Today, Americans are more likely to get their news from several different sources through Facebook than they would from CBS Evening News. Daily newspapers all over the country are struggling and, in some cases, dying. A story that appears on one obscure outlet can suddenly become a viral sensation reaching millions of readers at the speed of light.
And yet, as Jensen's Project Censored found, there are still numerous big, important news stories that receive very little exposure.
As Project Censored staffers Mickey Huff and Andy Lee Roth note, 90 percent of U.S. news media—the traditional outlets that employ full-time reporters—are controlled by six corporations. “The corporate media hardly represent the mainstream,” the staffers wrote in the current edition's introduction.
“By contrast, the independent journalists that Project Censored has celebrated since its inception are now understood as vital components of what experts have identified as the newly developing 'networked fourth estate.'”
Jensen set out to frame a new definition of censorship. He put out an annual list of the ten biggest stories that the mainstream media ignored, arguing that it was a failure of the corporate press to pursue and promote these stories that represented censorship – not by the government—but by the media itself.
“My definition starts with the other end, with the failure of information to reach people,” he wrote. “For the purposes of this project, censorship is defined as the suppression of information, whether purposeful or not, by any method – including bias, omission, underreporting, or self-censorship, which prevents the public from fully knowing what is happening in the world.”
1. Half of global wealth owned by the 1 percent
We hear plenty of talk about the wealth and power of the top 1 percent of people in the United States, but the global wealth gap is, if anything, even worse. And it has profound human consequences.
Oxfam international, which has been working for decades to fight global poverty, released a January 2015 report showing that, if current trends continue, the wealthiest 1 percent, by the end of this year, will control more wealth than everyone else in the world put together.
As reported in Project Censored, “The Oxfam report provided evidence that extreme inequality is not inevitable, but is, in fact, the result of political choices and economic policies established and maintained by the power elite, wealthy individuals whose strong influence keeps the status quo rigged in their own favor.”
Another stunning fact: The wealth of 85 of the richest people in the world combined is equal to the wealth of half the world's poor combined.
The mainstream news media coverage of the report and the associated issues was spotty at best, Project Censored notes: A few corporate television networks, including CNN, CBS, MSNBC, ABC, FOX and C-SPAN covered Oxfam's January report, according to the TV News Archive. CNN had the most coverage with about seven broadcast segments from Jan. 19 to 25, 2015. However, these stories aired between 2 and 3 a.m., far from primetime.
Sources: Larry Elliott and Ed Pilkington, “New Oxfam Report Says Half of Global Wealth Held by the 1%,” Guardian, Jan.19, 2015, http://tinyurl.com/mqt84tg
Sarah Dransfield, “Number of Billionaires Doubled Since Financial Crisis as Inequality Spirals Out of Control–Oxfam,” Oxfam, Oct. 29, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/nzox3t8
Samantha Cowan, “Every Kid on Earth Could Go to School If the World's 1,646 Richest People Gave 1.5 Percent,” TakePart, Nov. 3, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/worldswealthiest.
2. Oil industry illegally dumps fracking wastewater
Fracking, which involves pumping high-pressure water and chemicals into rock formations to free up oil and natural gas, has been a huge issue nationwide. But there's been little discussion of one of the side effects: The contamination of aquifers.
The Center for Biological Diversity reported in 2014 that oil companies had dumped almost 3 billion gallons of fracking wastewater into California's underground water supply. Since the companies refuse to say what chemicals they use in the process, nobody knows exactly what the level of contamination is. But wells that supply drinking water near where the fracking waste was dumped tested high in arsenic, thallium and nitrates.
According to Project Censored, “Although corporate media have covered debate over fracking regulations, the Center for Biological Diversity study regarding the dumping of wastewater into California's aquifers went all but ignored at first. There appears to have been a lag of more than three months between the initial independent news coverage of the Center for Biological Diversity revelations and corporate coverage.
In May 2015, the Los Angeles Times ran a front-page feature on Central Valley crops irrigated with treated oil field water; however, the Los Angeles Times report made no mention of the Center for Biological Diversity's findings regarding fracking wastewater contamination.”
Sources: Dan Bacher, “Massive Dumping of Wastewater into Aquifers Shows Big Oil's Power in California,” IndyBay, Oct. 11, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/DumpingWastewater
“California Aquifers Contaminated with Billions of Gallons of Fracking Wastewater,” Russia Today, October 11, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/nbtoa6j.
Donny Shaw, “CA Senators Voting NO on Fracking Moratorium Received 14x More from Oil & Gas Industry,” MapLight, June 3, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/FrackingMoratorium.
Dan Bacher, “Senators Opposing Fracking Moratorium Received 14x More Money from Big Oil,” IndyBay, June 7, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/SenatorsOpposeMoratorium
4. Popular resistance to corporate water grabbing
For decades, private companies have been trying to take over and control water supplies, particularly in the developing world. Now, as journalist Ellen Brown reported in March 2015, corporate water barons, including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, the Carlyle Group, and other investment firms “are purchasing water rights from around the world at an unprecedented pace.”
However, over the past 15 years, more than 180 communities have fought back and re-municipalized their water systems. “From Spain to Buenos Aires, Cochabamba to Kazakhstan, Berlin to Malaysia, water privatization is being aggressively rejected,” Victoria Collier reported in Counterpunch.
Meanwhile, in the United States, some cities—in what may be a move toward privatization—are radically raising water rates and cutting off service to low-income communities.
