Tag Archives: project censored top 25

Project Censored’s State of the Free Press

Project Censored’s State of the Free Press 2026 is out. They sell this only as a hard copy book as far as I can tell. It’s a good cause in my view, should you choose to invest. I don’t want the hard copy cluttering up my already bursting house however. The summary on Google Books gives a few clues as to what is in there.

Project Censored’s State of the Free Press 2026 includes: Project Censored director Mickey Huff’s Foreword, where he writes about the history and continued relevance of the Project, and why media literacy and press freedoms are more important than ever, as it celebrates its 50th anniversary; editors Shealeigh Voitl, Andy Lee Roth, and Mickey Huff introduction to this year’s book, discussing the siege on public knowledge in the age of Trump 2.0, envisioning an interconnected and imaginative resistance to censorship; a Déjà vu News chapter, which updates on previous year’s top stories, including how a Monsanto “intelligence center” targeted journalists and activists, journalist Abby Martin’s challenge to Georgia’s BDS “gag law,” and the Justice Department’s secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) rules; a Junk Food News section that spans from Snow White and actress Gal Gadot, to Drake versus Kendrick and the gutting of public education, not to mention Elon Musk’s chain saws, Cybertrucks, and creeping fascism, surveying the dubious reporting that’s Making America Junky Again; John Collins of Weave News discusses the Long Shadow of News Abuse in the case of Elise Stefanik, Israel, and Antisemitism; Media Democracy in Action, featuring inspiring contributions by Ryan Grim of Drop Site News, Maya Schenwar and Lara Witt of the Movement Media Alliance, Joe Lauria of Consortium News, Lauren Harper with the Freedom of the Press Foundation, and Jodi Rave Spotted Bear of the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance; and Shealeigh Voitl and Reagan Haynie’s zine-style guide to infographics equips social media users with the tools to responsibly evaluate the content they see online and become empowered media makers.

Top stories from 2025 (which I might have reported on last year) are posted for free here. Below are a handful that caught my eye. My own thoughts in brackets.

  • #12. PFAS, Other Toxic Chemicals Found in Products Meant to Keep Us Safe [Yes, it’s everywhere, and it’s disturbing. I don’t want to downplay it, but I kind of figure it is just one chemical (technically a family of chemicals) we have put a spotlight on. Kind of like we did with the Covid-19 virus. We don’t know much about all the different chemicals and viruses impacting us all at the same time, and how they interact with each other. We should work on this, but at the same time remember that we are mostly not dying of horrible, easily prevented infections and injuries that took out our ancestors at much younger ages than we succumb to cancers and brain diseases that may or may not be linked to these chemicals and viruses.]
  • #9. Antarctic Ice Sheets Approaching Tipping Point, Studies Find [I don’t think this is underreported, just ignored.]
  • #8. Underreported, Often Deadly Abuses of Police Authority US police kill “nearly four people per day” on average. This is disturbing. 1500 people per year. Compare to the order of magnitude of gun violence more broadly, car crashes (with each other and unprotected pedestrians and people using light forms of transportation), suicides and drug overdoses. 1500 additional deaths don’t make any of these other tragedies better, of course, and in some cases these happen because the police are the last line of defense in a society that has failed to solve so many social, health and economic problems.
  • #3. Indigenous Communities in the US Underfunded and Exploited by Federal and State Governments [With all the other social problems, the plight of Native Americans remains one of the most disturbing and shameful situations in the country. And in my view, a cautionary tale of trying to use policy to (helpfully) target an ethnic group. Much better to raise revenue and provide benefits to the masses, which will disproportionately help the most disadvantaged groups, while also helping everyone else and building the broad political support necessary to sustain the programs. Call this “socialism” if you want, but it just means efficiently deploying our society’s ample wealth to make sure everyone have the basics. This might not work on the scale of a city, btw, it needs to be society-wide.]

Project Censored Top 25

You should buy Project Censored’s new book or otherwise support them if you can. And having said that, they appear to have posted their top 25 “most censored” stories of 2023 on RSS. Here are a few that caught my eye:

  • #22: Agricultural industry’s continued heavy use of antibiotics linked antibiotic resistance concerns in humans
  • #21: A lot of homeless people actually do some sort of paid work.
  • #19: One study estimated economic costs of gun violence in the U.S. at $557 billion per year. It may seem callous to “put a price on human life” this way, but hard nosed cost-benefit analysis can sometimes help justify better policy decisions, as it has for seat belts and air pollution controls, for example.
  • #16: Sixteen municipalities in Puerto Rico are suing fossil fuel giants under racketeering statutes for intentionally misleading the public about the causes of climate change. And #14: And it’s not just oil and gas companies – the electric industry was also very much in on the lies and cover ups that have altered our biosphere beyond the point of return over the past half century.
  • #15: In the U.S., data show black people are wrongfully convicted of murder about seven times more often than white people.
  • #5: The idea of buying carbon offsets to offset travel or other emissions-producing activities seems very attractive, but unfortunately, the objective evidence does not show them to be anywhere near as effective as advertised.

top 25 “most censored” posts of 2022

Project Censored has posted its annual list of most censored news stories. Well, sort of. These popped up in my RSS feed and are posted publicly on their website, but there don’t seem to be any links to them on the landing page. So, by all means support them by donating or buying their book if you feel guilty, or if these links are no longer active by the time you click on them.

Anyway, as usual I would classify some of these as “important but under-reported” rather than intentionally censored, but you can be the judge. Here are a couple that caught my eye: