Project Censored has just released its list of top censored stories for 2008. Civil rights violations of U.S. citizens and economic abuses invited by the U.S. government are prominent thoughout this list. Sobering and depressing.
How many Blackwater incidents like this are unreported? I am just amazed when I hear repeated Republican claims that things are going well in Iraq. Until I know that reporters can wander out of the Green Zone un-escorted, I'll continue to assume that no news is bad news.
Where do you turn if you really want to know what’s going on in Burma?
Harry Shearer compares the Al Jazeera English coverage to domestic news services and finds that Al Jazeera wins hands down. CNN’s domestic feed is pathetic, while CNN has been working hard to make its international feed unavailable to those in the U.S.
How bad is domestic coverage of international news:
Once you watch BBC, CNNI, AJE–any of services we’ve been talking about today–and then venture back to the domestic swill, you realize the difference: the international channels are, despite their faults and differences, talking to grownups, the domestic channels are talking either to somewhat bright or somewhat dim children.
The comments fleshed out Shearer’s short post:
…Whenever something significant happens in the world – I either go to CBC or to a lesser extent the BBC for a real news account. The American counterpart is 1% news and 99% hot gas telling us how we should feel about it.
Somewhere along the line – people like Rupert Murdoch, Michael Eisner, and Sumner Rothstein decided that news was supposed to make money and pacify a nation of imbeciles – not inform the citizens of a self-governed nation. . . . And with names like those above – is it any wonder that the American public has been fed 35 years of anti-arab bias? I think back to my childhood watching cartoons – and even in the Bugs Bunny cartoons, the arab is always portrayed as an
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