Censored 2012 (45 page)

If we can make progress on these six goals in the next two years, then
Censored 2014
will be a lot thinner than
Censored 2011
.

If you’d like to join us in solution-based advocacy for a vital media landscape that delivers information instead of censoring it, in the interests of vigorous truth-based dialogue and meaningful democracy, here are some places to go for more information:

Website:
www.media-alliance.org

Huffington Post
column:
www.huffingtonpost.com/tracy-rosenberg

The Media Action Grassroots Network:
www.mag-net.org

The Media and Democracy Coalition:
www.media-democracy.net

by Jeff Cohen

With United States mainstream politics and media growing ever more corporatized and dumbed down, one of the few bright spots in our society is the growth of smart, independent media.

Decades ago, if aggressive journalism had pushed a deceptive member of the president’s cabinet to resign, credit would likely go to a big outlet like the
New York Times
. But corporate outlets have shrunk their newsrooms. Nowadays, it’s bloggers at
Talking Points Memo
who force an attorney general to resign. When Vice President Dick Cheney’s top aide was indicted, the reporter-of-record at the trial was a blogger for
Firedoglake.com
.

Nowadays, when a momentous movement for democracy erupts in Egypt, informed Americans rush for continuous on-the-scene coverage to outlets like
Democracy Now!
and Al Jazeera English. American TV networks (now lacking foreign bureaus) got to the story late and covered it by parachuting their star anchors into the country, with little knowledge of the language, culture, or history.

When unbridled Wall Street greed tanked the global economy, US
corporate media largely offered surface coverage while the full story of bipartisan corruption got told in-depth by independent journalists like Matt Taibbi, filmmaker Danny Schechter,
Truthdig’s
Robert Scheer and by documentaries like
Inside Job
.

As the failures of corporate media keep mounting—from the run-up to the Iraq invasion to Wall Street crime to the current debt crisis—independent media gain audience and credibility. Launched out of a broom closet in 1996,
Democracy Now!
has grown into a powerful global newscast with resources and personnel. A solo “blogger in his pajamas” in 2000, Josh Marshall has built Talking Points Memo into an aggressive news operation with over a dozen reporters.

The Park Center for Independent Media (PCIM) was established at Ithaca College in 2008 to track these exciting developments in independent media, and to point communications students toward career paths in independent media. Ithaca students have interned in recent summers at dozens of media organizations, large and small, including Brave New Films, The Real News Network, Free Speech TV, GRITtv with Laura Flanders,
Democracy Now!
, Common Dreams, Prometheus Radio, City Limits, and the
Nation
.

To spotlight “outstanding achievement in independent media,” the center gives out the annual Izzy Award, named after legendary independent journalist I. F. “Izzy” Stone. In 2009, the inaugural Izzy Award was shared by blogger Glenn Greenwald and Amy Goodman of
Democracy Now!
In 2010, the Izzy was awarded to investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill, whose reporting in independent outlets had pushed the issue of abuse by war contactors into mainstream discussion. In 2011, the award was shared by the unique New York City investigative outlet “City Limits” and by
Truthdig
cofounder Robert Scheer. (An editor of
Ramparts
in the 1960s, Scheer sees today’s internet-driven independent media as “
Ramparts
on speed.”)

Besides the Izzy winners, PCIM’s speakers series has brought many shining lights of independent media to Ithaca to inspire and motivate students, including authors Naomi Klein and Matt Taibbi, television and radio hosts Laura Flanders and Farai Chidaya, cartoonist Tom Tomorrow, and
Talking Points Memo
’s Josh Marshall.

The recent growth in independent media is exciting—as is the wave
of college students hungry to work in independent media and think outside the corporate box.

JEFF COHEN
, who founded the media watch group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) in 1986, became the founding director of Park Center for Independent Media in 2008.
www.ithaca.edu/indy
.

by Lisa Graves

Almost two years ago, I took the baton to lead the Center for Media and Democracy from John Stauber. John, a visionary activist who had been fighting Monsanto, founded the Center in 1993 to fight corporate public relations (PR) spin and government propaganda. The first book he coauthored was the breakthrough
Toxic Sludge Is Good for You
. It documented many PR scams, including the sewage sludge industry’s effort to rename the toxic soup of industrial and human waste “biosolids” for “use” on forests and land, despite all the heavy metals and other contaminants in it.

This past year, John spent some of his “retirement” working as an activist against the latest version of this scam by helping the Center establish the “Food Rights Network” to fight sludge peddlers who are now labeling it as the “organic” compost or “soil” amendment. The Center believes you have a right to know if your fruits and vegetables are being grown in heavy metals, flame retardants, and other toxics in sludge. Sadly, this scam was even covered up by “green” Democrats in San Francisco, who had been giving this junk away to local residents as “organic compost.” We helped stop this practice.

