25 Top Censored News Stories

A long-running theme on this blog has been the role of the corporate media in propagandizing and promoting illusions that result in injustice. We as individuals live as points moving in space, observing the world from our singular perspectives, but for us to make responsible decisions requires us to obtain accurate knowledge about phenomena outside the sphere of our own perception. We need to know what is really happening in the world so that we can know how to behave in relation to it.

For that we depend on publication and broadcast media, and unfortunately their incentives are different from ours. Sometimes it is better for the media to cover up a fact than to reveal it, or to describe an event in tones that please their sponsors and the leaders whose images and quotes attract an audience.

Sonoma State University, in California, has two classes, Sociology of Media and Sociology of Censorship, that undertake each year the important project of investigating and publishing the most important stories that were censored by the media in the previous year. They've been doing this for more than three decades, it is a great project to get students involved in research and to enlighten them to the fact that you can't believe everything you read in the papers. Besides students in those two classes, the project oversees more than sixty interns to investigate and organize the project's lecture series.

This week they released their list of the Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009/2010. Look down this list and you will see many things that you were unaware of. If some college kids in California can find out about these things, you can bet America's corporate media know about them, but they fail to report these stories.

• 1. US Congress Sells Out to Wall Street


• 2. US Schools are More Segregated Today 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. Activists Slam World Water Forum as a Corporate-Driven Fraud


• 24. Dollar Glut Finances US Military Expansion


• 25. Fast Track Oil Exploitation in Western Amazon