2007 Top 10 Censored Stories

Your tax dollars are being spent to make George W. Bush look pretty. Don't agree? Read this:

Published on September 13, 2007:
Censored Stories
The Top 10 big news items the U.S. media largely missed in the past year
By AMANDA WITHEREL
[...] This year's Project Censored presents a chilling portrait of a newly empowered executive branch signing away civil liberties for the sake of an endless and amorphous war on terror. And for the most part, the major news media weren't paying attention.
"This year, it seemed like civil rights just rose to the top," said Peter Phillips, the director of Project Censored, the annual media survey conducted by Sonoma State University researchers and students who spend the year patrolling obscure publications, national and international Web sites and mainstream news outlets to compile the 25 most significant stories that were inadequately reported or essentially ignored.
While the project usually turns up a range of underreported issues, this year's stories all fall somewhat neatly into two categories: the increase of privatization, and the decrease of human rights. Some of the stories qualify as both.
"I think they indicate a very real concern about where our democracy is heading," said writer and veteran judge Michael Parenti.
[...] As the stories cited in this year's Project Censored selections point out, the federal government continues to provide major news networks with stock footage, which is dutifully broadcast as news. The George W. Bush administration has spent more federal money than any other presidency on public relations. Without a doubt, Parenti said, the government invests in shaping our beliefs.
"Every day, they're checking out what we think," he said. "The erosion of civil liberties is not happening in one fell swoop, but in increments. Very consciously, this administration has been heading toward a general autocracy."
Carl Jensen, who founded Project Censored in 1976 after witnessing the landslide re-election of Richard Nixon in 1972 in spite of mounting evidence of the Watergate scandal, agreed that this year's censored stories amount to an accumulated threat to democracy.
[...]
1. GOODBYE, HABEAS CORPUS
2. MARTIAL LAW: COMING TO A TOWN NEAR YOU
3. AFRICOM
4. SECRET TRADE AGREEMENTS
5. SHANGHAIED SLAVES CONSTRUCT U.S. EMBASSY IN IRAQ
6. FALCON'S TALONS
7. BLACKWATER
8. KIA: THE NEOLIBERAL INVASION OF INDIA
9. THE PRIVATIZATION OF AMERICA'S INFRASTRUCTURE
10. VULTURE FUNDS: DEVOURING THE DESPERATE
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/gbase/Currents/Content?oid=oid%3A100285