From: harelb@MATH.CORNELL.EDU (Harel Barzilai)
Newsgroups: alt.activism,misc.headlines,talk.politics.misc,alt.news-media,alt.censorship
Subject: Top 10 Under-reported Stories of '91 released by Project Censored
Date: 23 Jul 92 01:01:04 GMT
Organization: misc.activism.progressive on UseNet ; ACTIV-L@UMCVMB

...From PeaceNet's media.issues via misc.activism.progressive...
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Topic 466       Project Censored releases 1991 "Mos 
rich    misc.activism.progressive        2:30 am  Jul 20, 1992 
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** Topic: Project Censored*CBS/NBC Top 1991 L ** 
** Written  5:54 pm  Feb 13, 1992 by newsdesk in cdp:media.issues ** 
Subject: Project Censored*CBS/NBC Top 1991 List 
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From bwilson@mvax.Sonoma.EDU Wed Feb 12 19:58:58 1992 

CENSORED News Release 
Project Censored/Sonoma State University/Rohnert Park, CA 94928 / 
707/664-2500/FAX 707/664-0597 

February 7, 1992 
Contact: Mark Lowenthal  

(EDITOR'S NOTE: A NATIONAL PANEL OF MEDIA EXPERTS ANNUALLY SELECTS 
        THE TOP TEN UNDER-REPORTED NEWS STORIES OF THE YEAR.) 

CBS AND NBC TOP CENSORED NEWS LIST OF 1991    

        ROHNERT PARK -- The top censored story of 1991 revealed how the 
news departments at CBS and NBC rejected rare, uncensored footage taken 
deep inside Iraq at the height of the U.S. air war in the Gulf according to a 
national panel of media experts.  
         The second overlooked story of the year reported how the 
government and an acquiescent press persuaded the American people to 
support the Gulf War by media manipulation, censorship and intimidation. 
The sixth ranked under-covered story of the year revealed there was no 
evidence of an Iraqi threat to Saudi Arabia at the start of the Gulf War 
despite the administration's warnings.  
        Carl Jensen, professor of communication studies at Sonoma State 
University (SSU), California, and director of Project Censored, said that 
the Gulf War was one of the "best censored" wars in history. 
        Project Censored, a national media research effort now in its 16th 
year, locates stories about significant issues which are not widely 
publicized by the national news media. Following are the top ten under- 
reported stories of 1991: 
(more) 
        1.      UNCENSORED IRAQ COVERAGE SPIKED BY NETWORKS.  CBS and 
NBC rejected professional videotape footage taken at the height of the air 
war in Iraq by two Emmy-award-winning documentary producers. The 
footage substantially contradicted U.S. administration claims that civilian 
damage from the American-led bombing campaign was light.  
        2.      OPERATION CENSORED WAR.  The Gulf War set new, 
questionable standards for wartime secrecy.  Many important stories, 
which the public had a right to know, are still not being reported by the 
major media.  It took a freelance journalist, posing as a mortician, to get 
a more accurate estimate of battlefield casualties from the Dover AFB 
mortuary, the only one handling Desert Storm casualties.  
        3.      VOODOO ECONOMICS.  The media failed to explain how bad the 
national deficit was and why the economy went into a tailspin in 1991. 
The interest alone on the federal debt will be the nation's single largest 
expenditure this year, exceeding even the military budget. 
        4.      THE $250 BILLION POLITICAL COVER-UP. An hour-long 
television documentary, produced by PBS Frontline and the San Francisco- 
based Center for Investigative Reporting, revealed the truth about the 
extent of the savings and loan scandal and how it was covered-up so that 
it would not threaten George Bush's candidacy in 1988. 
        5.      DOD'S UNTOLD SCANDAL.  A Justice Department investigation 
into possible fraud and bribery in securing defense contracts could equal 
or exceed the "Teapot Dome" scandal or the publication of the Pentagon 
Papers in its scope but we may never know. Search warrants and 
affidavits that contain transcripts of wiretapped conversations of 
employees with a major defense contractor have now been sealed by court 
order. 
        6.      NO IRAQI THREAT TO SAUDI ARABIA?  Satellite photos of Iraq 
and Kuwait on September 11, 1990, revealed no evidence of a massive 
Iraqi army threat to Saudi Arabia as cited by President George Bush that 
same day in his efforts to rally public support for the Gulf War.  
        7.      FOIA IS AN OXYMORON.  The erosion, and possible obsolescence, 
of the Freedom of Information Act over the past ten years coincides with 
a new and particularly hostile attitude towards the public's right to know 
which has characterized the Reagan-Bush administration.  
        8.      CORPORATE AMERICA'S ANTI-ENVIRONMENTAL CAMPAIGN.  
Recent corporate anti-environmental innovations include multi-million 
dollar SLAPP suits, the harassment and surveillance of activists, the 
infiltration of environmental groups by "agent provocateurs," and the 
creation of dummy ecology groups to locate whistleblowers. 
        9.      THE INSLAW SOFTWARE THEFT.  In a little-publicized but 
potentially explosive legal battle, the Inslaw Corporation charges that the 
U.S. Department of Justice robbed it of its case-management and criminal- 
tracking software program, conspired to send the company into 
bankruptcy, and then initiated a cover-up.  
        10.     THE BUSH FAMILY'S CONFLICTS OF INTEREST.  In recent history, 
no president has had the blatant but unexplored familial conflicts of 
interest comparable to that of George Bush.  These include his brother, 
Prescott, a financial consultant with influential contacts in Japan, South 
Korea, and the Philippines; his sons:  Neil, a former director of Silverado 
Savings and Loan whose failure cost taxpayers about $1 billion; Jeb, a 
Miami real estate developer with questionable  
ties to a drug trafficker; and George W., a director and consultant to    
Harken Energy Corporation which has a lucrative oil-production agreement 
with Bahrain, a tiny island off the coast of Saudi Arabia.  

