Censored 2014 (4 page)

Andy Lee Roth and Mickey Huff

FEARLESS SPEECH: CRITICAL AND AFFIRMATIVE

Thirty years ago, in October and November 1983, the French philosopher Michel Foucault gave a series of lectures at the University of California-Berkeley. No doubt aware of the campus having been the locus of the 1964–65 free speech movement, Foucault chose to focus his Berkeley lectures on the origins of our contemporary understanding of “free speech.”
¹

Tracing the history of this idea back to fifth century BCE Athens, Foucault explained how the Greek term
parrhesia
—conventionally translated into English as “free speech”—literally meant, “to say everything.” As such it could carry either a negative meaning—as in “chattering,” indiscriminately—or a positive one, “to tell the truth.”
²
As truth-telling,
parrhesia
amounted to a moral activity that was “an essential characteristic of Athenian democracy.”
³

In Foucault's analysis, five distinct elements (italicized in the following quotation) defined
parrhesia
as a specific kind of verbal activity:

Thus Foucault suggested, by tracing contemporary conceptions of “free speech” back to their Athenian roots, we might reconceive it as
fearless
speech, “the courage to speak the truth in spite of some danger.”
⁵

The independent journalists whose reportage features in
Censored 2014
each demonstrate that this is a robust, living tradition. Journalists committed to fearless speech risk their freedom and, far too often, their lives, in order to bring us the truth from places and in situations where those wielding power would prefer that silence reigned, as documented in
Censored 2014
story #16, “Journalism Under Attack Around the Globe.” Even more frequently, in the course of their work as truth-tellers, journalists give voice to others—themselves engaged in fearless speech—who might otherwise go unheard. As Brian Covert documents in this year's Censored News Cluster on “Whistleblowers and Gag Laws,” without the dedicated reporting of independent journalists such as Kevin Gosztola, Glenn Greenwald, and Janet Reitman, we would know at best an incomplete story about Bradley Manning and the trial that is ongoing as this volume goes to press: quite simply, the corporate media have failed to cover the whole Manning story.

Criticism—particularly the critique of those who wield their power indiscriminately or selfishly—is another characteristic of fearless speech, identified by Foucault in his Berkeley lectures, and evident in the independent journalism that Project Censored highlights in this volume. From the causes and consequences of wealth inequality—as reported, for example, by Carl Herman (story #2, “Richest Global 1 Percent Hide Trillions in Tax Havens”) and George Monbiot (story #6, “Bil-lionaires' Rising Wealth Intensifies Poverty and Inequality”)—to immigration (e.g., Erika L. Sánchez, story #10, “A ‘Culture of Cruelty' along Mexico-US Border”) and the environment (e.g., Elizabeth Royte, story #18, “Fracking Our Food Supply”), our best independent investigative reporters speak “from ‘below'” to hold accountable those “above.”
⁶

While true to Foucault's exploration of the ancient roots of fearless speech, an exclusive focus on criticism gives an incomplete view of journalistic duty, as practiced by today's independent press and broadcasters and celebrated by Project Censored. As heralded by Sarah van Gelder in her foreword, voiced by journalists across this year's Top 25, and resounded in our book's concluding chapter, “The New Story” by Michael Nagler, independent journalism in 2014 is as much about realistic
solutions
as it is oriented to systemic problems. “Solutions journalism,” van Gelder writes, “must investigate not only the individual innovations, but also the larger pattern of change—the
emerging ethics, institutions, and ways of life that are coming into existence.” To be effective, critique requires the balance of affirmation.
⁷

Affirmation also requires courage. In an era when “hope” and “change” may seem like nothing more than a deeper gloss of campaign rhetoric, reporting news stories of genuine change and valid hope takes a certain kind of fearlessness. So, we would expand Fou-cault's anatomy of fearless speech to encompass affirmative truth-telling, as is found here in Jessica Conrad's reportage on the people of Iceland voting to treat their nation's natural resources as a commons (story #9) and independent press accounts of the Creative Commons celebrating its tenth anniversary (story #17). The truth to which we need access in order to fulfill our duties and our potential—as family members, as community members, and as citizens—includes not only knowledge of power and its abuses, but also exemplars of human activity, relationships, and institutions at their very best.

FATEFUL TIMES AND CYNICISM

The “fateful times” that comprise the second half of our book's theme this year certainly include economic inequalities, environmental crises, and the scourge of war. But even the most in-depth journalism on these topics, or the most sophisticated analyses of their intercon-nectedness, will not help if those reports and analyses leave their audiences disenchanted or cynical.

As teachers and in our public work for Project Censored, we regularly encounter evidence of this dangerous result. For example, when independent journalists first began to document how Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials had consulted on the production of the movie
Zero Dark Thirty,
we posted one such report on Project Censored's Facebook page.
⁸
Within minutes, a person following our posts wrote in response, “This is news?” Similarly, during a classroom discussion of the revelation that Barack Obama's administration had demanded—and the Associated Press had provided—the phone records for a number of AP journalists, a student seemed intent on closing down further discussion by posing the cynical question, “Why are you surprised?”
⁹

The more we learn about climate-induced species extinctions, the consolidation of a nearly incomprehensible amount wealth in the hands of a
global “superclass,” or a “new” imperialism in Africa—to name just three of the crucial topics, expertly addressed by authors in subsequent sections of
Censored 2014
—the greater the risk that we too may respond cynically, “This is news?” or “Why are you surprised?” Those afflicted are too “cool” (read: jaded) to get upset about the latest environmental catastrophe or political scandal: they have effectively turned away from politics.

