Stories by Tate Hausman
From army spinmeisters working at CNN to sweatshop-like conditions in Silicon Valley, this year's Top Ten Censored Stories highlight some huge stories that the mainstream media missed.
Posted on Apr 10, 2001
Who are those "independent experts" on the news that tell us what to eat, who to vote for, when to buy stocks? The corporate media doesn't want you to know.
Posted on Jan 23, 2001
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Posted on Dec 5, 2000
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Posted on Nov 15, 2000
By February 15, America's prison population will have reached two million for the first time in history. The U.S. now has the world's highest incarceration rate, and the most prisoners of any nation on Earth. With crime rates down and the economy strong, why are we locking more people away than ever?
Posted on Apr 26, 2000
The number of Americans without health insurance rose last year to 44.3 million, shows a new census bureau report. At the same time, both Al Gore and Bill Bradley have revealed insurance reform packages that they claim will save our faltering system. But to doctors and patients in the trenches of the health care system, both plans look like the work of politicians bought off by the HMO and insurance industries.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000
The House of Representatives passed a bill on September 23 that would make it far more difficult for aggrieved citizens to file class-action lawsuits against large corporations. If approved by the Senate and President, the legislation would make irresponsible companies virtually immune from lawsuits such as the recent anti-tobacco and anti-gun claims that have significantly reigned in corporate abuses.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000
Tales of newly minted millionaires and ballooning corporate profits have convinced us that everyone with a paycheck must be getting rich. But America is suffering from the most pronounced wealth gap in decades -- the average executive now makes 419 times more than the average blue-collar worker. Three new studies explain why the "booming" new economy is really a bust for the vast majority of Americans.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000
When an environmentally irresponsible corporation poses as an eco-friendly defender of the Earth, most activists aren't fooled. But such publicity stunts, called greenwashes, are often very effective in shaping public opinion. To prevent oil giant British Petroleum from scoring political points with its misleading and hypocritical "Plug in the Sun" campaign, the online magazine Corporate Watch recently gave BP the infamous and always confrontational Summer 1999 Greenwash Award.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000
The most energetic student movement of the '90s, the protest against exploitative foreign sweatshops, will be returning to campuses this fall with new resources, powerful allies and vigorous protests. With a new national headquarters and plans to send students on undercover missions to sweatshops in Latin America, campus activists are gearing up for a semester of intense struggle. (EDITORS: Feel free to add a paragraph or sidebar about anti-sweatshop activity on nearby campuses to localize this story.)
Posted on Apr 26, 2000
If you've been watching your local PBS station over the last five years, you've noticed the change: more corporate logos flashing across your screen; more voice-overs hyping McDonald's or General Motors; more news for stockbrokers, bankers and CEOs; and less of anything that appeals to Joe Public. No surprise then that a new study has just emerged slamming PBS for its increasing commercialism and distance from the real public it was invented to serve. Is the "New PBS" turning into another NBC?