THE OTHER 15 "CENSORED" STORIES  
        The other 15 under-reported stories of 1991 were:  The Strange 
Death of Danny Casolaro; Dan Quayle: Lobbyist for Big Business; FinCEN: A 
Threat to Privacy and Property; The Failure of Congressional Oversight; 
The Untold October Surprise Story; The Specter of Environmental Racism; 
Inside Bohemian Grove: The Story People Magazine Censored; Federal 
Seizure Laws: Making Crime Pay; The Rejected Syrian Hostage Offer; 
Judicial Manipulation of the Agent Orange Case; EPA Fails to Pursue Fraud 
and Abuse; Public Health Service Takes a New Look at the Fluoridation 
Issue; Congressional Intelligence Oversight Law is Meaningless; The 
Canned Hunt: Killing Captive Animals for Sport;  Toxic PCB Contamination 
Above the Arctic Circle.  

PROJECT CENSORED JUDGES 
        The panel of judges who selected the top ten under-reported news 
stories were Dr. Donna Allen, founding editor of Media Report to Women; 
Ben Bagdikian, Professor Emeritus, Graduate School of Journalism, 
University of California at Berkeley; Richard Barnet, Senior Fellow, 
Institute for Policy Studies; Noam Chomsky, professor, Linguistics and 
Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Dr. George Gerbner, 
professor, Annenberg School of Communications, University of 
Pennsylvania;  
        Nicholas Johnson, professor, College of Law, University of Iowa; 
Rhoda H. Karpatkin, executive director, Consumers Union; Charles L. 
Klotzer, editor and publisher, St. Louis Journalism Review; Judith  
(more) 
Krug, director, Office for Intellectual Freedom, American Library 
Association; Frances Moore Lappe, co-founder and co-director, Institute 
for the Arts of Democracy; William Lutz, professor, English, Rutgers 
University, and editor of The Quarterly Review of Doublespeak;   
        Robert C. Maynard, editor and publisher, Oakland Tribune; Jack L. 
Nelson, professor, Graduate School of Education, Rutgers University; Tom 
Peters, nationally syndicated columnist on excellence; Herbert I. Schiller, 
Professor Emeritus of Communication, University of California at San 
Diego; and Sheila Rabb Weidenfeld, president, D.C. Productions.  
        The SSU PROJECT CENSORED researchers, who reviewed and 
evaluated more than 700 "censored" nominations from throughout the 
country, were Kathy Aanestad, John Aliotti Jr., Danny Bremson, Anne 
Britton, Maria Brosnan, Erik Cummins, Steve Dunlop, Paula Giebitz, Dena 
Griffith, Dustin Harp, Craig Haskell, Rachael Kinberg, Robyn O'Connor, Joe 
Polk, Scott Shawver, Scott Somohano, Ann Steffora, Jackie Stonebraker, 
and Mark Lowenthal, assistant director of Project Censored.  
        Jensen said anyone interested in receiving a free pamphlet with the 
results can send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to PROJECT 
CENSORED, Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, CA 94928. 

