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Project Censored, Alliance for Democracy Partner on Building a New Media Landscape
The Fall 2024 issue of Justice Rising, the flagship publication of the Alliance for Democracy, focuses on the theme of “Building a New Media Landscape for a Stronger Democracy.”
The issue features original articles by a number of Project Censored regulars and other stalwarts in the fields of independent journalism and critical media literacy, including Sue Wilson of the Media Action Center, Norman Solomon, Jack Bandy, and Victor Pickard, Alison Trope and DJ Johnson of the Critical Media Project, and Michael Gordon of the Propwatch Project.
Project Censored’s Allison Butler, Mischa Geracoulis, Shealeigh Voitl, Kate Horgan, Reagan Haynie, Mickey Huff, Nolan Higdon, and Andy Lee Roth also contributed articles.
The special issue of Justice Rising, which was edited by Jim Tarbell, Nancy Price, and David Delk of the Alliance for Democracy and Project Censored’s Andy Lee Roth, can be downloaded in PDF format from the Alliance for Democracy website. Print copies are available by contacting the Alliance for Democracy.
UC Santa Cruz Election Series on Power, Politics, and Democracy
A number of Project Censored faculty will be featured as expert panelists in a six-part series on power, politics, and democracy in the 2024 US elections, presented by UC Santa Cruz, taking place in person and via Zoom October 2–30.
Project Censored’s Nolan Higdon, who teaches at UCSC, is one of the series’ organizers and presenters. Events focused on topics including critical media literacy, identity and representation, political polarization, and misinformation will feature Project Censored’s Robin Andersen, Allison Butler, Mickey Huff, Steve Macek, and Andy Lee Roth, in addition to a number of additional experts, including Nicholas Baham, Reina Robinson, and Jeff Share.
The events are free and open to the public. Follow this link for more about the election series, including program dates and how to register.
Project Censored in the World
Nolan Higdon, coauthor of The Media and Me and author of The Anatomy of Fake News, published A Brief Resource Guide to Fake News and the 2024 Election. Check out the social media version of the guide, prepared by Reagan Haynie, posted on the Project’s Instagram account. Higdon also published Selective Outrage, about the establishment media’s partial stand against some foreign influences on US elections, in the Censored Notebook.
The Reynolds Journalism Institute published How To Conduct a DIY Algorithm Audit and Recognizing and Responding to Shadow Bans by Andy Lee Roth and avram anderson. The two articles are part of Project Censored’s series on Algorithmic Literacy for Journalists, which is supported by a fellowship from the Reynolds Journalism Institute.
Mischa Geracoulis has been selected by the Solutions Journalism Network as a participant in its Train-the-Trainers Program. Throughout October, Geracoulis, the Project’s curriculum coordinator, and her cohort fellows will meet virtually to discuss the best strategies for spreading solutions journalism—rigorous reporting on how people respond to problems—to newsrooms and journalists worldwide.
In September, Geracoulis was also a featured speaker on a roundtable sponsored by Human Rights Educators USA that focused on how mis/disinformation and weaponized communications impact elections and shape attitudes towards voting. “It was an honor to represent Project Censored at the HRE USA roundtable and to engage with such a conscientious, civic-minded group of human rights scholars who understand the need to prioritize media communications within the human rights and democratic framework,” Geracoulis noted. Led by HRE USA’s 2024 fellows and research scholars, the working group is developing a toolkit to help educators engage young people.
Truthout published an in-depth interview with Nolan Higdon and Allison Butler by Peter Handel, titled School Surveillance Earns Tech Companies Billions. Students Pay the Price, which focused on issues raised by Higdon and Butler’s new book, Surveillance Education: Navigating the Conspicuous Absence of Privacy in Schools.
Mickey Huff and Nolan Higdon joined Davey D on Pacifica’s Hard Knock Radio to discuss ongoing attempts by the establishment press and political class in the United States to promote fear-mongering about Russian interference in US elections—while ignoring the many other forces at work, from Israel and AIPAC to the corporate media itself, misleading the American public.
Steve Macek, coeditor of Censorship, Digital Media, and the Global Crackdown on Freedom of Expression, was featured in an interview by Divya Gopalan for Taiwan Plus about free speech in an age of censorship.
Mickey Huff was quoted in a New York Times article about new challenges faced by establishment news outlets and whether legacy news organizations can rebuild the influence and trust that once defined them. Noting the importance of a “true, vibrant and diverse free press” for democracy, Huff told the Times that legacy media are failing to report a range of opinions and realities, including, especially, the student debt crisis and other realities affecting young people’s lives. We suspect this is the first time that the New York Times has ever quoted a representative of Project Censored.
Dispatches on Media and Politics
Mickey Huff published Freed Between the Lines about Banned Books Week, which took place September 22–28 this year. In his Dispatch, Huff reflects on the timely relevance of this year’s theme, which provides the titles for his article, and notes that research “has shown that the curation of a curriculum that excludes certain identities, especially around issues of race, gender, class, and sexuality, harms student development and learning, whereas the inclusion of such culturally responsive pedagogy remarkably improves student growth.”
Steve Macek published Foreign Spending to Influence US Elections Goes Well Beyond Russian Covert Operations, which highlights how, although Russian interference garners significant attention, foreign-owned corporations use legal loopholes to funnel “dark money” into US politics, potentially posing a greater threat. Macek writes, “If the issue of foreign dark money corrupting our elections received even a fraction of the attention that Russiagate or Trump’s bogus claims about undocumented immigrants voting illegally have, Congress and state legislatures would have no choice but to act.”
Twice per month, the Project’s Dispatches series offers cogent analysis of the latest media industry news, the state of the free press, and the intersection of media and politics. Find the complete Dispatches on Media and Politics series here.
The Project Censored Show
Follow the links for each episode to learn more about the Show’s featured guests and content. Find the comprehensive archive of Project Censored Show episodes here.
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