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Chances are, the resignation of two judges from
Project Censored won’t be included in the organization’s next
list of overlooked news stories. But rest assured — there’s no conspiracy
afoot. Judges Robert Jensen, a journalism professor, and
Norman Solomon, a syndicated columnist, severed their ties with the
national media watchdog group over its decision last year to highlight the
controversial theories of physics professor Steven Jones, a critic of the
9/11 Commission findings. Jones hypothesizes that the Sept. 11, 2001, collapse
of the World Trade Center towers was the result of controlled detonation of
military-grade explosives rather than fires caused by two passenger jets
that slammed into the buildings. His views, which are available online at
Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice (stj911.org), have been largely
passed over or dismissed by mainstream news outlets. “This isn’t the first time that judges
have resigned at Project Censored over a story we’ve covered,”
says Peter Phillips, director of the program. The purpose of Project Censored, which has been run
by Sonoma State University, in Northern California, for more than 30 years,
is to compile an annual list of 25 significant stories that have been
“overlooked, under-reported or self-censored by the country’s
major national news media.”
Each year, students and researchers analyze hundreds
of stories submitted by the public. The stories are then provided to a
panel of judges, which ranks the top 25 by order of importance. Last
year’s panel ranked Jones’ story 18th. The annual results are
published by some news organizations, including Illinois Times [see Sarah
Phelan, “Ten big stories the media missed,” Sept. 14, 2006]. Phillips believes that Jones’ work warrants the
recognition bestowed on it by Project Censored. “It’s a valid news story,” he says.
“It deserves to be covered. We cover stories that people don’t
like. Our job is to talk about stories that don’t get talked
about.”
Jensen, who teaches at the University of Texas at
Austin, disagrees. “Based on my evaluation, the general cluster of
ideas that tend to get labeled as conspiracy theories around the events of
9/11 are on the face of it implausible,” he says. Jensen also says
that there is no indication that Jones’ opinions are being excluded
from mainstream coverage because of any political bias. Conspiracy theories
in general…”the role of the United States in the world,” Jensen
says.
Specific to 9/11, Jensen says: “The one thing
that we would probably all agree on is that there are unanswered
questions.”
Phillips hopes that by providing an outlet for
Jones’ theories Project Censored can help spur the creation of a
truth commission to further investigate the events of 9/11. “This is
a sore spot in American politics,” he says, “that’s not
going away.”
Contact C.D. Stelzer at cdstelzer@yahoo.com.
This article appears in Jun 21-27, 2007.
