HAVANA, Cuba, Dec 1 (acn) The book Project Censored 2009 is a powerful denunciation of the US mainstream media, which purposely silences certain news stories of public interest, said Chilean journalist Ernesto Carmona as he presented the book today in Havana.
The book encompasses the 25 stories largely silenced in the United States, some of which are related to Latin American reality, Carmona explained and noted that the Censored Project is a research initiative that has worked for the past 32 years to target the silence practiced by the US mainstream media on real stories.
Addressing journalists, students, scholars and public in general at the Havana-based Jose Marti International Journalism Institute, Carmona launched the book for the first time in Spanish language in Cuba; the worked was recently launched at the 4th International Book Fair of Venezuela.
The consolidation and continuation of the initiative has been the effort of US sociologist Peter Phillips aimed at questioning the truthfulness of the US mainstream media.
Some one thousand news stories, which were the target of silence, were taken from alternative sources by students and professors at the Sonoma State University, in California for further research that concluded with the selection of a total of 25 stories.
How many people have been killed in Iraq?, reads the title of one of the silenced stories published by Project Censored. The case of the five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters held for 10 years in US jails was also included by the initiative as one of the stories silenced or manipulated by the US mainstream media.
The book also includes a wrap-up of the most important news stories in Latin America over the past 32 years, which were not covered at all by the media. Project Censored was born in the Sociology Faculty of the Sonoma State University during the Watergate scandal, which put an end to the second presidential term of Richard Nixon.
Project Censored is currently associated to 25 universities and has given momentum to independent and alternative media outlets.
Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009 (www.projectcensored.org)
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
