Tag: corruption

“Project Censored” List: Top 25 Most Censored News Stories Of The Year

“Published each year by Seven Stories Press, featuring dispatches from the ongoing revolution in independent journalism, each book reports the year’s top-25 independent news stories, which corporate media have ignored, misrepresented, or censored; analyzes corporate “junk food” news and “news abuse;” highlights organizations that exemplify media democracy in action; and investigates hot topics in journalism and politics.” – Source

The presentation of the Top 25 stories of 2021-2022 extends the tradition originated by Professor Carl Jensen and his Sonoma State University students in 1976, while reflecting how the expansion of the Project to include affiliate faculty and students from campuses across North America has made the Project even more diverse and robust. The Top 25 stories of 2021-2022 have been selected from several hundred candidate stories submitted by 207 student researchers from ten US college and university campuses. – Source

About Project Censored

 “Project Censored educates students and the public about the importance of a truly free press for democratic self-government. We expose and oppose news censorship and we promote independent investigative journalism, media literacy, and critical thinking. Through our website, weekly radio program, annual book, and other programs, we provide this service to the United States, Canada, UK, and the world.

2021-2022 Theme: Billionaire’s Press

Writing for the Santa Fe reporter, “Project Censored, The billionaires’ press dominates censorship beat” Paul Rosenberg explained “Since its founding in 1976, Project Censored has been focused on stories—like Watergate before the 1972 election—that aren’t censored in the authoritarian government sense, but in a broader, expanded sense reflective of what a functioning democracy should be, censorship defined as “the suppression of information, whether purposeful or not, by any method—including bias, omission, underreporting, or self-censorship—that prevents the public from fully knowing what is happening in society.” It is, after all, the reason that journalism enjoys special protection in the First Amendment: Without the free flow of vital information, government based on the consent of the governed is but an illusory dream.”

“Yet, from the very beginning, as A.J. Liebling put it, ‘Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.’”

“In their introduction to Project Censored’s annual State of the Free Press, [ ] Mickey Huff and Andy Lee Roth [ ] observe, “History shows that consolidated media, controlled by a handful of elite owners, seldom serves the public interest.”

“Despite the promise of boundless access to information, Silicon Valley mirrors legacy media in its consolidated ownership and privileging of elite narratives. This new class of billionaire oligarchs owns or controls the most popular media platforms, including the companies often referred to as the FAANGs—Facebook (Meta), Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google (Alphabet)”.

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US intelligence community warned Twitter about Ukrainian prosecutor’s book alleging Biden corruption

An internal Twitter document published by journalist Matt Taibbi has revealed that the United States (US) intelligence community warned the tech company about the publicity surrounding a book from a former Ukrainian prosecutor that claimed President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, were involved in corruption in Ukraine.

The book, “True Stories Of Joe Biden’s International Corruption In Ukraine” was written by Viktor Shokin, who served as Ukraine’s top prosecutor between February 10, 2015 and March 29, 2016. In the book, Shokin alleged that Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company that had Hunter Biden on its board, paid Hunter millions of dollars to prevent prosecutors from taking action against Burisma.

Shokin also claimed that then Vice President Joe Biden had ordered Shokin to be fired before he could take action against Burisma. In January 2018, Joe Biden bragged about withholding $1 billion in aid to Ukraine until Shokin was fired.

Yet despite Biden admitting that he had withheld aid to ensure that Shokin was fired, the US intelligence community warned Twitter that “in the summer of 2020 members of a Russian influence, which is at least partially directed by Russian intelligence” were “aware of a production plan” associated with the book. The US intelligence community admitted that it’s “unclear at this time how involved Russian intelligence might be in the creation or promotion” of the book but cited “previous operations” as justification for highlighting “the potential nexus between this book and Russian intelligence.”

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Mainstream Media Spun These News Stories as Conspiracy Theories — But They Turned Out to Be True

In a recent episode of “The Kim Iversen Show,” political commentator Kim Iversen reviewed the top 10 stories in 2022 that she said the mainstream media spun as “conspiracy theories” — but turned out to be true after all.

Iversen said the conspiracy theorist label was usually given “simply for saying something that went against the establishment liberal orthodoxy — not because it was quackery rooted in falsehoods.”

“The reality is, so many that they [the mainstream media] claim to be ‘conspiracy theories’ are actually true,” Iversen said, adding:

“Anytime someone’s labeled as a conspiracy theorist, it might just mean it’s time to actually investigate and look a little deeper into whatever it is they’re claiming because so often nowadays conspiracy theorists are not conspiracy theorists at all. They’re truth-tellers — fact-tellers, researchers — and they’re connecting the dots and getting a lot of things right.”

“Maybe we can make a New Year’s resolution to make 2023 the year of truth,” she suggested.

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Summaries Of All ‘Twitter Files’ To Date

It’s January 4th, 2023, which means Twitter Files stories have been coming out for over a month. Because these are weedsy tales, and may be hard to follow if you haven’t from the beginning, I’ve written up capsule summaries of each of the threads by all of the Twitter Files reporters, and added links to the threads and accounts of each. At the end, in response to some readers (especially foreign ones) who’ve found some of the alphabet-soup government agency names confusing, I’ve included a brief glossary of terms to help as well.

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Former FBI Agent Seeking Probation After Admitting to Destroying Evidence

A former FBI agent is requesting that an Arkansas federal judge give him a year of probation after he pleaded guilty to destroying evidence while investigating a corruption case against Republican Arkansas State Sen. Jon Woods.

