Censored 2012 (36 page)

In the last year, when the vital issue of public education finally came to the forefront of the corporate media, Ravitch, a respected voice with a relevant, award-winning work of scholarship, was effectively censored from the corporate media for making a research-based critique of the Obama administration’s educational program—one supported
by the vast financial interests described herein. As a result, the public was deprived of a valuable dissenting perspective on an issue of national interest, and was left with an education discussion that resembled an advertisement for free-market education policies rather than an authentic and complex debate. Indeed, the treatment of Ravitch—and of public education and public workers in general—is an example of News Abuse in its most virulent form.

Given that so much attention has been paid to the topic of Junk Food News, News Abuse seems to be a more under-covered, yet very problematic and increasingly ubiquitous category that merits additional serious attention in terms of the efficacy of proffered solutions for big news media failures. In fact, News Abuse is propaganda, and should be seen and understood as such. In more contemporary parlance, it is more specifically framing and spin. These issues in particular, along with attacking, the use of labels, distortion, overgeneralization, and the straw person fallacy all work to create a faux news landscape that must be called out. New models of independent journalism must be based on accountability, transparency, and full factual reporting if we are to be serious about being our own governors. This is what the American people need as the failures of the news media mount and Junk Food News exponentially expands, depriving the body politic of the fact-based, substantive discussion it needs to be healthy and to survive. Unless we embrace the positive possibilities of grassroots, democratic, independent journalism, including the use of new communications technologies, time just might be running out for real change to unfold and we may be severed not only from reality, lost in
“electronic hallucination,” but from the promises of our country’s founders to future generations of Americans.

Carl Jensen prescribed a possible way to cure the press of their Junk Food habits almost twenty years ago that goes unfulfilled, but which still stands as sage advice worth considering. Jensen wrote, “The corporate media owners should start to earn their unique First Amendment privileges. Editors should rethink their news judgment. Journalists should persevere in going after the hard stories. Journalism professors should emphasize ethics and critical analysis and turn out more muckrakers and fewer buckrakers. The judicial system should defend the freedom-of-the-press provision of the First Amendment with far more vigor. And the public should show the media it is more concerned with the high crimes and misdemeanors of its political and corporate leaders than it is with dinosaurs, sluts, and adulterers.”
¹⁵¹
Or with Tiger’s Blood and Birthers. At Project Censored, we strongly believe that Jensen’s prescription is still one worth fulfilling, and is necessary for maintaining a vibrant and functional democracy.

MICKEY HUFF
is the director of Project Censored, an associate professor of history at Diablo Valley College, and a member of the board of directors of the Media Freedom Foundation.

ADAM BESSIE
is an assistant professor of English at Diablo Valley College, and he cowrote “Manufacturing Distraction: Junk Food News and News Abuse” in
Censored 2011
. Last year, Bessie analyzed media coverage on education reform for
Daily Censored
and
Truthout
, on which much of the case study in this chapter is based. His scholarship on metaphor and framing was published in the academic journal
Inside English, and
cited extensively in 2011 peer-reviewed article featured in the
Journal of Psychoanalytic Inquiry
written by a former president of the International Psychoanalytic Association. He thanks his wife and public school history teacher, Corin Greenberg, for her tireless support and inspiration.

ABBY MARTIN
holds a BA in political science from San Diego State University. She has years of experience working as a news correspondent, editor, and producer for internet television, and now writes investigative reports for multiple publications. Abby pioneered the creation of Media Roots, a grassroots citizen journalism project, to help inform and connect the conscious community. She is a member of the board of directors of the Media Freedom Foundation. You can check out her media organization at
www.mediaroots.org
, her art at
www.abbymartin.org
or follow her on Twitter:
twitter.com/AbbyMartin
.

CLIFTON ROY DAMIENS
is a junior at the University of California, Berkeley, and
NOLAN HIGDON
is a graduate student in history at San Diego State University. Both are Project Censored interns.

Special thanks to the Diablo Valley College “Critical Reasoning in History” classes, Spring 2011, and thanks to Ryan Shehee and Meg Huff for additional edits and proofing.

1
. This alludes to the epigraph for this chapter, an interview with journalist Chris Hedges by Media Roots, online at
http://www.mediaroots.org/media-roots-tv-interview-with-chris-hedges.php
. For more on the subject of Junk Food News and News Abuse, see previous Project Censored chapters with full citations: Mickey Huffand Frances A. Capell, “Infotainment Society: Junk Food News and News Abuse for 2008/2009,”
Censored 2010: The Top 25 Ccensored Stories of 2008–09
(New York: Seven Stories Press. 2009), 147–174; and Mickey Huff, Frances A. Capell, and Adam Bessie, “Manufacturing Distraction: Junk Food News and News Abuse on a Feed to Know Basis,”
Censored 2011: The Top 25 Censored Stories of 2009–10
(New York: Seven Stories Press, 2010), 159–191.

2
. Katie Stapleton-Paff, “College Students Prefer ‘The Daily Show’ to Real News,”
The Daily
, May 21, 2007,
http://dailyuw.com/blog/2007/05/21/college-students-prefer-the-daily-show-to-real-ne/
; see the study by PEW, “How Young People View Their Lives, Futures and Politics: A PORTRAIT OF ‘GENERATION NEXT,’ ” January 9, 2007,
http://people-press.org/http://people-press.org/files/legacy-pdf/300.pdf
; and another study from Indiana University by Professor Julie R. Fox titled, “No Joke: A Comparison of Substance in
The Daily Show
with Jon Stewart and Broadcast Network Television Coverage of the 2004 Presidential Election Campaign,” discussed online at
http://newsinfo.iu.edu/web/page/normal/4159.html
and published in the
Journal of Broadcast and Electronic Media
, summer 2007. While these studies are dated, they show a trajectory of the trends described as they have been in the making for some time.

