Rady Ananda, Contributing Writer
Activist Post
For the past 35 years, Project Censored has published an annual collection of the top 25 censored news stories. In the 2012 book edition, just released this September, my article, Atmospheric Geoengineering: Weather Manipulation, Contrails and Chemtrails, ranks as the 9th most censored story in the United States.
Originally published at the Centre for Research on Globalization in July 2010, an updated version at COTO Report has seen over 13,000 page views as of this writing. The article is widely posted across the world in several English and non-English speaking countries, giving it far broader readership than we’ll ever know, but likely over a million.
Ironically, and as if to prove Project Censored’s point, after I posted a link last year to the Atmospheric Geoengineering piece on the “progressive” link site, buzzflash.com, I was banned, and all my contributions removed, though my links often made their front page.
In another bit of censorship irony, the link site, reddit.com, just banned me for posting links to wordpress.com (which hosts COTO Report), because it considers all wordpress articles spam.
The moderator known as lanismycousin told me, “We hate links to blog articles, stories are better served by linking to an actual reliable news source.” When asked for a list of acceptable news sources, s/he called me a “douche.”
Further emphasizing WP rejection, the reddit moderator known asluster called me “a wordpress blog spammer.”
WordPress sees over 30 million unique visitors a month and provides a button that drives traffic to reddit, which sees less than 2 million a month. The huge drop in views last month might have something to do with reddit’s new policy.
Since reddit moderators are now banning WP links, Matt Mullenweg might want to reach reddit founder, Alexis Ohanian. Or, Mullenweg could simply reciprocate the ban.
I wrote to reddit administrators about the issue, and included their “Submit a Link” icon which invites blog entries, but have received no response:
Not surprisingly, even today, Atmospheric Geoengineering continues to be marginalized. A recent hit piece by Rebecca Bowe described “several claims in this year’s list” as “stretching things a bit.” She disparaged my article and Project Censored for having “a fringe obsession with supposedly suspicious airplane contrails.”
“The reporter mischaracterized your story,” said Professor Mickey Huff, the director of the project. “We have told her and her publisher about it.”
Unbeholden to the corporate line, independent media has a different view of my work. Activist Post recently gave me an honorable mention in its Ten Most Influential People in Alternative Media.
No doubt, chemtrail deniers are more numerous than those who believe the official version of what happened on 9/11 (which Project Censored covers extensively, most recently in its 2011 edition). This is likely why the deeply-researched piece made it onto Project Censored’s Top Ten.
The Project has also been censored for reporting on 9/11 truth, as this KPFA interview from last year reveals. Inter Press Service contracted with Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff to write the piece, and then refused to publish it and permanently severed their relationship. Huff says the footnotes went on for two pages, though the piece was only a page and a half long.
A history professor at Diablo Valley College in Contra Costa County, California, Mickey Huff explains that the selection process for censored stories begins with public nominations.
A committee of college students from over 30 colleges around the world then reviews them for media coverage using a variety of databases including Lexis Nexis. If a story is under-represented, the students then fact check the article and consult with experts. After stories have been validated, a team of judges ranks their favorites and the results are calculated.
In addition to the top 25 censored stories for the year (April through March), the book covers several more topics related to media censorship and democracy. Here’s the Top Ten 2012 countdown:
#10 Statistical Games with the Unemployment Rate. At Information Clearing House, Greg Hunter showed that instead of 9%, the real unemployment rate is over 22%.
#9 Chemtrails. Atmospheric Geoengineering: Weather Manipulation, Contrails and Chemtrails, July 10, 2010.
#8 The Truth on Nuclear Power. The Union of Concerned Scientists published a report describing 14 near-miss nuclear accidents in 2010 in the US. (One is Fort Calhoun, which I covered here and here.) Other nuclear pieces mentioned in this category include Jeff Goodell’s “America’s Nuclear Nightmare” at Rolling Stone.
#7 U.S. Army and psychology’s largest experiment – ever. Horrified by war? Be positive! A series of APA articles describing and promoting a program of “psychological resilience” is confronted by Roy Eidelson, Marc Pilisuk and Stephen Soldz at Truthout.
#6 Google Spies for CIA, US Military. In January 2010, Eric Sommer wrote “Google’s Deep CIA Connections” for Pravda.ru.
#5 Prison Companies Fund Anti-Immigrant Legislation. Exposed in depth by Peter Cervantes-Gautschi at AlterNet, Wall Street is profiting from immigrant lock-ups.
#4 Wall Street Engineers Food Crisis. On March 24, 2011, David Moberg wrote “Diet Hard: With a Vengeance” for In These Times showing that speculating on food commodities, along with income inequality, cause hunger – not lack of production.
#3 Obama’s Extrajudicial Hit List. State sanctioned assassinations outside the scope of law is somehow okay by this dictator. This is an under-reported story later covered by Glenn Greenwald atSalon and William Fisher at IPS. Originally titled “Death by Drone: ‘CIA’s hitlist is murder’,” IPS later changed it to “Death by Remote: But Is It Legal?”
#2 Army of Fake Personas to Promote Propaganda. Two sites broke the story on Feb. 22, 2011: Darlene Storm at Computer World and Stephen Webster at Raw Story. In March, Guardian writers Nick Fielding and Ian Cobain covered it.
#1 US Soldier Suicides Exceed Combat Deaths in 2010. Cord Jefferson broke the story on Jan. 27, 2011 at Iceland’s Good Magazine.