 another edition of Thinking Things Through, Critical Thinking for Critical Times. I'm your host, Michael Sukoff. Today, we complete our three-part Project Sensored Special. Last month, we talked with Peter Phillips, former Director of Project Sensored, and Andy Learoth, the current Associate Director. Today, we are pleased to have with us Dr. Mickey Huff, Director of Project Sensored, a non-profit media watchdog organization. We're going to be discussing Big Tech, corporate media, and the news. What's wrong with today's US news media? Welcome to the show, Mickey. Hi, Michael. It's a great opportunity to be with you. I am very appreciative. So, and I hear this is the third installment for Project Sensored. So, I feel very fortunate that you are showcasing our work. So, thank you very much for that. You're welcome. And this will be the capstone. In addition to being the current Director of Project Sensored, you also are President of the Media Freedom Foundation, which is a non-profit corporation that supports First Amendment organizations and investigative research. You are also Professor and Chair of the Social Science and History Programs at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, California. And finally, you are also a host of the weekly Project Sensored show on Pacifica Radio in Berkeley, California, which also airs on some 50 stations from Maui to New York and online everywhere. And in the interest of full disclosure, I was a co-host with you on the Project Sensored show in 2018. Mickey, is there anything you'd like to add briefly about your background and interests? Well, I think we can just jump right into the conversation. That stuff will come out. I have several books out this year related to Project Sensored, including Project Sensored, that overlap with the theme here on critical thinking, critical media literacy, conflict management, you know, various things that we seem to, we don't have prioritized enough in our society. So I'm looking forward to our conversation, Michael. So as we've discussed on this show, and I've discussed with you, thinking things through, this show seeks to help viewers and listeners to learn to think critically about important issues in the world today by showing them ways of looking at and thinking about these issues from alternative, more critical perspectives. And we've talked on previous shows what I mean by critical, but we don't need to go into that now unless it comes up in the course of our conversation. So this includes learning how to question the ways in which these issues often are presented to and framed for us by the mainstream media and that notion of frame may be something that'll come up in our discussion. So before we begin, Mickey, let's talk a little more about what Project Sensored is, what it does and why you think what it does is important in our current media climate. Thanks, Michael. Project Sensored is the longest continuously extant media watchdog, if you will, in the United States, founded in 1976 by Carl Jensen, background in sociology and communications, also came from a media background, journalism background. He founded the project at Sonoma State University in 1976 as a class question, basically a class project that turned into Project Sensored. And the question, a very critical one, if you will, came from the coverage of the Watergate scandal and Jensen, who fancied himself a pretty savvy media character for the early mid-70s, he, like many Americans, looked at Watergate as a phenomenon where the media was very useful in helping break that story, right? The legacy press, the establishment Washington Post, right? Here we are 50 years on with Woodward and Bernstein, people celebrating the watchdog nature of the free press and how it can work. Curiously, however, the critical element of this is Carl went back and looked and realized that there were more media outlets, independent alternative media outlets that were actually onto Nixon's corruption and covering a lot of Nixon's corruption prior to Washington Post really digging in to the Watergate series. But of course, it's the platform of the Post which got a lot of attention, which is laudable. That's what the free press should be doing as a fourth estate, holding those in power to account. But Jensen noticed that it was also an opportunity to point out how the media scoops each other. And he wanted to start a class exercise and investigation. How many stories do the legacy press miss? How many are delayed? How many do they never get to at all? I just want to hear a few for a second. What is a legacy press? So we're talking about the establishment press, legacy press, corporate media. This, Michael, is what most people refer to as the mainstream media. The reason we don't use that term at Project Censored is because there's nothing mainstream about six corporations that control 90% of the outlets that people commonly use. It really, in other words, that really riffs on the problem of media ownership. Who owns it? How do they use the alleged public airways? How does advertising play a role for media profits to run as a business rather than as a public service? Who are the newsmakers and shapers? How does negative feedback or flag effect that? And what is the ideological bias of those who own the press? Now, Michael, you might be sitting there nodding as a sociologist saying, you just rattled off the propaganda model. And you'd be right. That was Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky's propaganda model from Manufacturing Consent of 1988, 12 years after the founding of Project Censored. But Carl was asking these questions early on and he had a whole class then that was formed that was Project Censored. And then you would have students investigate the independent press to find out what the corporate media, the mainstream media, what were they missing and why? And I just wanna mention, we are gonna get into some definitions of terms, including propaganda a little bit later in the show. Okay, well, great. So as I understand it from your website and could we please show the Project Censored website address on the screen for our viewers. So part of Project Censored's mission as I understand it is to expose and oppose news censorship and to promote independent investigative journalism, media literacy and critical thinking. Now let's unpack all that a little, okay? To start with, let's talk about what quote news on quote means. How do you define it? And how do you distinguish it from some of these other terms like