Project Censored 2006: All the News the Mainstream Doesn't Print

No matter how diligent you might be about getting your news from various sources, media conglomeration, together with the sheer volume of alternate sources means that major news stories fall through the cracks, sometimes intentionally.

Yet for the past 30 years, Sonoma State's Department of Sociology has been bringing underreported, lost and buried stories to the light of day through Project Censored. Their latest collection, Censored 2006, is in bookstores now. As usual, their list of the top 25 censored stories is at once shocking, eye-opening, and fascinating. If you've ever felt that the mainstream media isn't painting a complete picture of our world, and wonder what you might be missing, this is the book for you.

Some of the notable stories here include (#12) Military in Iraq Contacts Human Rights Violators; (#19) Child Wards of the State Used in AIDS Experiments; and (#5) U.S. Uses Tsunami to Military Advantage in Southeast Asia. The other 23 subjects covered in the book are equally provocative and eminently readable; the two to five page story descriptions are concise, yet packed with well-researched information. You'll learn more in a few pages here than you might from entire books on similar subjects.

An initial herd of 700 to 1000 stories are researched, discussed and voted on by hundreds of Sonoma staff, interns and community volunteers before being culled to just 25, then ranked in order of perceived importance. While many in the mainstream might call the story choices and rankings leftist, the process of submitting selecting and voting on stories requires the efforts of hundreds, if not thousands of people from academia, journalism and elsewhere.

And the book doesn't stop at simply listing this year's stories. In fact, that's just the first chapter. The subsequent 250 pages are spent updating readers on subjects covered in previous versions of the book, and reports from other media watchdog groups like New York's own Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. These chapters offer an even more in-depth examination of shocking issues which still have failed to garner the notoriety they deserve.

Whether you're a alt-media junky, or a casual TV news viewer, Project Censored will open your eyes about something, and will likely make you angry enough to attempt to do something about it, even if it's just telling your friends or coworkers about the stories. If you can read through these 432 pages without doing at least that, you better ask someone to check your pulse, because you just might be dead.