In many ways, the corporate media encourage such responses. But, we confess to being surprised when we recently read—in the
New York Times,
no less—that conspiracy theories and those who advocate them are to blame for cynicism about politics. In “Sure You Saw a Flying Sau-cer,” Maggie Koerth-Baker drew on psychological research to show that those who believe in conspiracy theories are “more likely to be cynical about the world in general and politics in particular.” She continued,

From this perspective, the problem is that, although conspiracy theories give their believers a
feeling
of being in control, they do not actually confer greater control. “Psychologists aren't sure whether powerlessness causes conspiracy theories or vice versa,” Koerth-Bak-er wrote. “Either way, the current scientific thinking suggests these beliefs are nothing more than an extreme form of cynicism, a turning away from politics and traditional media.”
¹¹

At the risk of identifying ourselves as suffering from low self-worth or powerlessness, we note that, by emphasizing psychological rather than sociological or historical understandings of conspiracy theories, Koerth-Baker offers at best a partial understanding of the links between conspiracy theories and political cynicism. Kathryn Olmsted, a historian at University of California-Davis, provided useful counterpoint to the predominating low self-worth explanation—though Koerth-Baker paraphrased Olmsted, rather than quoting her directly: “[C]onspiracy theo-ries wouldn't exist in a world in which real conspiracies didn't exist.”
¹²

INSIDE
CENSORED 2014

We organized
Censored 2014
into three primary sections.

Section I features our listing and summaries of the Top 25 Censored Stories for 2012–13, as well as in-depth analyses of those stories in the form of Censored News Clusters by Brian Covert, James F. Tracy, Susan Rahman and Donna Nassor, Targol Mesbah and Zara Zimbardo, Susan Rahman and Liliana Valdez-Madera, and Andy Lee Roth, who each contribute news clusters that “connect the dots,” by identifying overarching themes that link individual stories and by offering background analysis of the
types
of stories most likely to be underreported or censored in corporate coverage.

Three additional chapters add breadth to this first section's analysis of the Top 25 stories.

Chapter 2
revisits six selected Top 25 Censored Stories from previous years, focusing on their subsequent corporate coverage and the extent to which they have either become part of broader public discourse, or have remained “censored” by corporate media. Mickey Huff and Nolan Higdon work with Project Censored intern researchers and writers Andrew O'Connor-Watts, Jen Eiden, Allen Kew, Emmie Ruhland, Aaron Hudson, Rex Yang, Sam Park, Amitai Cohen, Michael Kolbe,
and Matthew Carhart to bring us up-to-date on news media coverage of key past stories addressing the emerging police state, Federal Bureau of Investigation-involved and subsequently thwarted terror plots, economic global ruling elites, the US and al-Qaeda in Syria, sexual assaults on women in the US military, and President Obama's use of drones and the ongoing assassination campaign.

Chapter 3
features Project Censored's annual review of Junk Food News, News Abuse, and the ongoing problem of Infotainment. Project Censored interns Michael Kolbe, Sam Park, and Kimberly Soiero, Jen Eiden, along with Mickey Huff and Nolan Higdon, survey a year's worth of establishment news coverage to contrast the corporate low-lights, distractions, and propaganda with the independent press's stellar alternatives. From the Korean rapper Psy's dance craze and the return of MC Hammer to election debates involving Big Bird and national lamentations over the Twinkie, this year's offerings, from the insipid to mendacious, are so far off the infotainment charts that “U Can't Touch This.”

Chapter 4
, “Media Democracy in Action,” takes readers on a tour through the “no-spin” zone—territory that increasingly appears outside the range of corporate news media. Daniel Ellsberg's essay, “On Civil Courage,” sets the tone for this chapter on free press and free speech advocates who make a difference, and really connects with Foucault's analysis of
parrhesia,
or fearless speech, outlined earlier. “Media Democracy in Action” also features Josh Wolf of Journalism that Matters, William Creely with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, Christopher M. Finan of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, Acacia O'Connor on the National Coalition Against Censorship and the Kids' Right to Read Project, Tony Diaz of Librotraficante, Beau Hodai of the Center for Media and Democracy and DBA Press on “Dissent or Terror,” Sunsara Taylor on Stop Patriarchy, John Collins and
The Weave,
and Ken Walden on “What the World Could Be.” This chapter is meant to inspire us to action and further build community around free speech, free press, and free thought ideals.

Section II
addresses the importance of critical thinking and media literacy in addressing narratives of power. Crucial skills for all community members and citizens, critical thinking and media literacy go to the heart
of Project Censored's ongoing mission to educate students about the importance of a truly free press for democratic self-government.

Do you know the Disney origins of our misconception about lemmings? Using the myth of lemmings' alleged inclination to collective suicide as its organizing metaphor, in
Chapter 5
, Elliot D. Cohen identifies six critical thinking skills and illustrates their effective use by applying them to corporate news coverage on a range of contemporary issues. Cohen not only invites us to dig deeper, he provides the tools to do the heavy lifting in developing independence of thought.