propaganda opinion or even what used to be called infotainment? Well, that's a fantastic question to unpack. And given that we only have 20 or so minutes left, we'll try to give shorter versions of those answers. Of course, we've been writing about these problems for decades. We do an annual book, the weekly radio show, more stuff housed at the website, projectcensored.org, documentary films, other sidebook projects including with city lights, Rutledge, other academic work. So this is a huge topic. What is news? And what's the difference between news and propaganda? Well, I guess that depends who's spewing it and who the audience is. News is supposed to be timely. It's supposed to be factually supported and transparently sourced. It's supposed to be relevant to the audience for which it's intended. It is supposed to inform audiences, not attempt to sway their opinion or change their beliefs. In other words, objective news media journalism which doesn't really exist is a model that comes out of the 20th century. Let me interrupt you for just a second just for our listeners and viewers. So it sounds like the way you're defining news is information. It is supposed to be information that is usable by an audience to govern its own affairs. The reason that the Congress, that the early founders in the Bill of Rights decided that the press was so important that it needed to be protected in the First Amendment was because if you're going to even have a pretense to self-governance, you have to imagine that people have access to accurate information to be able to digest, discuss, debate and even push back on key issues or ideas of any given time. And so that's why the founders worked in all. We could have a dozen other shows on their problems but they had the foresight to understand that an informed populace was necessary in order for the experiment of the Republic to move forward. And as we've had changing technologies we've had changing challenges. We've had different challenges. The early part of the 20th century which is seen as a heyday for muckraking or investigative reporting is the same time as the golden age of the penny press, the tabloid press, the rise of the Hearst empire. We talk about monopoly media and billionaire media and nowadays whether it's Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, whatever there's nothing new about this. It's gotten worse but this has been the pattern. And one of the counters to that pattern is to try to make news media conform to certain ethics, ethical codes like the society professional journal has put forward. And objectivity was always one of those goals. And now none of us can be perfectly objective of course but the goal was is if we practice journalism in a way that is informative, that outlines conflicts of interest that gives audiences disclosures that doesn't hide financial interests that really just tries to, well, look some of the slogans in our corporate media now, their propaganda, they pretend to we report you decide over at Fox or CNN which dressed a name in news or Washington Post, democracy dies in darkness. The idea that journalism shines a light to the dark spaces. What we see however is when we analyze media critically which is to understand the power structure behind it is that most of these media outlets have agendas they merely try to mask them under the guise of being mainstream so that people will accept their biases uncritically and will then just debate about whatever the sort of narrow winnowed idea of democracy is where the independent alternative press is reporting outside of that bubble if you will or that winnowed center and so this is what it means to be critically media literate and in a nutshell all the work we do curricularly in our educational program at some 20 campuses and we've influenced programs in other countries the root of it is to be a critically media literate citizen so you can be a civically engaged person in a purportedly free society it is a necessary component and as you mentioned earlier Michael about infotainment, garbage in, garbage out without a functioning free press we do not have a functional democratic republic. I'm glad you're making that point early on we're gonna be discussing that later but in case we don't get to do it justice I'm glad we're bringing it up now well let me drill down a little bit with you so you've basically defined what news is ideally what it is and then you've mentioned infotainment and propaganda so what are the differences between these three because if I would guess and I think I'm probably on target that if I just picked any person off the street and said, well, is MSNBC propaganda and most people would probably, oh absolutely not but you seem to be in digging a little deeper saying something quite different so and I know there are shades of gray here so what's the difference between the ideal of news and propaganda and what are those shades of gray that we see today? That's a fantastic question and I suppose again the people that watch MSNBC or read the New York Times they're less likely to see those sources as problematic they're less critical of things where they find agreement which is the product of confirmation bias we talk about cognitive biases we talk about critical thinking tools, fallacies we teach all of these things as part of critical media literacy Fox News you ask the average viewer about Fox News depending you'll say all of Fox News is total right wing propaganda unless you happen to be a devotee of Tucker Carlson and then you see him as one of the only truth tellers in a forest of liberal lies so propaganda is any kind of information that has as its goal persuasion basically it wants people to come across in agreement with whatever its message happens to be now the difference is his objective journalism is there to inform people and if those facts persuade people to whatever conclusion they come to so be it but the journalist shouldn't be tethered to the outcome the outcome is to provide information in historical context propagandists are different their intent is to get adherence by hook or crook whether by deception or truth the best propaganda going back to the French theorist Jacques Elul talks about propaganda the best propaganda is true because you don't have to change any of the information right you just you say something that's factually true to an audience and they believe it and if you want them to believe you the intent is still propagandistic but deception wasn't necessary now we have different degrees