Articles by Peter Phillips

Censorship in the United States today is seldom deliberate. Instead it comes stealthily under the heading Missed Opportunities. Mega-merged corporate media are predominantly interested in the entertainment value of news and the maintenance of high audience viewing/reading levels that lead to profitable advertising sales. Non-sexy or complex stories tend to receive little attention within these corporate media systems.

A recent Pew Research Center poll showed more than 77 percent of all journalists admitted that news stories that were perceived as important but dull are sometimes ignored. More than a third polled stated that news stories that would hurt the financial interests of their news organization often or sometimes go unreported. read more

By ignoring critical social issues mainstream corporate media dismisses democratic values in the United States.

Since the Fall of 1999 there have been four major political demonstrations in the United States. The cities of Seattle, Washington DC, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles each hosted either a major political party convention or global economic institution meetings where thousands of activists protested, engaged in non-violent civil disobedience, and in rare, often provoked cases, caused superficial damaged to public and private property. Corporate media has labeled the protesters as unorganized groups of radical environmentalists, single issues extremists, and directionless anarchists bent on disrupting  social order. The extensive involvement of unions and labor in Seattle has generally been explained as an one time aberration and the global trade issues focusing on NAFTA and the WTO have been mostly forgotten. read more

The mainstream media in the United States were aware that the Pentagon and NATO were releasing biased and false information regarding the war in Kosovo. Yet they continued to pass on the information to the US public as if it were gospel.

"The media were once more asked to sort our a few kernels of facts from a barrage of distortions and half-truths from government information manipulators…baloney-ladened military briefings in Brussels…cryptic shows at the Pentagon," Newsday’s Washington Bureau correspondent Patrick Sloyan reported in June. Writing in  the American Journalism Review, Sloyan went on to describe how the elite of US media complained to President Clinton, but failed to use their power to challenge the government. read more