yearly book features a collection of the top 25 censored stories from the previous two years. In this case, from 2010 to 2011. The highlights in this issue are the censored stories involving human costs of war and violence. Drawing off of an article from Truthdig by one of my favorite writers, Chris Hedges, Project Censored's student researchers reveal more American soldiers committed suicide than died in combat. I found this very disturbing, but it reveals more of the disgraceful ways the U.S. Department of Defense treats its own soldiers. In Censored 2011, research revealed the U.S. Department of Defense is the biggest polluter in the world. For an update, 2012 tells us the U.S. military has been poisoning Libyans, in addition to Iraqis, with its Radioactive Depleted Uranium.

Section 1 also has an article on the private prison companies that have been fueling anti-immigrant legislation. This is the only drawback to the book. That was not a censored story at all. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and the Corrections Corporation of America lobbyist in her administration, Chuck Coughlin were all over the news.

After the top 25 censored stories, there are also updates to last year's list of Project Censored's 25 censored stories. These include more on the U.S. Department of Defense's pollution, America's support for the Taliban, and many others.

To finish the first section off, they end with an essay on a type of news story known as Junk Food News. Also known as Infotainment, Junk Food News refers to news stories that have no significance to them, such as celebrity culture, fashions, and other pointless stories. I like this essay on Junk Food News even better than 2011's, as it is more elaborate. It breaks down Infotainment into several categories: sex news, yo-yo news, brand name news, crazed news, showbiz news, and political news. After that, Censored 2012 uncovers media character assassinations of public sector employees and welfare recipients, as well as other common stereotypes found in the media. The very end of the chapter has a compiled list of great independent media outlets like News Hounds, PR Watch, and Labor Video Project. I have been enjoying these for the past week.

Section 2- Truth Emergency: Understanding Propaganda in Theory and Practice. This section of the book is worth the price of admission alone. It covers issues such as political propaganda, social propaganda, pre-propaganda, and draws on the work of French sociologist Jacques Ellul, author of Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes. It even has a chapter on the history of propaganda, which can be traced all the way back to Ancient Athens and Rome. After reading this section of the book, I can guarantee you will never view media the same.

The last section of Censored 2012 is all about the human rights abuses going on around the world, and environmental issues that have not received fair coverage in the mainstream media. This is my least favorite part of the book, but is great none the less.

So please, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of Project Censored 2012. It will change the way you view media, and make you into a media-literate individual who does not get fooled by the misleading information the corporate media feeds us on a daily basis.

"Censorship of the True State of Maternity Care in the US" was the most informative article for me. It should be required reading for every woman who is pregnant or even thinking about becoming pregnant. On the whole, the book presents information that I wouldn't have been aware of otherwise. It helps me to have a greater understanding of the underlying context of issues that are presented in the superficial "news" of the day.

In his introduction to this most important sourcebook, P. Phillips draws a gloomy picture of world affairs run by a military-industrial-media complex, an international concentration of wealth and military power with the corporate media as its information control wing. This complex endangers `not only the personal freedoms and life chances of billions of people, but the potential for life on earth simply to exist. The ultimate result of its policies could be `a freedomless State of global corporate fascism.'

The top censored stories in this book are presented in clusters. Hereafter their titles and some important issues:
Human Costs of War and Violence: "More US Soldiers Committed Suicide than Died in Combat', `Obama Authorizes International Assassination Campaign' and `Extension of Depleted Uranium Weapons to Libya.'
Social Media and Internet Freedom: `US Military Manipulates the Social Media' to spread military propaganda, and `Google Spying?' through the illegal collection of personal data.
Economics and Inequality: `Global Food Crisis Expands' and `Real Unemployment One out of Five in US.'
Power, Abuse and Accountability: `Government Sponsored Technology for Weather Modification', `Oxfam Exposes how Aid is Used for Politically Purposes' and `Will State Emergency be Used to Supersede our Constitution?'
Health and Environment: `The Fairy Tale of Clear and Safe Nuclear Power', `Pacific (Ocean) Garbage Dump' and `Superbug Bacteria Spreading Worldwide.'
Women and Gender Issues: `Trafficking of Iraqi Women Rampant.'
Collaboration and Common Good: `Participatory Budgeting: A Method to Empower Local Citizens and Communities' against the dominant commercial culture.

There are also follow-ups on former top censored stories, like `the global plan to replace the dollar as the only world currency reserve' or `Internet Privacy'.

This book contains also a brief history of propaganda and a summary of J. Ellul's theory on political and social propaganda.
Another extremely important issue is `net neutrality'. For E.D. Cohen, its demise may well mark the end of freedom and democracy in the free world. Telecom companies, which work already together with federal agencies for mass surveillance of all electronic traffic (telephone, e-mail, internet searches) could be allowed to block internet contents.

This sourcebook is a must read for all those who want to understand the world we live in.