of propaganda white propaganda, gray propaganda, black propaganda propaganda scholars have studied this for decades and this is where things get as you mentioned gray Michael this is the devil's are in the details right always and it's the intention to deceive no go ahead if the intent to deceive which is the bigger problem than anything we all make mistakes misinformation is me passing along erroneous information without my potential understanding that I'm doing so I'm a conduit of a falsehood but I didn't do it with the intent to deceive disinformation is deceptive the intent is to deceive an audience and deception and disinformation we usually involve some degree of censorship we don't want people to know the full context we don't want people to know all the details because if they did they might ask questions and then they would be harder to propaganda okay I have a question for you I understand what you're saying about whether or not the intent is there but here's an example Fox News, MSNBC, CNN the newscasters who are on the screen or that we're listening to they may not have the intent to deceive or propagandize but what about the forces behind the scenes that are creating the frame in which they're presenting what they're presenting and what they're presenting is not always the whole picture the frame is propaganda itself because it automatically includes and excludes information that may be germane to the discussion, the topic at hand and I mean again, while I find it hard to believe that these people that make millions of dollars don't understand that they're doing the bidding of their owners, it's fascinating though like you take the show like Meet the Press, Chuck Todd once upon a time actually said out loud in an interview that he can't ask tough questions of his guests because they wouldn't come on well that's one of the third tenants, third and fourth tenants of the propaganda model that you work with newsmakers and shapers so that they'll come on your platform other networks won't scoop you you get more eyeballs for advertisers everybody wins quote unquote, that's not true the main loser is us, the viewer, we, the people and it's very important to question the frame now look Michael, the frame is often visible, right because you don't, MSNBC and Fox, you don't come there and they don't say like well, here's what our biases are here's what our conflicts are and here's what we're not going to tell you they don't tell you that because if they did, they would undercut the efficacy of their brand with their viewers notice I'm talking like a marketer I'm talking like a marketer now why are you doing that, Mickey? Well, because that's what's taken over journalism if you go back to 1960, A.J. Liebling who wrote for the New Yorker he used to have a column called the wayward press and in one of the columns from May of 1960 he wrote a stellar column called do you belong in journalism and the whole angle of it was aimed at this principle the best way to guarantee freedom of the press is to own one and so he pilloried the owners of the press of his day the shrinking size of the ownership class and why it was problematic in our system that journalists had to be business people in order to get a platform or that business people hired journalists to tell the stories that well happened to accompany their beliefs, their value those of their shareholders and advertisers and so that is the unpacking of the frame that is so crucial to understand which is why there again corporate media is a voice for corporate interests if not mainstream in terms of main street values now where it overlaps with those may help its audience but that's unfortunately not the prime mover or prime driver behind content production All right, wow there's so much here to unpack and we're fast running out of time so let me just move you forward a little bit could you say a little, okay you've used the terms critical media literacy and democracy both as being objectives of project sensor on the website so what is critical media literacy let's pull that apart for our listeners and viewers well to be critical doesn't mean to be negative it means to and you're a sociologist by trade so you think this way as a matter of course so I mean this is a default for a sociologist, right you wanna, what's behind the system what's behind the structure what's the power hierarchy and in many cases these are very invisible, right and so you have to interrogate systems of power who do they represent, who do they not represent who is marginalized intersectionally how do issues of race and gender and class play out in the power dynamic and now when we're adding media into this it means that we're simply asking all of these questions in our interrogation of the power structures that control media which happened to be major corporations that operate privately for for profit even though they claim to operate the public airwaves in the interest of the public well, that's been shown again and again and again tome after tome after tome decade after decade to be well-intentioned but not true and so the best we can do is fairly and honestly equally interrogate all forms of media across the spectrum in a way that gets us an understanding about what we're getting when we tune into or read a particular source. And what that understanding is what you mean by literacy? Yeah, that means that is the development of a form of literacy about the news media that means you know what you're getting when you go to the New York Times and you know what you're not getting and by the way, Project Censored makes it a point to be critical and affirmative and I know my colleague Andy Lee Roth talks about this a lot it means we will critique the corporate media when they censor, when they distort, when they leave things out but we will also affirm when they do stellar investigative reporting because they have the resources to do it in a meaningful way. We will also affirm independent alternative media sources when they do journalism in an ethical transparent way such that it can be an example to inform how corporate media could operate its affairs if it weren't so beholden to so many other interests. And that's where the devil gets back into the details and we highlight a top under-reported list every year since 1976 in our books. We've been publishing a book a year since 1993 with seven stories press now partnered with Insert Press Project Censored State of the Free Press 2022. There's the cover Andy Lee Roth and I editors Daniel