Showing posts with label tradition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tradition. Show all posts

Saturday, September 26, 2009

Underreported? 2009 Head to Head

As is tradition here, I give you the Project Censored "Top 25 Censored Stories" and the WorldNetDaily "Most Ignored Stories" lists. Unfortunately, they're on somewhat different cycles, with WND working from calendar years and PC working on more of an academic year. As usual, I will bold the ones I've heard of. I make no claims about the truth of any of these stories, only that they are considered underreported; I have edited them slightly for length and clarity.
Project Censored, 2008-2009
1. US Congress Sells Out to Wall Street
2. US Schools are More Segregated than in the 1950s
3. Toxic Waste Behind Somali Pirates
4. Nuclear Waste Pools in North Carolina
5. Europe Blocks US Toxic Products
6. Lobbyists Buy Congress
7. Obama’s Military Appointments Have Corrupt Past
8. Bailed out Banks and America’s Wealthiest Cheat IRS Out of Billions
9. US Arms Used for War Crimes in Gaza
10. Ecuador Declares Foreign Debt Illegitimate
11. Private Corporations Profit from the Occupation of Palestine
12. Mysterious Death of Mike Connell—Karl Rove’s Election Thief
13. Katrina’s Hidden Race War
14. Congress Invested in Defense Contracts
15. World Bank’s Carbon Trade Fiasco
16. US Repression of Haiti Continues
17. The ICC Facilitates US Covert War in Sudan
18. Ecuador’s Constitutional Rights of Nature
19. Bank Bailout Recipients Spent to Defeat Labor
20. Secret Control of the Presidential Debates
21. Recession Causes States to Cut Welfare
22. Obama’s Trilateral Commission Team
23. World Water Forum a Corporate-Driven Fraud
24. Dollar Glut Finances US Military Expansion
25. Fast Track Oil Exploitation in Western Amazon
WorldNetDaily, 2008
1. Charges that Barack Obama is not a natural born citizen of the U.S.
2. hundreds of top scientists tell Senate they believe claims of man-caused global warming are fraudulent
3. The true causes of the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, which point directly to the Democratic Party
4. Obama's ties to terrorists and extremists
5. The campaigns of third-party presidential candidates, especially Ron Paul's
6. The stunning success of the Iraq war
7. The sources of Obama's campaign contributions
8. Obama's far-left voting record
9. Bush's refusal to pardon imprisoned border agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean
10. Suppression of Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders' film, "Fitna," which posits worldwide threat from Islam

This is the first year, I think, that I've actually heard all ten of the WND stories, probably because it was election year stuff which actually got a lot of play. This is typical for WND, though: their list is made up of stories which should have, they think, changed things; the fact that they were widely reported, usually debunked, and people moved on is evidence, as far as they're concerned, that the story was under-reported. It's not the same thing.

I'd heard of six of the top ten PC stories, 11 out of 25: I think that's a bit low for me (hmm, checking the past years, it's actually on the high side), but some of these, if true (and not overstated), clearly are under-reported. The ones I've heard of, mostly come from my leftist sources, but almost never make it into the wider, so-called "mainstream" media in any detail or depth.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Censored/Underreported Stories of 2008

As is tradition here, I give you the Project Censored "Top 25 Censored Stories" and the WorldNetDaily "Most Ignored Stories" lists. Unfortunately, they're on somewhat different cycles, with WND working from calendar years and PC working on more of an academic year. As usual, I will bold the ones I've heard of.
Project Censored
# 1 Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by US Occupation
# 2 Security and Prosperity Partnership: Militarized NAFTA
# 3 InfraGard: The FBI Deputizes Business
# 4 ILEA: Is the US Restarting Dirty Wars in Latin America?
# 5 Seizing War Protesters’ Assets
# 6 The Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act
# 7 Guest Workers Inc.: Fraud and Human Trafficking
# 8 Executive Orders Can Be Changed Secretly
# 9 Iraq and Afghanistan Vets Testify
# 10 APA Complicit in CIA Torture
# 11 El Salvador’s Water Privatization and the Global War on Terror
# 12 Bush Profiteers Collect Billions From No Child Left Behind
# 13 Tracking Billions of Dollars Lost in Iraq
# 14 Mainstreaming Nuclear Waste
# 15 Worldwide Slavery
# 16 Annual Survey on Trade Union Rights
# 17 UN’s Empty Declaration of Indigenous Rights
# 18 Cruelty and Death in Juvenile Detention Centers
# 19 Indigenous Herders and Small Farmers Fight Livestock Extinction
# 20 Marijuana Arrests Set New Record
# 21 NATO Considers “First Strike” Nuclear Option
# 22 CARE Rejects US Food Aid
# 23 FDA Complicit in Pushing Pharmaceutical Drugs
# 24 Japan Questions 9/11 and the Global War on Terror
# 25 Bush’s Real Problem with Eliot Spitzer
WorldNetDaily, January 05, 2008
1. moving closer to a North American Union
2. Bush's refusal to pardon Border Patrol agents convicted of unlawful killing
3. Research refuting man-made global warming

4. Lack of action on border fence mandated by Congress
5. California bill introducing homosexuality to young children
6. Hillary and her felonious fundraising
7. Illegal aliens who rape, murder, kill driving drunk, commit voter fraud, welfare fraud and burden the system

8. Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein's resignation from the Senate Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee, which she chaired, amid a conflict of interest due to her husband's ownership of two major defense contractors
9. Progress of Law of the Sea Treaty
10. Syria's alleged WMDs and Israel's attack


I've heard of seven WND stories, 70%, and nine of the PC stories, 36%, suggesting that the WND stories really aren't as underreported as all that. As in the past, the WND list comprises stories that have been pretty heavily flogged in right-leaning media (or outright fringe sources like WND) but which haven't gotten enough traction in mainstream consciousness for something to be done about them. I heard most of the PC stories through liberal/left sources (not the mainstream media, which is centrist) or through specialist blogs.

It is interesting, though, that the first item on the WND list is the second item on the PC list....