Project Censored
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| Motto | The News That Didn't Make the News. |
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| Type | Non-Profit |
| Location |
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| Fields | Journalism and Media |
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Key people
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Peter Phillips (President of The Media Freedom Foundation) Mickey Huff (Director of Project Censored) Andy Lee Roth (Associate Director of Project Censored) |
| Website | www.projectcensored.org |
Project Censored is a media research, education, and advocacy initiative started at Sonoma State University in 1976. It is currently housed at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, California. Project Censored was founded by Professor Carl Jensen to expose censorship in propaganda and mass media. Jensen named Professor Peter Phillips his successor to the director position of Project Censored in 1996.
As of 2016, the director of Project Censored is Mickey Huff and his assistant director is Andy Lee Roth. They have expanded Project Censored to approximately two dozen university and college campuses across the United States, which is now the current size. Among its journalistic activities is the publication of news stories omitted or significantly under-reported by other media sources. Project Censored's content is developed from a vast network of educators, students, activists, and advocates including Ralph Nader, Lori Bindig, Noam Chomsky, Julie Frechette, Nicholas Johnson, Rob Williams, Sarah van Gelder, Dorthy Kidd, William Yousman, Crystal Bedford, Nolan Higdon, Ellie Kim, John Boyer, Ben Boyington, and more. Project Censored is associated with numerous education, advocacy, and activist organizations such as Action Coalition for Media Education (ACME), Sacred Heart University’s master's degree in Media Literacy and Digital Culture Program, Union for Democratic Communications, Code Pink, National Whistle-blower's Summit, Veterans For Peace, 9/11 Truth, Peace and Justice Center, and more.
In 1976, Dr. Carl Jensen founded Project Censored at Sonoma State University as a media research program with a focus on student development of media literacy and critical thinking skills as applied to the news media censorship in the US. Each year the Project researches, vets, and compiles the Top Twenty Five most censored and under-reported news stories in the US, and offers scholarly analysis and critiques, which are published in a book, Censored, by Seven Stories Press.
Corporate media reporters, editors, and executives lampooned Jensen for claiming they "censored" news stories. They argued that the stories were not censored, but due to time and space constraints they could not publish every story. Jensen began an annual study that found that the corporate media often covers trivial and non-newsworthy stories which Jensen coined as "junk food news" rather than cover newsworthy stories. Each year's Junk Food News study was added to the annual edition of Censored.
In 1996, when Jensen retired, Dr. Peter Phillips, also a sociology professor at Sonoma State University, became the director of Project Censored. He continued to expand the annual book and educational outreach. In 2000, Project Censored came under the oversight of the non-profit Media Freedom Foundation, founded by Jensen and Phillips, to ensure its independence.
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