McLean from the Society of Professional Journalists wrote the foreword to that talking about the importance of independent media independent journalism. And right there, Michael at the outset you can what we do is we talk about the state of the free press. What are the challenges that we see journalists facing? What are some things that are being done about it? What are some top stories that the indie media covered that the corporate media hasn't gotten to yet or may not? Independent media, right? So we highlight what we think are the best stories in independent press. We have 30 judges that are media experts, journalists and scholars. We vet hundreds of stories through 20 different universities. This is an academic curriculum based on critical media literacy that goes through professors and students research and vet these stories. So all along the way, this is a didactic process. This is an educational project. It's not just about me getting on the radio or us talking whatever our smack is about what we think is most important. This is all vetted. It's fact-checked. It goes through a balloting process. It's a very detailed thing that you can see on our website. We outline it. We're very transparent at projectscensored.org. How we do these things, how these decisions are made, how people can nominate stories. And we think the project is, and we got this through Carl Jensen and then through Peter Phillips. It is a walk the walk project. We practice what we teach, right? And that's what I think makes us different than a lot of other watchdog groups like fairness and accuracy and reporting. Who does a great, they do great work, right? But we do something that is a little different. And I would say deeper because we're not just trying to tell the public, hey, this is wrong. We're trying to teach the public how they can begin to interrogate media on their own. And they may even become critical media producers. Yes. Consumers, right? And that's very important. Yeah, I need to stop you because we unfortunately need to move towards wrapping up. But as we do, I'd like to show the cover of the forthcoming book called Media and Me. We just did that for young people, 10 collective authors with projects censored, including Andy and I and Nolan Higdon and Allison Butler and then Boynton and others. Yep, that's coming out this October and it's written for young people. So people that are in junior high, high school, first year of college, people that are just saturated in media, there's no media literacy curriculum in the United States. We have no common core media literacy curriculum. We have, if you're lucky to get it, it's because of the teacher and we're trying to change that with workshops, curricula, this textbook. And we're actually going, Michael, we're going to be making copies available for libraries and schools as the result of a grant for free this fall. So if you're a librarian and educator or teacher, get ahold of us at mickeyandprojectcensor.org or through the censoredpress.org. We wanna hear from you because we want you to have these sources to help teach people in your schools. And by the way, for the information of our listeners and viewers, we are going to have Andy Lee Roth back on this program, probably sometime in the next two months to discuss that book. That would be fabulous. And we have nine other authors that would love to come on with you and talk about any facet of it. So anyway, Mickey, like I said, we're almost at the end of our time together today, but in closing, I'd like to ask you, given everything that we've discussed and that you've said, how can citizens of whether it's of Hawaii, the United States or of the world make a difference in their lives and the lives of other people at home and abroad using the kinds of tools you've just been discussing? Briefly. Well, we think education is its own form of activism, critical pedagogy. We think that education is a form in and of itself of civic engagement. And so one of the books we did this year from Routledge, Let's Agree to Disagree is a critical media literacy and critical thinking communication primer aimed at conflict management in our very contentious political climate where we offer nuts and bolts, how-to's, constructive communication patterns, the importance of empathy. So our website is full of information that helps people have those difficult and challenging conversations in their families and their lives and their communities. And we are available to do workshops. We're available to provide curriculum. We're available to, we're available to help in any way we can. So if you're somebody that's interested and concerned in these issues and these challenges and the rise of censorship and how critical media literacy is a better approach to try to contextually inform people about things they don't understand or don't like, then feel free to contact us, projectcensored.org. We would love to hear from you and we're really, really honored to be on with you. Professor Michael Sukoff, we're very honored to have been able to have experienced your work. And we appreciate your work as another example of the kind of things media literate citizens do. They contribute back to society. They wanna help lead difficult conversations and they wanna change things for the betterment for most people. Well, thanks. Thank you very much, Mickey. And thanks for joining us today. I just wanna mention again that if you're interested in more information about Project Censored, you can either go to the Project Censored website or communicate with Mickey directly at mickeyatprojectcensored.org. Again, Mickey, thanks so much for joining us and we'd love to have you back sometime soon. All my pleasure, Michael. I really appreciate what you're doing and we're always grateful to have the opportunity to talk to you and new prospective audiences. So good to see you. Wonderful, thanks so much. This has been thinking things through. Critical thinking for critical times on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm your host, Michael Sukoff. Thanks as always to our engineer, Haley Ikeda, the rest of the studio staff and much appreciation to Jay Fidel. And I wanna encourage our listeners' views again. I would love your feedback about any of the shows that we're doing. Please contact me at Hawaiiiscalling at gmail.com. If we could put that up on the screen, our engineer. And please join us again two weeks from today at the same time, wherever you may be. Mahalo. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.