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Top Ten Censored Stories of 1999
An Anonymous Coward sends in a link to Project Censored's top ten censored stories of 1999. While the stories are interesting, I'd point readers to the sidebar at right added by the Alternet people. I think they have a good point... Slashdot readers have any thoughts on the subject?
So far, it works way better than I, or anyone else, thought it would. The majority of stories do get posted, but so far the majority of submissions have been really good. So no conclusions there yet.
As for promoting an agenda-- people seem to vote for stories that they think would engender good discussion, or at least that they'd like to talk about. There doesn't seem to be too much "agenda-whoring" going on so far.
Will it scale? Well, I'm dealing with a little over 500 users, so far. So nowhere near slashdot-scale numbers. For the users I have, it works pretty well. It's starting to get a little bit creaky, though-- people want sections, they want to be able to vote for a story to be rewritten or edited... many small needs. But on the whole, it's worked well.
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There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
Why isn't THIS story being put on the main /. page? It's a conspiracy!
Did anyone notice that in the great list of censored stuff, there was nothing pointing to sources of valid data? If these stories are so earth shattering you would think they would have links all over to sources that tell the story. I have a hard time swallowing anything given in only two paragraphs from one source. Are these people censoring the works because they only provide the limited information?
And some of the awards are just plain ignorance. The story about sapce was jsut plain dumb. Sending up space probes with plutonium fuel is not a weapon, let alone a weapon of mass destruction. As for the company that was playing "substandard" wages, does this really mean anything. Wouldn't the standard wage be an average of sorts were some are higher and some are lower? Standard wage is a pretty subjective term.
For a site that claims to promote open flows of information and making sure everyone gets the whole story, they sure seemed to turn a blind eye to the huge holes the "censored journalists" left in there stories. Alternet seems to promote allegations as truth as much or more than any regular news site.
Too many of these "censored stories" are nothing more than badly slanted opinions, looking for journalism.
"Drug companies put profits before health." Oh no! The companies are making a killing on a successful drug that doesn't save lives! Well I've got news for 'em--Viagra is a (relatively) simple drug to have created. It deals with blood vessels and muscle. TB, malaria, and other diseases are _complex_. Look at how much money has gone into AIDS research, and how far they have (not) got with it. Diseases are tough tough TOUGH to battle with drugs. Furthermore, where does the money to research this stuff come from? Could it be from sales of Viagra and others? Nah...
"Turkey uses US weapons to wipe out Kurds!" Could it be that, in the telling of the slaughter (which _has_ been a significant news item) the manufacture of the specific weapons used wasn't particularly relevant?
"Nato defends..." Oh hell, they even admit that this one is unprintable as anything more than unsubstantiated rumour. Why bother putting it here, though?
"US media reduces foreign coverage." Well, maybe this has only been patently obvious for decades to those of us outside the US.
"US plans to put weapons into space." Someone else has debunked this one already.
"Louisiana promotes toxic racism." Now where is the racism here? The companies are looking for cheap land and downtrodden people who won't bitch. The state is looking for rich tenants. The fact that those areas are populated by 'communities of color' points to more significant problems in the US, which are reported on quite often.
That's 6/10 for a start, which really makes me wonder about the accuracy of the other four.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
The fact that some stories don't make it to the "big ones" or to the American press in general has other effects other than just not keeping people informed. It may put in check the credibility of the news outlet which publishes these stories.
I don't live in the U.S., so I receive a bunch of information that Americans in general don't. Not that they can't reach it if they so want, I'm talking about the kind of news that reaches you, the kind of news that you see browsing the front page of a newspaper or watching the evening news on TV (which I don't).
My prime source of general international news is cnn.com, I find it up to the minute and well organized. Moreover, it's quite hard to change one's news-gattering habits. On more than one ocasion, though, I came across international news from other sources and took a look at cnn.com just to see what they had to say about it, from a U.S. perspective (which, of course, they are not the sole owners) and I was intrigued by the fact that the story wans't even mentioned. That, in the begining, led me to believe that maybe the other source had gone a bit overboard, or that things hadn't been confirmed, whatever. It took some time for it to strike me that it was the kind of news that wouldn't satisfy some interests, or even wouldn't be what readers were willing to read, for the material was negative to the U.S., or the American self image.
Now, is this article "news for nerds"?
This one wasn't censored, it's fiction. The only weapons prohibited from outer space by treaty are "weapons of mass destruction" (e.g. nuclear bombs). Lasers aren't. Further and more, nuclear power sources for satellites are not prohibited -- indeed have been used far more by Russia/USSR (whose space reactor technology is well ahead of the US's) to power e.g. radar reconaissance satellites. (Spectacular example of this was Cosmos 954 which didn't properly boost to a disposal orbit and reentered over northwest Canada in 1979. Operation Morning Light picked up most of the radioactive debris that didn't burn up on reentry.)
I didn't bother with the rest of the stories, it wouldn't surprise me to find a similar level of politically-inspired bogosity.
-- Alastair