BuzzFlash Reviews

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

BuzzFlash is extremely proud that two of the last three years, BuzzFlash stories have been selected as number one in the prestigious "Project Censored" awards. In addition, we have also had -- two of the last three years -- two additional stories that have placed in the top 25 winners.

So, we are pleased to offer the 2007 Project Censored book, which includes this year's winners.

That means stories in the "Future of Internet Debate Ignored by Media" category (won by a BuzzFlash commentary) and "Homeland Security Contracts KBR to Build Detention Centers in the US" (also including a winning BuzzFlash article).

Project Censored has a distinguished history of highlighting stories that the mainstream press either doesn't cover or underplays. Needless to say, BuzzFlash is grateful for the support of its readers in allowing it to pursue the kind of news that Project Censored honors with these awards.

By buying the book, you will get a window to the news that you won't get from Katie Couric or your daily hometown newspaper. You will also help support Project Censored and BuzzFlash.com.

Project Censored, founded in 1976 by Carl Jensen, has as its principal objective the advocacy for and protection of First Amendment rights and the freedom of information in the United States.

A recent article in the San Francisco Bay Guardian provided some background into the history of Project Censored:

"Last month, two news stories broke the same day, one meaty, one junky. In Detroit, US District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled that the Bush administration's warrantless National Security Agency surveillance program was unconstitutional and must end. Meanwhile, somewhere in Thailand, a weirdo named John Mark Karr claimed he was with six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey when she died in 1996.

Predictably, the mainstream media devoted acres of newsprint and hours of airtime to the self-proclaimed beauty queen killer, including stories on what he ate on the plane ride home, his desire for a sex change, his child-porn fixation, and — when DNA tests proved Karr wasn't the killer — why he confessed to a crime he didn't commit.

During that same time period, hardly a word was written or said in the same outlets about Judge Diggs Taylor's ruling and the question it raises about why Bush and his power-grabbing administration repeatedly lie to the American public.

The mainstream media's fascination with unimportant stories isn't anything new. Professor Carl Jensen, a disenchanted journalist who entered advertising only to walk away in greater disgust and become a sociologist, says the media's preoccupation with "junk food news" inspired him to found a media research project at Sonoma State University about 30 years ago to publicize the top 25 big stories the media had censored, ignored, or underreported the previous year.

That was the beginning of Project Censored, the longest-running media censorship project in the nation."

As the uproar over a partisan fictionalized ABC account of 9/11 continues to flare, it is time to give Project Censored plaudits for giving recognition to the news that gets neglected and censored -- tacitly or overtly -- by the mainstream media.

BuzzFlash is honored to be among those recognized for its work.


BUZZFLASH REVIEWS