The mainstream media response to the privatization of water has been largely silence.
Sources: Ellen Brown, “California Water Wars: Another Form of Asset Stripping?,” Nation of Change, March 25, 2015, http://tinyurl.com/CaliforniaWaterWars.
Victoria Collier, “Citizens Mobilize Against Corporate Water Grabs,” CounterPunch, Feb.11, 2015, http://tinyurl.com/CitizensMobilize.
Larry Gabriel, “When the City Turned Off Their Water, Detroit Residents and Groups Delivered Help,” YES! Magazine, Nov. 24, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/CityTurnedOffWater.
Madeline Ostrander, “LA Imports Nearly 85 Percent of Its Water—Can It Change That by Gathering Rain?,” YES! Magazine, Jan. 5, 2015, http://tinyurl.com/LAImportsWater.
5. Fukushima nuclear disaster deepens
More than four years after a tsunami destroyed Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant and causing one of the worst nuclear accidents in human history, radiation from the plant continues to leak into the ocean.
But the story has largely disappeared from the news.
As Project Censored notes: The continued dumping of extremely radioactive cooling water into the Pacific Ocean from the destroyed nuclear plant, already being detected along the Japanese coastline, has the potential to impact entire portions of the Pacific Ocean and North America's western shoreline. Aside from the potential release of plutonium into the Pacific Ocean, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) recently admitted that the facility is releasing large quantities of water contaminated with tritium, cesium and strontium into the ocean every day.
We're talking large amounts of highly contaminated water getting dumped into the ocean. The plant's owner, Tokyo Electric Power Company, “admitted that the facility is releasing a whopping 150 billion becquerels of tritium and seven billion becquerels of cesium- and strontium-contaminated water into the ocean every day.” The potential for long-term problems all over the world is huge—and the situation hasn't been contained.
Souces: “TEPCO Drops Bombshell About Sea Releases; 8 Billion Bq Per Day,” Simply Info: The Fukushima Project, Aug. 26, 2014, http://www.fukuleaks.org/web/?p=13700.
Sarah Lazare, “Fukushima Meltdown Worse Than Previous Estimates: TEPCO,” Common Dreams, August 7, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/q9hwkhg.
Michel Chossudovsky, “The Fukushima Endgame: The Radioactive Contamination of the Pacific Ocean,” Global Research, Dec.17, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/FukushimaEndGame.
6. Methane and Arctic warming's global impacts
We all know that carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are a huge threat to climate stability. But there's another giant threat out there that hasn't made much news.
The arctic ice sheets, which are rapidly melting in some areas, contain massive amounts of methane – a greenhouse gas that's way worse than carbon dioxide. And, as the ice recedes, that methane is getting released into the atmosphere.
Dahr Jamail, writing in Truthout, notes that all of our predictions about the pace of global warming and its impacts might have to be re-evaluated in the wake of revelations about methane releases:
“A 2013 study, published in Nature, reported that a 50-gigaton 'burp' of methane is 'highly possible at any time.' As Jamail clarified, 'That would be the equivalent of at least 1,000 gigatons of carbon dioxide,' noting that, since 1850, humans have released a total of about 1,475 gigatons in carbon dioxide. A massive, sudden change in methane levels could, in turn, lead to temperature increases of four to six degrees Celsius in just one or two decades—a rapid rate of climate change to which human agriculture, and ecosystems more generally, could not readily adapt.”
Jamail quoted Paul Beckwith, a professor of climatology and meteorology at the University of Ottawa: “Our climate system is in early stages of abrupt climate change that, unchecked, will lead to a temperature rise of 5 to 6 degrees Celsius within a decade or two.” Such changes would have “unprecedented effects” for life on Earth.
A huge story? Apparently not. The major news media have written at length about the geopolitics of the arctic region, but there's been very little mention of the methane monster.
Source: Dahr Jamail, “The Methane Monster Roars,” Truthout, Jan. 13, 2015, http://tinyurl.com/MethaneMonsters.
10. Costa Rica is setting the standard on renewable energy
Is it possible to meet a modern nation's energy needs without any fossil-fuel consumption? Yes. Costa Rica has been doing it.
To be fair, that country's main industries—tourism and agriculture—are not energy-intensive, and heavy rainfall in the first part of the year made it possible for the country to rely heavily on its hydropower resources.
But even in normal years, Costa Rica generates 90 percent of its energy without burning any fossil fuels.
Iceland also produces the vast majority of its energy from renewable sources.
The transition to 100 percent renewables will be harder for larger countries – but as the limited reporting on Costa Rica notes, it's possible to take large steps in that direction.
Sources: Myles Gough, “Costa Rica Powered with 100% Renewable Energy for 75 Straight Days,” Science Alert, March 20, 2015, http://www.sciencealert.com/costa-rica- ... or-75-days.
Adam Epstein, “Costa Rica is Now Running Completely on Renewable Energy,” Quartz, March 23, 2015, http://qz.com/367985/costa-rica-is-now- ... ble-energy.
11. Pesticide Manufacturers Spend Millions on PR Response to Declining Bee Populations
12. Seeds of Doubt: USDA Ignores Popular Critiques of New Pesticide-Resistant Genetically Modified Crops
19. “Most Comprehensive” Assessment Yet Warns against Geoengineering Risks
21. The New Amazon of the North: Canadian Deforestation
22. Global Killing of Environmentalists Rises Drastically
25. Greenland's Meltwater Contributes to Rising Sea Levels
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