Top 5 News Stories Of 2014 That Major Media Don’t Want You To Know

Freedom of the press is protected by the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, but you’d never know it based on how little the American public gets told by press. Every year there’s big news ? important news ? vital news ? that press doesn’t tell. And thanks to media serving the interests of corporations and politicians instead of the interests of its public audience, the U.S. ranks 46th of all nations in Global Press Freedom Rankings.

(Logo from Project Censored)
(Logo from Project Censored)

This circumstance gives organizations like Project Censored ample opportunity to not only distribute this news, but to tell us which stories appeared to be covered up and blocked the most. And from Project Censored’s Top 25 of 2014, here are the five that stood out most to Liberal America.

1) The U.S. Provides Foreign Aid To Nations That Torture

(Image from Wikimedia)
(Image from Wikimedia)

The Foreign Assistance Act makes it against the law for Congress to authorize foreign aid to any country that ?engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights, including torture.? That didn’t stop Congress from providing over $11 billion to 10 countries known to practice torture of some kind, though, British journalist Daniel Wickham reported in Jan. 2014. Making it worse, Wickham learned, those 10 nations were the top recipients of all U.S. foreign aid for Fiscal Year ?14.

Says Project Censored about the news story, which it ranks Number 2 on this year’s censored list:

?Wickham reported that, according to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other leading human rights organizations, each of the listed countries is accused of torturing people in the last year, and at least half are reported to be doing so on a massive scale.?

The 10 nations (listed in descending order in amount of U.S. aid received) are: Israel, Afghanistan, Egypt, Pakistan, Nigeria, Jordan, Iraq, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.

2) The U.S. Has The Largest Life-Sentence Prison Population Of All Countries

(Image from Wikimedia)
(Image from Wikimedia)

While many know that the U.S. has the largest prison population in the world (about 1.6 million), the fact that it also has the largest number serving life sentences isn’t well-known enough. And of even greater prominence, the number of Americans serving life without option of parole and who are sentenced to life for nonviolent crimes are at new highs, too, and even though there’s been a slight decline in total prison population in recent years.

The ACLU, British media, and many small new websites have circulated this information and relevant facts, but major American media remain hush.

Notes Project Censored in coverage of this subject it ranks 23rd:

?(T)he number of prisoners serving life sentences in the U.S. state and federal prisons reached a new record of close to 160,000 in 2012. Of these, 49,000 are serving life without possibility of parole, an increase of 22.2 percent since 2008.?[?]There are currently 3,281 prisoners in the U.S. serving a life sentence?with no chance of parole?for minor, nonviolent crimes, according to a Nov. 2013 report by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).?

3) Wireless Technology Is Hazardous To Your Health

(Image from Wikimedia [modified])
(Image from Wikimedia [modified])
It’s long been known that wireless communication devices, including mobile telephones, emit radio-frequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMFs). While suspicion of health hazards have been constant, that RF-EMFs have confirmed association with cancer and brain tumors is still relatively new, though. But U.S. media seems to have filtered such information, and maybe even purposely skipped out on telling it to an American audience, Florida professor James Tracy wrote in Jan. 2014.

Tracy’s research article, which Project Censored ranks 14th, reviewed coverage of the topic by English-speaking media since scientific confirmation of these RF-EMF hazards were established. Less than 10 percent of articles that mentioned RF-EMFs mentioned these now-known dangers; only two percent were in U.S. media.

It’s not just media, though. It seems like the U.S. Congress doesn’t want its constituents to know this, either, Tracy noted.

?The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ceased studying the health effects of radio-frequency radiation when the Senate Appropriations Committee cut the department’s funding and forbade it from further research into the area. Thereafter RF limits were codified as mere ?guidelines? based on the EPA’s tentative findings and are presently overseen by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).?

And just like U.S. media didn’t report on the established health hazards of mobile phones and other wireless electronics, none reported on Tracy’s research on this subject’s lack of media coverage.

4) The Military Is Kicking Out Wounded Soldiers On Made-Up Charges Just To Save Money

(Image from Wikimedia)
(Image from Wikimedia)

In big business, when a company wants to downsize its staff without paying them any exit benefits, it’s common for an ?axe man? to make the workplace ugly with hopes of inspiring staff to quit, or to discipline them for silly offenses to justify firing them. It’s called ?chaptering out.? And the military has been doing the same in recent years with injured soldiers.

The number of military who are dishonorably discharged ? specifically ones with disabilities incurred during service ? has steadily increased every year since 2006, Dave Phillips of the Colorado Springs Gazette reported.

In description of this story it ranks?25th, Project Censored notes:

?The US military has been engaged in a policy of forcing wounded and disabled veterans out of service to avoid paying benefits and to make room for new able-bodied recruits. Identifying injured combat soldiers as delinquent and negligent has lead to a practice called ?chaptering out? which results in those soldiers being forced to leave the military without an honorable discharge. Because of this, thousands of soldiers have been chaptered out, losing federally sponsored benefits including health care, unemployment, and educational programs.?

And just like an HR ?axe man? may drum up or even set up charges on which to fire an employee, so too is the military setting up its soldiers, Phillips found. For example, active duty military are failing routine drug tests, but based on the psychiatric medications they’re prescribed to counter PTSD. About 76,000 soldiers have been chaptered out since 2006, Phillips reported, a majority of whom he presumes to be ones who were disabled in combat:

“These commanders are stuck in this position where if they try to get [disabled soldiers] out medically, they are still stuck with them, maybe for a long time. If they decide to kick them out for misconduct instead, they could be out in weeks.?

Aside from the newspaper that employs Phillips, only Al Jazeera has reported this topic.

5) The Ocean Is Being Damaged At An Alarming Rate

(Image from NOAA)
(Image from NOAA)

When most think of climate change, they think of carbon dioxide in the air and surrounding atmosphere. CO2 emissions affect life underwater, too, however. About 20 trillion pounds of CO2 ? roughly a quarter of all produced by fossil fuels annually ? is absorbed by the oceans, producing an acidification that is already affecting marine life. And the effect this pollution is having on marine life is not only drastic, but elevating at an alarming rate, according to an article by Seattle Times environment reporter Craig Welch.

Project Censored ranks this news at the top of its 2014 list of 25 ?most censored stories?:

?When CO2?mixes with seawater, it lowers the pH levels of the water, making it more acidic and sour. In turn this erodes some animals? shells and skeletons and robs the water of ingredients that those animals require for healthy development. Known as ocean acidification, this phenomenon, Welch wrote, ?is helping push the seas toward a great unraveling that threatens to scramble marine life on a scale almost too big to fathom, and far faster than first expected.??

A report on this same subject by Eli Kintisch, published in the May 2014 edition of Science, offers specific example of this acidification.

?An increasingly acidified Pacific Ocean is dissolving the shells of tiny marine snails that live along North America’s western coast. The broad finding, which has surprised some researchers, suggests that sea life is already being affected by changes in the ocean’s chemistry caused by rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.?

Kintisch’s example demonstrates acidification’s domino-like effects. That one sea butterfly type of snail is the principal food item of many small fish in the Pacific ? those particular small fish are the principal food item of pink salmon ? pink salmon is both a regional dietary staple and a major product of North Pacific fisheries. Thus, the damages extend from environment to sea life to industry to human life.

 

Project Censored is a media research program, operating from Sonoma State Univ. since 1976, that focuses on news censorship in the U.S. See all 25 ?Most Censored New Stories of 2014? from its website.


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I had a successful career actively working with at-risk youth, people struggling with poverty and unemployment, and disadvantaged and oppressed populations. In 2011, I made the decision to pursue my dreams and become a full-time writer. Connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.