TOP CENSORED NEWS STORIES OF 1993! For Release: March 29, 1994 Contact: Mark Lowenthal 707/664-2893 (Editor's note: A national panel of media experts annually selects the top ten under-reported news stories of the year.) KILLING OUR CHILDREN TOPS CENSORED NEWS LIST ROHNERT PARK -- The top censored story of 1993 cited an under- reported study by the United Nations Children's Fund which revealed that nine out of ten young people murdered in industrialized countries are slain in the United States. Carl Jensen, professor of communication studies at Sonoma State University, California, and founder/director of Project Censored, said the mass media should have warned the public about the growing violence against our young people long before the tragic kidnap/murder of Polly Klaas captured the media's attention in late 1993. Project Censored, a national media research effort now in its 18th year, locates stories about significant issues that are not widely publicized by the national news media. Following are the top ten under-reported stories of 1993: 1. THE U.S. IS KILLING ITS YOUNG. An alarming report by the United Nations, revealing that the United States has become one of the most dangerous places in the world for young people -- a situation which continues to worsen -- was ignored by the nation's major news media. 2. WHY ARE WE REALLY IN SOMALIA? While the media touted humanitarian reasons for our intervention in Somalia, one investigative journalist reported that "four major U.S. oil companies are quietly sitting on a prospective fortune in exclusive concessions to explore and exploit tens of millions of acres of the Somali countryside." 3. THE SANDIA REPORT ON EDUCATION. One of the most thorough investigations into the quality of education in the United States did not produce the expected results to support the Bush administration's preference for the school voucher system and ended up being swept under the carpet. 4. THE REAL WELFARE CHEATS: AMERICA'S CORPORATIONS. While all administrations call for welfare reform, the jailing of welfare cheats, and the need for workfare, they rarely mention the largest recipients of taxpayer largesse: major U.S. corporations. 5. THE HIDDEN TRAGEDY OF CHERNOBYL HAS WORLDWIDE IMPLICATIONS. A devastating book on the far-reaching impact of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, censored in Russia and under-reported in the U.S., explodes many of the myths promoted by the Soviet authorities and eagerly accepted by the international nuclear establishment. 6. U.S. ARMY QUIETLY RESUMES BIOWARFARE TESTING AFTER TEN-YEAR HIATUS. Although few people outside of Dugway, Utah, are aware of it, the U.S. Army has brought biological warfare testing back to a site it declared unsafe a decade earlier. 7. THE ECOLOGICAL DISASTER THAT CHALLENGES THE EXXON VALDEZ. A chronic environmental nightmare caused by selenium-contaminated drainwater makes the Exxon Valdez oil spill pale in comparison. 8. AMERICA'S DEADLY DOCTORS. A well-documented report revealed that 30,000 to 60,000 of America's doctors are impaired or incompetent and could be hazardous to your health. 9. THERE'S A LOT OF MONEY TO BE MADE IN POVERTY. A special issue of Southern Exposure magazine reveals how some of America's largest and best-known national and international corporations own and finance a growing "poverty industry" that targets low-income, blue- collar, and minority consumers for fraud, exploitation, and price gouging. 10. HAITI: DRUGS, THUGS, THE CIA AND THE DETERRENCE OF DEMOCRACY. While the media tend to focus on the Haitian boat people, little attention is given to the CIA's involvement with the overthrow of Haiti's first freely elected president and the smuggling of cocaine from Colombia and the Dominican Republic into the U.S. 15 OTHER "CENSORED" STORIES Another 15 under-reported issues round out the list of the top 25 "censored" stories of 1993: High-Tech Maquiladoras in Silicon Valley, The Rocky Flats Grand Jury That Wouldn't Take It Any More, Public Input and Congressional Oversight Locked Out of NAFTA, Public Relations: Legalized Manipulation and Deceit, Thousands of Cubans Losing Their Sight Because of Malnutrition, Tropical Rainforests -- More Endangered Than Ever Before?, Clinton's Option 9 Plan: A Resounding Defeat for Ancient Forests, The Silent Slaughter in Bangladesh, How Big Business Corrupts the Judicial System by "Buying a Clean Record," Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith -- an Oxymoron?, The EPA Ignores Its Own Toxic Experience, Stinger Missiles Sting U.S. Taxpayers Twice, DARE: The Biggest Drug Bust of All, Setting the Corporate Fox to Guard the Chickens in the 90s, The EPA Fiddles While an Illegal Incinerator Pollutes Ohio. 