The Center has dramatically expanded its PR-busting in the past two years, with new exposés on the Koch brothers and their radical agenda and on the corporate creation of a new right-wing vanguard like radical governor Scott Walker and his efforts to crush workers’ rights. While the corporate media was initially ignoring the dramatic labor uprising in Wisconsin and then turning minimal coverage into some sort of he said, she said dispute, on
PRWatch.org
we were
breaking the real story about the inspiring unity of protestors from every walk of life coming together to fight this radical agenda. We documented “tractor-cades” of farmers marching together with other laborers, students, and people from all walks of life, hundreds of thousands of Americans marching in the freezing Wisconsin winter, being discounted numerically and dismissed substantively by the mainstream press (except at night on MSNBC). We have a real day-by-day account of breakthroughs, setbacks, and victories that you won’t find anywhere else. You certainly will not find it on Fox’s propaganda machine or its echo on CNN and the Associated Press, whose wire stories feed local papers with few reporters.

We also launched
BanksterUSA.org
to get you the truth about the Goldman Sachs “alumni” pulling the strings in Washington regardless of who wins the White House. With veteran trade activist Mary Bottari at the helm, we helped push for the first ever public audit of the Federal Reserve, backed Elizabeth Warren’s appointment to get the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau off the ground along with needed reforms, and documented the true cost of the bailout of Wall Street—beyond just the TARP funds. We are now helping to support a move-your-money campaign, spearheaded by firefighters getting their funds out of banks that back anti-union politicians.

In the summer of 2009, Mary joined me at the Center along with Wendell Potter, the former CIGNA health insurance PR exec turned whistleblower, who sought us out to fight the insurance industry’s spin machine on health reform. Wendell has testified before Congress and written a new book,
Deadly Spin
, that documents the untold story of the industry’s spin doctors. Wendell is continuing to fight the PR campaign corporations that have mounted to undo the progress made in the compromise passed last year.

Also, I have brought my expertise in battling national security surveillance policies—such as the PATRIOT Act, warrantless wiretapping, the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force’s spying on peace activists and other Americans, and expanded powers of the Department of Homeland Security—to the Center’s agenda. I have also devoted substantial effort to fighting back against the US Supreme Court’s deplorable decision to expand the power of corporations to corrupt politicians through spending unlimited money to influence elections. The Center is one of the leading voices in the
national effort to repeal this decision, which unfortunately is going to result in the most expensive and deceptive election cycle in US history in 2012.

Our team will be in overdrive for the next eighteen months exposing corporate front groups, busting spin, and debunking lies being peddled by “special” interests. We will be relying heavily on our specialized wiki,
SourceWatch.org
, to document these deceptive groups with their innocent, patriotic sounding names that are really advancing a corporate agenda at odds with the real interests of ordinary people. Americans don’t need a faked out Wall Street economy built on shipping US jobs overseas while cutting social services, job security, and environmental protection at home. We need a real economy with good secure jobs that helps the American dream be possible, a safety net that protects our health and lives when illness comes and aging takes its toll, and healthier food and a more sustainable planet for our families and our children’s children.

In the past two years, we’ve made some big changes at the Center, cutting overhead while expanding and deepening our investigative work. This past year we produced more original articles than in the past two years combined. Our team is proud to be part of the Center for Media and Democracy’s second chapter, devoted to exposing corporate spin and propaganda in order to protect our health, our planet, our economy, and the power of the people in our democracy. We are also proud to support Project Censored’s work getting important stories out that are overlooked by the mainstream media. We are honored to be part of that muckraker tradition. We know that knowledge is power in a democracy, and we at the Center are working to help arm you with the truth, compellingly told. So, we hope you will check out the Center for Media and Democracy version 2.0 on our
sites—PRWatch.org
,
SourceWatch.org
,
BanksterUSA.org
, and on Facebook as well as on Twitter (please follow and share our work under “PRWatch”).

LISA GRAVES
is the executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy, which exposes corporate PR and government propaganda and which publishes
PRWatch.org
,
SourceWatch.org
, and
BanksterUSA.org
. She previously served as a senior advisor in all three branches of the federal government, as a leading strategist on civil liberties advocacy, and as an adjunct law professor at one of the top law schools in the country, after joining the US Department of Justice through the attorney general’s Honor Program
following a clerkship with a federal judge and graduation with honors from Cornell Law School.

by Josh Wolf

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution makes it clear that the rights of journalists are to be respected, but it offers few clues on how the free press should be protected. It’s generally understood that reporters are not given extra rights, and they certainly don’t have a pass to break the law. But journalists often have legitimate reasons to venture into areas they otherwise wouldn’t and to talk to people engaged in suspicious activities.

In November 2010, I followed a group of students into a lecture hall at the University of California, Berkeley. I filmed them as they barricaded themselves inside and held fast onto doors as dozens of police tried to get inside.