Just over a month ago I met with Peter Philips, professor of sociology and the Project Censored director at Sonoma State University. For more than an hour we discussed the history and the workings of Project Censored, censored articles from past years, and how the mainstream media’s censorship of today’s newsworthy stories compares with past years.

Project Censored was founded by Carl Jensen, professor emeritus of communications, Sonoma State University, in 1976, as a result of his inability to adequately answer his students questions as to why Watergate, which happened five months prior to President Nixon’s reelection, wasn’t discovered by the mainstream media before the election. Philips was handed the reins to Project Censored when Jensen retired in 1996.

From the Project Censored Web site: “Project Censored is a media research program working in cooperation with numerous independent media groups in the U.S. Project Censored’s principle objective is training of SSU students in media research and First Amendment issues and the advocacy for, and protection of, free press rights in the United States. Project Censored has trained over 1,500 students in investigative research in the past three decades. Through a partnership of faculty, students and the community, Project Censored conducts research on important national news stories that are underreported, ignored, misrepresented or censored by the U.S. corporate media. Each year, Project Censored publishes a ranking of the top 25 most censored nationally important news stories in the yearbook, ‘Censored: Media Democracy in Action,’ which is released in September.”

The ongoing joke with the Project Censored staff is that the mainstream media censors Project Censored, as most people have never heard of it. I recently found out about Project Censored when I received an e-mail from Connie Fogal of the Canadian Action Party, informing me she had been nominated for her article “North American Union: The SPP is a ‘hostile takeover’ of democratic government and an end to the Rule of Law” (Global Research Institute).

Fogal’s article and Stephen Lendman’s, “The Militarization and Annexation of North America” (Global Research Institute), both regarding NAFTA, the Security Prosperity Partnership and the North American Union, earned them the No. 2 spot in Project Censored’s most censored news stories of 2007-2008. Fogal, along with Lendman, who is the talk radio host of the “Global Research News Hour,” will be lecturing at Sonoma Sate University in the Project Censored Modern Media Censor lecture series, on Thursday, Sept. 11.

From Project Censored’s Web site: “The lecture series will provide a forum for some of the best investigative journalists in our country today, allowing them to give an ‘insider’s perspective’ on the hard-hitting news reports that fell through the cracks of the corporate mass media. The lectures ask: How are important events covered by the major media outlets? Are there stories or subjects that are consistently left out? Do mainstream media outlets have a ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ bias? Do distortions in the current system rise to the level of censorship?”

A year and a half ago, while I was researching NAFTA on the Internet, I came upon the CAP Web site, discovering that their founding members, which included Fogal, formed CAP because of the dangers they perceived NAFTA would inflict on their Canadian sovereignty, something the other Canadian political parties were ignoring. I e-mailed Fogal, requesting information “from the other side of the border” about NAFTA, thinking nothing would come of it. Within a day, Fogal e-mailed me back that she would have one of her staff members contact me and provide me with information. One day later I received CAP’s list of more than 40 recommended Internet sites for information as they thanked me for my concerns, asking me to stay in touch. I have been receiving their e-mailed updates about NAFTA and their other concerns, ever since much of their information parallels and supplements what Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, is warning Americans about, most of which our mainstream media (including Rush, Hannity and O’Reilly) downplays or ignores.

Whether you consider yourself left- or right-leaning, Project Censored’s Modern Media Censorship lecture series addresses current issues that most Americans are unaware of, and offers valuable insight as to how the mainstream media functions within the United States and around the world.

Fogal and Lendman are scheduled to lecture Thursday, Sept. 11, at 7 p.m., in the Darwin building, #103. Tickets are $10 at the door or can be pre-purchased at Brown Paper Tickets at 1-800-838-3006 or online at support@BrownPaperTickets.com. For more information about Project Censored, contact Kate Sims at 664-3160 or simsk@sonoma.edu.

(Eggers lives in Napa.)