Is your news "trivial" and "censored?"

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Former Vice President and former journalist Al Gore recently told comedy talk show host Jon Stewart that the Internet "the single greatest source of hope that we will be able to fix what ails the conversation of democracy."

He added:

[T]he television news programs have probably spent a lot more time on Britney Spears' shaving her head, and Paris Hilton going to jail, and Anna-Nicole Smith's estate lawyers and Joey Buttafuoco, and all this stuff, than they have spent giving us the facts — for example, telling us before the invasion of Iraq, that actually Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with the attack of 9/11.

Taylor Marsh posted the audio of Gore's May 22 conference call with bloggers about his new book, The Assault on Reason, in which he elaborates on his belief that the news industry's inattention to what matters is part of a larger social problem.

Since Gore's comments came on the heels of the release of Project Censored's 2007 list of the 25 top censored stories, I wanted to see whether bloggers were spotlighting the under-covered stories about Iraq and other critical issues that the "legacy media" has underplayed. The answer so far: aside from the top story on its list, on the Net Neutrality debate, not so much.

This really should be a series of posts, so I'll confine this one to a list of the censored stories. The Project Censored link above has updates on all of these stories, most of which were published in 2005.

1 Future of Internet Debate Ignored by Media

Sources:

Buzzflash.com, July 18, 2005
Title: “Web of Deceit: How Internet Freedom Got the Federal Ax, and Why Corporate News Censored the Story”
Author: Elliot D. Cohen, Ph.D.

#2 Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technologies to Iran

Source:

Global Research.ca, August 5, 2005
Title: “Halliburton Secretly Doing Business With Key Member of Iran’s Nuclear Team”
Author: Jason Leopold

#3 Oceans of the World in Extreme Danger

Source:

Mother Jones, March /April, 2006
Title: The Fate of the Ocean
Author: Julia Whitty

#4 Hunger and Homelessness Increasing in the US

Sources:

The New Standard, December 2005
Title: “New Report Shows Increase in Urban Hunger, Homelessness”
Author: Brendan Coyne

OneWorld.net, March, 2006
Title: “US Plan to Eliminate Survey of Needy Families Draws Fire “
Author: Abid Aslam

#5 High-Tech Genocide in Congo

Sources:

The Taylor Report, March 28, 2005
Title: “The World’s Most Neglected Emergency: Phil Taylor talks to Keith Harmon Snow”

Earth First! Journal, August 2005
Title: “High-Tech Genocide”
Author: Sprocket

Z Magazine, March 1, 2006
Title: “Behind the Numbers: Untold Suffering in the Congo”
Authors: Keith Harmon Snow and David Barouski

#6 Federal Whistleblower Protection in Jeopardy

Source:

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility website
Titles: December 5, 2005
“Long-Delayed Investigation of Special Counsel Finally Begins,” October 18,2005
“Back Door Rollback of Federal Whistleblower Protections,” September 22, 2005
Author: Jeff Ruch

# 7 US Operatives Torture Detainees to Death in Afghanistan and Iraq

Sources:

American Civil Liberties Website, October 24, 2005
Title: “US Operatives Killed Detainees During Interrogations in Afghanistan and Iraq”

Tom Dispatch.com, March 5, 2006
Title: “Tracing the Trail of Torture: Embedding Torture as Policy from Guantanamo to Iraq”
Author: Dahr Jamail

#8 Pentagon Exempt from Freedom of Information Act

Sources:

New Standard, May 6, 2005
Title: “Pentagon Seeks Greater Immunity from Freedom of Information”
Author: Michelle Chen

Newspaper Association of America website, posted December 2005
Title: “FOIA Exemption Granted to Federal Agency”

#9 The World Bank Funds Israel-Palestine Wall

Sources:

Left Turn Issue #18
Title: “Cementing Israeli Apartheid: The Role of World Bank”
Author: Jamal Juma’

Al-Jazeerah, March 9, 2005
Title: “US Free Trade Agreements Split Arab Opinion”
Author: Linda Heard

#10 Expanded Air War in Iraq Kills More Civilians

Sources:

The New Yorker, December 2005
Title: "Up in the Air"
Author: Seymour M. Hersh

Tomdispatch, December 2005
Title: "An Increasingly Aerial Occupation"
Author: Dahr Jamail

#11 Dangers of Genetically Modified Food Confirmed

Sources:

Independent/UK, May 22, 2005
Title: Revealed: “Health Fears Over Secret Study in GM Food”
Author: Geoffrey Lean

Organic Consumers Association website, June 2,2005
Title: “Monsanto's GE Corn Experiments on Rats Continue to Generate Global Controversy”
Authors: GM Free Cymru

Independent/UK, January 8, 2006
Title: GM: New Study Shows Unborn Babies Could Be Harmed”
Author: Geoffrey Lean

Le Monde and Truthout, February 9, 2006
Title: “New Suspicions About GMOs”
Author: Herve Kempf

#12 Pentagon Plans to Build New Landmines

Source:

Inter Press Service, August 3, 2005
Title: “After 10-Year Hiatus, Pentagon Eyes New Landmine”
Author: Isaac Baker

Human Rights Watch website, August 2005
Title: “Development and Production of Landmines”

#13 New Evidence Establishes Dangers of Roundup

Sources:

Third World Resurgence, No. 176, April 2005
Title: “New Evidence of Dangers of Roundup Weedkiller”
Author: Chee Yoke Heong

#14 Homeland Security Contracts KBR to Build Detention Centers in the US

Sources:
New America Media, January 31, 2006
Title: “Homeland Security Contracts for Vast New Detention Camps”
Author: Peter Dale Scott

New America Media,