-- SSU --  


(EDITOR'S NOTE:  TWO SIDEBAR STORIES FOLLOW)     



INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISTS AND MEDIA 
CITED FOR EXPOSING "CENSORED" STORIES 

        Following are the investigative journalists and media cited by 
Project Censored for exposing the top ten issues overlooked or under- 
reported by the national news media in 1991: 

        1.      IRAQ COVERAGE SPIKED BY NETWORKS. SAN FRANCISCO BAY 
GUARDIAN, 3/20/91, "Sights unseen," by Dennis Bernstein and Sasha 
Futran. 
        2.      OPERATION CENSORED WAR.  EDITOR & PUBLISHER, 7/13/91, 
"Military Obstacles Detailed;" san francisco bay guardian, 3/6/91, "Inside 
the Desert Storm Mortuary," by Jonathan Franklin; THE PROGRESSIVE 
REVIEW, March 1991, "Collateral Damage, What We've Lost Already," by 
Sam Smith.  
        3.      VOODOO ECONOMICS.  KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS, 11/3/91- 
11/8/91, "Caught In The Middle," by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, 
of the Philadelphia Inquirer;  USA TODAY, 10/1/91, "Interest to take 
largest slice of budget pie," by Mark Memmott.  
        4.      S&L POLITICAL COVER-UP.  PBS-TV FRONTLINE and THE CENTER 
FOR INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING, 10/22/91, "The Great American Bailout;" 
Glenn Silber, producer/director; George Clyde, coordinating producer; 
Robert Krulwich, correspondent; Wendy Wank, editor; associate producers 
were Diana Hembree (Texas), Juan A. Avila Hernandez (Texas), and William 
Kistner (Washington, DC); Dan Noyes, project director; Sharon Tiller, 
executive producer for CIR; David Fanning, executive producer for 
FRONTLINE. 
        5.      DOD'S UNTOLD SCANDAL.  COMMON CAUSE MAGAZINE, Nov/Dec 
1990, "The Devil and Mr. Jones," by John Hanrahan; THE ST. LOUIS 
JOURNALISM REVIEW, March 1991, "The documents were sealed and the 
public shut out," by Philip Dunn. 
        6.      NO IRAQI THREAT.  IN THESE TIMES, 2/27/91, "Public doesn't 
get picture with Gulf satellite photos," by Jean Heller, (reprinted from St. 
Petersburg (Fla.) Times, 1/6/91). 
        7.      FOIA IS AN OXYMORON.  COMMON CAUSE, July/Aug 1991, "The 
Fight To Know," by Peter Montgomery and Peter Overby. 
        8.      CORPORATE ANTI-ENVIRONMENT CAMPAIGN.  E MAGAZINE, 
Nov/Dec 1991, "Stop the Greens," by Eve Pell; GREENPEACE NEWS, 5/10/91, 
Washington, D.C. 
        9.      INSLAW SOFTWARE THEFT.  IN THESE TIMES, 5/29-6/11/91, 
"Software Pirates," by Joel Bleifuss; RANDOM LENGTHS, 10/3-16/91, 
"Software to Die For," by James Ridgeway.  
        10.     BUSH FAMILY'S CONFLICTS OF INTEREST.  SAN FRANCISCO 
EXAMINER, 7/28/91, "Crime-linked firms hired Prescott Bush;" SANTA 
ROSA PRESS DEMOCRAT, 7/19/91, "Neil Bush's new boss ....," and "8/6/91, 
"Son's S&L not closed ...;" SPIN, 12/3/91, "See No Evil," by Jefferson 
Morley; THE TEXAS OBSERVER,  7/12/91, "Oil in the Family," and 9/20/91, 
"Global Entanglements," both by David Armstrong.  

-- SSU --  

(EDITOR'S NOTE:   SIDEBAR STORY FOLLOWS) 

ANNUAL RESOURCE BOOK FEATURES 
CENSORED ELECTION YEAR ISSUES 

        Project Censored's third annual resource book, "The Top 25 Censored 
News Stories of 1991," provides more information about all the top 
"censored" stories along with comments by many of the "censored" 
journalists who wrote the original articles. 
        The feature article in the 1991 resource book is titled "Two Decades 
of Censored Presidential Election Issues" and takes the reader from the 
1972 election when the media failed to tell the American voters about 
Watergate up to 1992 and some of the issues the media should be covering 
in this election. 
        The book is available by sending $15, which includes shipping and 
handling, to Project Censored, Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, CA 
94928. 

-- 30 --  

** End of text from cdp:media.issues ** 

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