Posted on Apr 26, 2000
When placed next to each other, the two words "Barnes" and "Noble" rarely give independent booksellers a reason to smile. That is, until June 2, when Barnes & Noble finally dropped its proposal to buy Ingram Book Group, America's largest book wholesaler. The deal collapsed only one day after the Federal Trade Commission decided that it might block the acquisition -- a decision made in large part because of a grassroots lobbying campaign organized by independent booksellers. Now the independents aren't just smiling, they're celebrating.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000
A new documentary called "Project Censored: Is the Press Really Free?" will air on PBS stations across the country on May 9. The hour-long film boldly confronts the censorship and shoddy reporting that plague the mainstream press, while intelligently exploring the definition of censorship itself.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000
Late last year, Michael Robles received a 25 year prison sentence for trying to buy a macadamia nut. Michael's case became a dramatic example of how nonviolent offenders -- whose numbers have, for the first time in history, passed the one million mark -- suffer under increasingly harsh mandatory sentences and "three strikes" laws. After a recent study showed that our nonviolent prisoner population has skyrocketted to an unthinkable level, mostly because of drug-related arrests, activists are setting up protests across the nation.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000
Despite their reputation for apathy and self-absorption, many of today's college students are getting involved in a new wave of activism. United by the accelerating campaign against exploitative foreign sweatshops, students have staged vocal protests at dozens of universities over the last two weeks, demanding that their schools enforce Codes of Conduct in the factories that produce their university logo-wear. The campus crusaders are leading the nation in the anti-sweatshop campaign -- and may be leading their peers into a new era of student activism.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000
After a tumultuous week of political upheaval, the Caribbean nation of Haiti is quickly slipping towards chaos. While the mainstream American media hardly stops to take notice, Haiti's president has dissolved the country's Parliament, protesters are rioting in the streets and assassins nearly killed the president's sister. Fierce political rivalries show no signs of abating, and observers fear imminent bloodshed in the Western hemisphere's poorest nation.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000
While politicians continue to smugly celebrate our thriving economy, a new study released last week reports that 74 percent of the occupations with the highest growth rates -- such as child care workers and cashiers -- fail to pay a livable wage. In conjuction with the study's release, a national coalition called Jobs with Justice organized demonstrations in more than 50 cities to expose and decry this sad state of affairs. (Editors -- For a list of cities that staged demonstrations and contact numbers for local organizations, call Tate Hausman at 415.284.1425)
Posted on Apr 26, 2000
All too often, we hear that the War on Drugs is creeping into our own backyards. We remain largely unaware, however, that our South American neighbors -- especially the subsistence farmers of Colombia, Bolivia and Peru -- suffer violent fallout from our "tough on drugs" policies. These small farmers, forced to produce drugs and then severely punished for doing so, are the invisible casualties of our War on Drugs. And the U.S. military doesn't want us think about them.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000
On September 14, U.S. Senators Orrin Hatch and Jeff Sessions took the first step in rolling our criminal justice system back to the dark ages. With a series of clandestine and underhanded political manuevers, Hatch and Sessions snuck the Violent and Repeat Youth Offenders Act -- the most draconian crime legislation of the past 25 years -- through a distracted House. And they didn't even open the bill up for debate.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000
"Livelyhood," a PBS miniseries focusing on modern American workers and the issues they confront, has been hailed by critics as "a stroke of television genius," (San Francisco Examiner) and "one of the most inspiring hours of television this year" (Kansas City Star). The series' third episode, "Honey, We Bought the Company," brings together a diverse group of working Americans with one thing in common -- they all own their businesses. Airing on PBS stations beginning Friday, September 4, Livelyhoods's brilliant combination of clever dialogue, snappy camera work and intelligent research is sure to please everyone from the casual channel surfer to the trained economist.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000
Listening to some education policy-makers, the average observer might think that the Great Voucher Debate represents a full scale Armageddon, where the righteous are violently battling the wicked over the future of American public schools. What the rhetoric fails to explain, of course, is what exactly vouchers are all about. The following voucher "cliff notes" should properly arm you with the jargon and opinions necessary to fling yourself headlong into the debate.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000
When Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott called homosexuality a "sin" on a June 15 talk show, he set off a far-right attack on the gay and lesbian community. Though this new style of gay bashing uses "kinder, gentler" rhetoric suggesting that Republicans and religious extremists hope to "cure" homosexuals of their "disease," the heart of the matter has nothing to do with benevolence. After examining the facts, the G.O.P.'s main purpose becomes clear -- to galvanize conservative voters around an anti-gay agenda just in time to influence the upcoming mid-term elections.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000
Did you know that sweatshops on American soil have been sewing uniforms for the U.S. military? Or that the same companies that deliver energy to your home may be supporting brutal dictators in Third World countries? Or that the Pentagon has plans to put weapons in outer space, directly violating international law? If you did, you were among the few, because these stories -- and seven others like them -- were just named the Top Ten Censored Stories of 1999.
Posted on Apr 1, 2000
