Censored 2000: The Year's Top 25 Censored Stories
by Project Censored
Seven Stories Press

Rushing once more unto the barricades, the folks at Sonoma State University's Project Censored have released "Censored 2000: The Year's Top 25 Censored Stories," an annual compendium of the most significant under reported news stories of the previous year and essays on topics like media monopolies and corporate-sponsored censorship. The book is edited by Sonoma State professors and students; the stories are chosen by an independent panel of media types.

Anyone picking up an issue of "Censored" for the first time will be impressed that:
1) The stories are always real conspiracy feeders, like "Multinational Corporations Profit from International Brutality" and "U.S. Nuclear Weapons Controlled by Unstable Personnel" (if nothing else, they make great icebreakers at grad-student parties).
2) The essays are all pretty insightful, and often written by big names in the anti-corporate-media world like Noam Chomsky and Michael Parenti.
3) The book is full of cool Tom Tomorrow cartoons.

Anyone picking up an issue of "Censored" who has read it before, however, will be impressed (or rather depressed) by something else:
1) It reads exactly like every other issue of "Censored." (no 2) or 3), sorry). The stories change, the essay authors change, but the messages remains the same: The United States military promotes ethnic oppression and human rights abuses. Companies are making untold millions by lying to the American public, covering up unsafe working conditions or needlessly exposing citizens to hazardous chemicals. The World Bank is simply a seething den of bastards. It's the standard litany, and "Censored" reads like a hymnal of the Chomskyan left (Mumia Abu-Jamal wrote the introduction; need I say more?).

Reader Email "The bottom line: Is this stuff true? And if it is, What're You doing about it? …" More ›

(Okay, and here's where the reviewer steps in and says, "Wait, don't start throwing stones just yet. I don't mean to belittle the efforts of the good folks at Project Censored. They provide an invaluable service that more people should take an advantage of. Oh, and free Mumia, too.")

But the thing is, one gets to the end of "Censored" and wonders — if it's true that multinationals, conservative media moguls and Washington insiders are so evil, and have been for a long time, why is it that all the Project Censored people seem to do is complain? (And, having read several of these annuals, I can say that "Censored 2000" stands out as particularly guilty of this sin).

Of the 13 essays in "Censored 2000," only two ("Information Equity for the 21st Century" and "Media Accountability: News Councils and Ombudsmen") hint at a solution, and even then the authors rarely venture beyond vague statements like "We must harness our strength as voters, educators and activists who know how to act up if our rights are at risk."

Granted, part of the solution is Project Censored itself. And the book does provide a pretty thorough bibliography, as well as an exhaustive list of "alternative" publications for further reading. But one gets the sneaking suspicion that "Censored" is forever preaching to the converted, and that people who read essay after essay about things like "The Battle for Free Speech Radio" already know there is something deeply wrong with the American media.

At the same time, Project Censored never seems to tackle other issues that affect the way media is received in this country — the pervasive cynicism that informs civic discourse, the displacement of diverse cultural forms with shallow entertainment, and the entrenched, apathy-inducing logic of winner-takes-all democracy, for example.

Mostly, though, "Censored 2000" is emblematic of all the problems facing the American Left. It is so sure of its own righteousness and the absolute evils of the corporate world that it makes the same mistakes as the very mainstream media institutions it critiques — it reduces everything to an easy black and white and contents itself with peddling that simplistic line to a congregation of eager listeners.