In August, the Department of Justice announced former FBI Special Agent Robert Cessario pleaded guilty in the Western District of Arkansas to erasing the contents of his government computer hard drive. Cessario was one of the agents who investigated Woods, who was convicted on 15 corruption-related charges and was sentenced to more than 18 years in federal prison in 2018.

The charge that Cessario pled guilty to carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. As part of the plea deal, Cessario’s defense team and the prosecution have both requested he receives probation. Cessario suggested the probationary period should be for one year.

A judge will ultimately determine Cessario’s sentence in court on Thursday. Both Cessario’s team and federal prosecutors estimated the sentencing hearing should take about an hour, with neither side planning to call witnesses or present testimony.

Cessario’s plea agreement states that he obtained recordings from a cooperating defendant as part of the federal prosecution against Woods in a corruption and money laundering case.

As questions arose in the case about how Cessario had obtained the audio recordings, the court ordered Cessario to submit his computer for a forensic examination on or about Dec. 4, 2017. Before submitting his computer to the forensic examination, Cessario instead took the device to a commercial computer business and paid the business to erase the contents of his computer’s hard drive.

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Twitter Files: Company Exaggerated Russian Influence to Appease Media, Democrats

Twitter deliberately exaggerated the extent of Russian influence on its platform in an attempt to appease the media and Democrats, even after internal investigations into the matter proved a “dud,” according to journalist Matt Taibbi, who released another batch of the Twitter Files today.

Twitter initially tried to stay out of the spotlight on the Russia issue in 2017, hoping Facebook would remain the main target of scrutiny from the media and Democrats. Twitter’s PR department even agreed on a media strategy to “keep the focus on FB.”

But after being slammed by Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) for an “inadequate” response to allegations of Russian meddling, Twitter’s public policy VP said the company should “keep producing material” on Russian interference to satisfy the Democrats. As a result, Twitter formed a “Russia Task Force,” to investigate Russian influence on the platform.

But the task force found little evidence of significant Russian involvement on the platform. In October 2017, the task force reported that it had found “no evidence of a coordinated approach, all of the accounts found seem to be lone-wolf type activity (different timing, spend, targeting, <$10k in ad spend).”

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New Twitter Files Reveal How Company Allowed Intelligence Agencies to Influence It

A series of tweets by investigative reporter Matt Taibbi has revealed how Twitter came under the influence of American intelligence agencies after concerns about foreign influence put the company under the spotlight.

Until August 2017, Twitter was not on many people’s radars with regard to the Trump–Russia foreign influence scandal. In September that year, Twitter informed the Senate that its cursory review led to the suspension of 22 possible Russian accounts as well as 179 accounts possibly linked to the initial set of accounts. Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.), who was the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee at the time, called Twitter’s report “frankly inadequate on every level.”

Facing growing anxiety over its public relations problems, Twitter started a “Russia Task Force” to investigate the issue.

“First round of RU investigation … 15 high-risk accounts, 3 of which have connections with Russia, although 2 are RT,” said an October 2017 Twitter memo shared by Taibbi. RT refers to the television network Russia Today, which is controlled by the state.

“Finished with investigation … 2,500 full manual account reviews, we think this is exhaustive … 32 suspicious accounts and only 17 of those are connected with Russia, only 2 of those have significant spend one of which is Russia Today … remaining <$10k in spend,” said a message from the same month.

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This Twitter user looked up all the former feds now employed at Google and you have to read it to believe how incestuous the government and Big Tech are

In case it wasn’t clear after Elon Musk canned James Baker, the former FBI lawyer who became a Twitter lawyer and worked from the inside of the Big Tech platform to protect what you might call the deep state, the government and Big Tech have become one gigantic anti-freedom behemoth.

Big government is squelching speech and protecting Democrats and the cultural hegemony of the Left by planting their former employees in all the tech platforms.

This anonymous Twitter user did some research into several Big Tech companies through publicly accessible info and found some VERY interesting connections.

The government and Deep-State folks are too smart to go the direct route and censor the right through government laws.

But “Google is a private company,” so the government is hiding behind the Big Tech giant to covertly enforce speech codes.

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Coca-Cola accused of paying NAACP to call soda taxes ‘racist’

TrueMedicine Care co-founder Calley Means published a thread to Twitter on Monday, where he broke down the grip that soda companies have over food regulation. Means claimed that his Twitter Blue access and his account is now under review, suggesting that this was due to Coca-Cola being a major advertiser for Twitter.

“Early in my career, I consulted for Coke to ensure sugar taxes failed and soda was included in food stamp funding,” Means claimed.

“I say Coke’s policies are evil because I saw inside the room. The first step in playbook was paying the NAACP + other civil rights groups to call opponents racist. Coke gave millions to the NAACP and the Hispanic Federation – both directly and through front groups like the American Beverage Association This picked up in 2011-2013 – when the Farm Bill and soda taxes were under consideration.”

Means included a screenshot from a Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) report as written about in Nutrition Insight in March of 2013.


Both the NAACP and the Hispanic Federation “received grants from Coca-Cola, with the national NAACP receiving at least $2.1 million from the soda giant since 1986, including $100,000 as recently as December. The Hispanic Federation also lists Coke as a donor, and in February 2012 its president, Lillian Rodriguez Lopez, left the nonprofit group to become director of Latin affairs at the company,” Nutrition Insight wrote.

CSPI’s report noted that Coca-Cola gave the American Academy of Family Physicians a $600,000 grant in 2009 for a new website, and gave a $1 million grant in 2003 to the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry, which was “seemingly enough to get the president of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry to suddenly hedge the group’s position on the extent to which soda causes cavities,” Nutrition Insight reported.

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