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, Berkeley; Richard Barnet, Senior Fellow, Institute for Policy Studies; Noam Chomsky, professor, Linguistics and Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Hugh Downs, host, ABC's "20/20;" Susan Faludi, journalist/author; George Gerbner, professor of communication and Dean Emeritus, University of Pennsylvania; Edward S. Herman, professor, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Sut Jhally, professor, Communications, University of Massachusetts; Nicholas Johnson, professor, College of Law, University of Iowa; Rhoda H. Karpatkin, president, Consumers Union; Charles L. Klotzer, editor and publisher, St. Louis Journalism Review; Judith Krug, director, Office for Intellectual Freedom, American Library Association; Frances Moore Lappe, co-founder and co-director, Center for Living Democracy; William Lutz, professor, English, Rutgers University, and editor of The Quarterly Review of Doublespeak; Jack L. Nelson, professor, Graduate School of Education, Rutgers University; Michael Parenti, political scientist and author; Herbert I. Schiller, professor emeritus of Communication, University of California, 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 Gerald Austin, Jesse Boggs, Paul Chambers, Tamara Fresca, Tim Gordon, Bill Harding, Courteney Lunt, Katie Maloney, Mark Papadopoulos, Kristen Rutledge, Sunil Sharma, Laurie Turner, Mark Lowenthal, assistant director of Project Censored, and Amy S. Cohen, Project Censored research associate. CENSORED: The News That Didn't Make the News and Why, the 1994 Censored Yearbook, published by Four Walls Eight Windows, New York, is available in bookstores or by calling 1/800/626-4848. To receive a free pamphlet listing the top 25 stories, please send a self- addressed, stamped envelope to PROJECT CENSORED, Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, CA 94928. --SSU-- (Editor's note: sidebar story follows) 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 1993: 1. THE U.S. IS KILLING ITS YOUNG. Dallas Morning News, 9/25/93, "U.N. Says U.S. Dangerous for Children," by Gayle Reaves; USA TODAY, 6/16/93, "Report: 12M kids go hungry in USA." 2. WHY ARE WE REALLY IN SOMALIA? Los Angeles Times, 1/18/93, "The Oil Factor In Somalia," by Mark Fineman; Propaganda Review, No. 10, 1993, "Somoilia?," by Rory Cox; EXTRA!, March 1993, "The Somalia Intervention: Tragedy Made Simple," by Jim Naureckas. 3. THE SANDIA REPORT ON EDUCATION. Phi Delta Kappan, May 1993, "Perspectives on Education in America," by Robert M. Huelskamp; The Education Digest, September 1993, "The Second Coming of the Sandia Report," reprinted from Phi Delta Kappan; US News & World Report, 10/18/93, "School choice: Its time has come," by Michael Barone. 4. THE REAL WELFARE CHEATS: AMERICA'S CORPORATIONS. Multinational Monitor, January/February 1993, "Public Assets, Private Profits: The U.S. Corporate Welfare Rolls," by Chris Lewis, Laurence H. Kallen, Jonathan Dushoff, David Lapp, and Randal O'Toole. 5. THE HIDDEN TRAGEDY OF CHERNOBYL HAS WORLDWIDE IMPLICATIONS. The Nation, 3/15/93, "Chernobyl -- The Hidden Tragedy," by Jay M. Gould. 6. U.S. ARMY QUIETLY RESUMES BIOWARFARE TESTING AFTER TEN-YEAR HIATUS. Salt Lake Tribune, 1/27/93 & 7/28/93, "Army Resumes Biological-Agent Tests At Dugway After 10-Year Cessation" and "Dugway to test disease-causing agents at remote lab," by Jim Woolf, and 9/21/93, "Dugway Base Cited for 22 Waste Violations," by Laurie Sullivan; High Country News, 8/9/93, "Biowarfare is back," by Jon Christensen; High Desert Advocate, 9/15/93, "Utah biowarfare oversight group wants to do its work behind closed doors." 7. THE ECOLOGICAL DISASTER THAT CHALLENGES THE EXXON VALDEZ. Sports Illustrated, 3/22/93, "The Killing Fields," by Robert H. Boyle. 8. AMERICA'S DEADLY DOCTORS. Woman's Day, 10/12/93, "Deadly Doctors," by Sue Browder. 9. THERE'S A LOT OF MONEY TO BE MADE IN POVERTY. Southern Exposure, Fall 1993, "Poverty, Inc. Why the poor pay more -- and who really profits," by Mike Hudson, Eric Bates, Barry Yeoman, Adam Feuerstein. 10. HAITI: DRUGS, THUGS, THE CIA, AND THE DETERRENCE OF DEMOCRACY. The New York Times, 11/1/93, "Key Haiti Leaders Said To Have Been In The CIA's Pay," by Tim Weiner; Pacific News Service, 10/20/93 & 11/2/93, "What's Behind Washington's Silence on Haiti Drug Connection?," and "A Haitian Call to Arms," by Dennis Bernstein; San Francisco Bay Guardian, 11/3/93, "The CIA's Haitian Connection," by Dennis Bernstein and Howard Levine; Los Angeles Times, 10/31/93, "CIA's Aid Plan Would Have Undercut Aristide in '87-88," by Jim Mann. -- SSU -- This file and other Project Censored information are now available on the Internet, via Gopher and WWW. Email: project.censored@sonoma.edu Gopher URL: gopher://censored.sonoma.edu:70/11/ProjectCensored WWW URL: http://censored.sonoma.edu/ProjectCensored/