3
. Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols,
The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution that will Begin the World Again
(New York: Nation Books, 2010), 3.

4
. Carl Jensen and Project Censored,
Censored 1994
(New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1994), 142–143; further, Jensen added to this sentiment in “Junk Food News 1877–2000,” as
chapter 5
of
Censored 2001
(New York: Seven Stories Press, 2001), 251–264.

5
. Jensen,
Censored 1994
, 143.

6
. Ibid.

7
. Wayne Drash, “Viral Post Pits Coverage of Sheen Fallen Soldiers,” CNN, March 2011,
http://afghanistan.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/10/viral-post-pits-coverage-of-sheen-fallen-soldiers/
.

8
. Andrea Canning, “Charlie Sheen, ABC News Interview on 20/20 Special Edition,”
ABC News
, February 26, 2011,
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/charlie-sheen-interview-special-edition-2020/story?id=13008140
.

9
. Glynnis MacNicol, “Watch Charlie Sheen’s Last Minute Live Hour Long Interview With Piers Morgan,”
Business Insider
, February 28, 2011,
http://www.businessinsider.com/charlie-sheen-piers-morgan-video-2011-2
.

10
.
Dylan Howard, “Sheen Drug Test Revealed Live—Video,”
ABC News
, February 28, 2011,
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/sheen-drug-test-results-revealed-live-13017942
.

11
. Tiffany Hsu, “Charlie Sheen’s Twitter Account Breaks More Records,”
Los Angeles Times
, March 9, 2011,
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/03/charlie-sheens-twitter-account-breaks-more-records.html
. See also Benny Evangelista, “Charlie Sheen Sets New Twitter Record? Zero to One Million in 24 Hours,”
SF Gate
, March 2, 2011,
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/techchron/detail?entry_id=84205
.

12
. Alexander Mooney, “Trump Says He Has Doubts About Obama’s Birth Place,” CNN Political Ticker, March 17, 2011,
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/17/trump-says-he-has-doubts-about-obama%E2%80%99s-birth-place/
.

13
. Bill Dedman, “General Electric Designed Reactors in Fukushima Have 23 Sisters in US,” MSNBC, March 13, 2011,
http://openchannel.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/03/13/6256121-general-electric-designed-reactors-in-fukushima-have-23-sisters-in-us
.

14
. Matthew Rothschild, “Obama’s Libya War: Unconstitutional, Naïve, Hypocrytical,”
Progressive
, March 19, 2011,
http://www.progressive.org/wx031911.html
.

15
. “Cost of Libya War Soaring For US,”
Press TV
, June 10, 2011,
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/184023.html
.

16
. James Poniewozik, “Bristol Palin and the Future of Democracy,”
Time
, November 11, 2010,
http://tunedin.blogs.time.com/2010/11/22/bristol-palin-and-the-future-of-democracy/
.

17
. List of the Latest Stories on Bristol Palin, CNN, November 2010 - May 2011,
http://topics.cnn.com/topics/bristol_palin
.

18
. Lisa De Moraes, “Bristol Palin Gets Viewers Heated Up On ‘Dancing With The Stars,’ ”
Washington Post
, November 16, 2010,
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/tvblog/2010/11/bristol-palin-gets-viewers-hea.html
.

19
. Linda Holmes, “The Non-Scandal of Bristol Palin’s ‘Dancing With The Stars’ Success,” National Public Radio, November 22, 2010,
http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2010/11/22/131508417/the-non-scandal-of-bristol-palin-s-dancing-with-the-stars-success
.

20
. Nancy Franklin, “Mush! Sarah Palin Take Us For a Ride,”
New Yorker
, November 15, 2010.

21
. Charlie Savage, “FBI Seeks Wider Wiretap Law For Web,”
New York Times
, November 16, 2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/technology/17wiretap.html?_r=1
.

22
. Joshua Kors, “Video of Torture Hearing Released,”
Huffington Post
, November 11, 2010,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joshua-kors/video-of-torture-hearing_b_781993.html
.

23
. Alyson Shortnell, “Jenn Sterger: Sexts, Start-Ups, and Single Life,”
Business Insider
, June 10, 2011,
http://www.businessinsider.com/exclusive-jenn-sterger-interview-single-brett-favre-sext-startup-tv-personality-host#ixzz1PGneqkF7
.

24
. Robert Hawkins, “Oceanside man ejected from airport for refusing security check,”
Sign On San Diego
, November 14, 2010,
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/nov/14/tsa-ejects-oceanside-man-airport-refusing-security/
.

25
. Jesse Holcomb, “PEJ News Coverage Index: November 15–21, 2010,” PEW Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism,
http://www.journalism.org/index_report/pej_news_coverage_index_november_1521_2010
.

26
.
Charles Krauthammer, “Don’t Touch My Junk,”
Washington Post
, November 18, 2010,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/18/AR2010111804494.html
.

27
. “Social Media Deride TSA Security Measures,” PEW Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, December 2, 2010,
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1816/social-media-tsa-security-pat-downs
.

28
. “The Story Behind ‘Don’t Touch My Junk,’ ” CNN, November 15, 2010,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9reOs70_iMw
.

29
. Mickey Huff et al., “Manufacturing Distraction: Junk Food News and News Abuse on the Feed to Know Basis,”
Censored 2011: The Top 25 Censored Stories of 2009–10
(New York: Seven Stories Press, 2010), 159–191.