Like the flagship program of the progressive left, the Radio Democracy Now!, an enterprise called Project Censored is part of the progressive Pacifica Foundation, based in Los Angeles. The task has existed since 1976, and its founder was Carl Jensen, a lecturer at Sonoma State University, California. The classics have already published a study on the state of the media all year, State of the Free Press, published by the independent 7 Stories Press release.
In the United States, as is known, there is no authoritative censorship and essentially cannot be (unless you are Julian Assange), however, it will not surprise anyone that the media are talking more about certain matters and much little about others or not at all. task Censored so defines censorship as "the purposeful or unintentional suppression of the circulation of information in any way – inter alia by bias, silence, incomplete or superficial information or self-censorship – as a consequence of which the public is not sufficiently informed of socially applicable events". all year, it publishes a selection of materials that have been overlooked or completely "repressed" by the largest media, and which, according to task Censored, deserve public attention.
This year's edition of this study has just been released, as always, in the form of a book: State of the Free Press 2024. In the mediate there are 25 examples of journalistic failures from last year – stories that, although socially relevant, remained unspoken, insufficiently explored, besides silent.
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I will give an example of my own reporting experience: there are inactive counties in the US that offer peculiar benefits to the recently arrived companies, putting first and foremost the promised jobs. However, letting in a large business frequently has a negative impact on the community (from environmental harm to underpaid) or does not bring about an expected increase in employment. This was the case, for example, with Hive, a "solar data company" that has been built in Golden Valley, Arizona for 5 years.
There are many specified suspicious projects, especially in the southwest of America. Local media, if they are on site, can compose 1 article or the other, reporting that the company is being formed and how many plans to hire employees, but they do not have the resources or people to actually x-ray specified businesses.
Meanwhile, the local government, which invested in the company through crucial taxation relief and favorable land prices, remains, as in the case of Hive, with a built pier in which no 1 knows what data is stored and why, and respective actual employees came along with the company. Since the company does not yet make income, and CEOs change like gloves, the authorities are waiting endlessly, while the company brings absolutely nothing into the community's life. I personally attended the company's beginning ceremony in 2018; now I read that the investment is to be completed in 2026.
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The concentration and monopolization of the corporate press is ongoing, which, itself conceived as a business to bring income, serves the interests of large business and local power. Trust in journalism and journalists in the United States falls year by year. Hence, most media audiences have no major problem with the fact that local newspapers 1 by 1 vanish from towns and full counties, leaving 1 option or no within hundreds of miles.
There are many reasons for this – the 2 most crucial are social media, which have mostly replaced paper reading, even online, and Trump's run against journalists, to any degree (as the study shows) even justified. However, as the Pew investigation Center survey of 2022 showed, only 61% of Americans trust mainstream media. This is simply a decline of 15 percent points since 2016.
Trump's voters consider the media to be an extension of Biden's administration – and even Democrats are profoundly disappointed by the submission of liberal media to the current president's abroad policy. And extremists who have become journalists on the net constantly attack (verbally and sometimes physically) smaller and larger newspapers, trying to do journalism about journalism.
In a large agrarian America there is frequently no net – especially in the mountains, deserts and indigenous reserves of the population, which are rather a fewer in the western United States. In addition, the country is flooded by alleged false press, i.e. pure political propaganda (printed and online), whose forces are primarily utilized by extremist right-wingers, but besides by part of democrats.
On the another hand, we have a problem filtering messages on social media. The ability to read critically has never been an American stronghold, unlike the more skeptical east Europe, raised on propaganda and delicate to it. The fact is that people no longer want to pay for news and do not have the time or patience to read long articles. "There is no supply or request in journalism anymore," says sociologist Andy Lee Roth, 1 of the editors of the study State of the Free Press 2024.
Another phenomenon characteristic of the media is news snacking, treating the news as a two-minute brain snack in line at the supermarket. People think if something crucial happens, they'll find out. That's not necessarily true, due to the fact that on Facebook they will only read messages selected for themselves, under the colour of their profile of interest created by algorithms. As a result, Americans do not know much about politics, although they are convinced that they know everything they request to know.
A comparatively fresh phenomenon is besides the increase in the number of erstwhile CIA agents working in all almost net department of piers specified as Google.
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So what is not written in a country without censorship? The most unwritten stories inactive concern the climate crisis and pollution. Unlike the European Union, the US continues to let the usage of harmful or highly toxic substances specified as asbestos. Corporate media reports about subsequent climate conferences, but they do not say, for example, that rainwater is no longer suitable for drinking anywhere in the world, or that the compensation of carbon dioxide emissions by companies specified as Disney, Shell or Gucci does not contribute to a general simplification in emissions.
The media did not pay peculiar attention to the fact that in the second half of 2022 corporations achieved the highest profits in history, among another things, due to the fact that inflated prices of many productsBy blocking inflation. It has not been said that the fossil fuel manufacture regularly sues governments – state, local and national – to block regulations that effort to improve things.
It is besides hard to read in the American media that at least 1733 environmental activists and activists have been murdered in the world, and the most dangerous countries for them are Mexico and Honduras.
An crucial issue that the media has not dealt with sufficiently is the changes in state law in states specified as Alabama and Oklahoma, which have led to women being deprived of abortion rights. In Alabama, the ones that have aborted are already arrested and charged with murder. To find specified women, “stalkerware” is used, a program originally designed to monitor children.
Americans besides do not know how strong the “forbidden books” movement is in schools and how much force on local authorities to eliminate books About race, sex and sex from schools and advanced schools. This is driven by masses of conservative moms, associated for example in the Moms for Liberty movement, which has a list of titles “unacceptable”. On leaves There are books about 2 penguins raising a chick, but besides Shakespeare's works and Slaughterhouse Number 5 Kurt Vonnegut.
Finally, 1 affirmative – and besides undescribed in corporate media – phenomenon: resurgent trade unions in public sectors in the south of the USA. Above all, the heavenly Americans organize, which bodes for the unions a fresh future. 71% already supported by the majority of the population, as shown by The State of the Free Press 2024 – this is the highest level of support since 1965.
However, corporate media trust mainly on the alleged authoritative sources, or statements of local power. Even the “New York Times” frequently confines itself to presenting the authoritative position of the State Department. And journalists, politicians and businessmen play golf together.
The failure of American – and not only – journalism dates back at least during the Vietnam War. erstwhile the slaughter occurred in My Lai, where in 1968 American land troops massacred respective 100 armed civilians, there were 649 abroad journalists in Vietnam. no of them wrote about what happened. The planet only learned of the massacre a year and a half later erstwhile a young investigative reporter Seymour Hersh described it.
The most celebrated American signalist Daniel Ellsberg briefly before his death in 2023 doubted whether "New York Times" and "Washington Post" would dare to print the Pentagon's secret file today, as they did, despite Nixon's panicful response, more than 50 years ago.
John Pilger, a late deceased Australian writer and author of many documentaries, described this phenomenon as “lapdogs with laptops” – surviving area dogs with laptops. He cited the failures of large media specified as the BBC, which cooperated with the right-wing government to harm the Labour organization (editors wrote speeches for the right), or published articles delivered to journalists straight by M16 intelligence agents (this was on the occasion of the Iraq War).
Had it not been for the cowardice of journalists who did not effort to verify George Bush's administration's lies about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction, nearly a million people would not gotta die in Iraq. After the fresh York Times saidthat the material published there just before the American invasion of Iraq was not decently verified, but for the victims and for the full country it was besides late.
