Project Censored

Eleanor Goldfield and Mickey Huff host this week’s program.First up, journalist Stephanie Koithan joins the show to discuss Dilley, a concentration camp predominantly for children. Stephanie discusses some of the horrific stories she’s uncovered through her investigative reporting including instances of gross medical neglect and how difficult it is to do that reporting from what she calls a black site of information, and the retaliation by guards against the children for speaking with press.  Next up, my cohost Mickey Huff and I dig into some of the news that didn’t make the news with a focus on the US/Israeli illegal and unprovoked attacks on Iran. We discuss the nuance and multitude of facts that corporate media always miss or omit, the importance of historical context, the regional repercussions of these attacks, and more. Stephanie Koithan is the Digital Editor of the San Antonio Current, where she covers politics, music, and other topics for the leftist alternative weekly. She also covers voter suppression, homelessness and ICE actions in the area, among other areas of focus.   

Program Summary:    Eleanor Goldfield and Mickey Huff host this week’s program.   First up this week, Mexico City-based journalist José Luis Granados Ceja joins the show to talk about the recent Mexican operation that captured and killed a notorious cartel kingpin, and how US corporate media is twisting this story to not only give the US undue credit but to further the dangerous and dehumanizing rhetoric of Mexicans as villains. José Luis also digs into Mexico / US relations and how regional solidarity is needed in order to address the violent grandstanding by the US.    Next up, Mickey sits down again with media analyst Nolan Higdon to dig into the latest in the Epstein files including the disturbing lack of accountability, the spectacle of the slow release of information, deconstructing propaganda around the files, and more.    Notes:    José Luis Granados Ceja is an experienced journalist based in Mexico City, co-host of the Canal Once public affairs television program Sin Muros, as well as Soberanía: The Mexican Politics Podcast. He covers Latin America for DropSite News, and has worked as a writer, editor, photographer, correspondent, radio host, TV producer, and as on-camera analyst, with a particular focus on social movements and labor unions throughout Latin America.     Nolan Higdon is a political analyst, author, host of The Disinfo Detox Podcast, lecturer at Merrill College and the Education Department at University of California, Santa Cruz, and Project Censored National Judge. Higdon’s areas of concentration include critical AI literacy, podcasting, digital culture, news media history & propaganda, and critical media literacy.

In the first part of the program Eleanor sits down with Martha Dimitratou, founder and Executive Director of Repro Uncensored to talk about the battles to bring reproductive health and sexual education information to the people in a time of escalating digital and indeed analog censorship. Martha talks about how incorrect information is often platformed while science-backed and nuanced information is stifled - and what this means for the physical, mental and emotional health of those seeking reproductive health information and access. She also outlines tactics to sidestep this censorship, online and off.  Next up, Mickey sits down with Norman Stockwell, publisher of The Progressive magazine and indie media veteran to talk about the current state of the media, some history of independent media and why that matters, the importance of becoming the media ourselves, and framing the news outside of the 24/7 extractive cycle. Norm and Mickey also dig into the nuance of attacks on corporate media, and why a truly free press means more, not fewer voices.  Notes:  Martha Dimitratou is the founder and Executive Director of Repro Uncensored, the global nonprofit documenting systemic online censorship affecting sexual and reproductive health, abortion, LGBTQ+ communities, sex worker"led initiatives, and feminist organizations and activists.  Through Repro Uncensored, she also leads cultural initiatives and movement convenings that bridge art, technology, and advocacy.  Norman Stockwell is publisher of The Progressive magazine. Previously, for more thantwenty years, he served as WORT Community Radios Operations Coordinator in Madison, Wisconsin.He also coordinated the IraqJournal website in 2002-2003.In 2011, he regularly reported on protests in Madison for Irans PressTV and other outlets.His reports and interviews have appeared on Free Speech Radio News, DemocracyNow!, and AirAmerica, and in print in Z Magazine, the Capital Times, AlterNet, Toward Freedom, the Tico Times, the Feminist Connection, and elsewhere.He is co-editor of the bookREBEL REPORTING: John Ross Speaks to Independent Journalists. 

First up, Mickey and Eleanor dive into some critical media literacy including AI-generated videos and images that ping our confirmation biases, making it all the more important to stay vigilant in analyzing content, regardless of whether or not we want it to be true. We also look at patterns of mis and disinformation, tools and tips for media consumers and creators, and more.    Next up, Katie Jones from Fractracker joins the show to talk about the shadowy connection between data centers and fracking. Katie talks about how data centers are in many ways the new fracking boom, and are using many of the same loopholes and tactics to push through public opposition while also of course demanding a power surge, mostly coming from fossil fuels. Katie and I also debunk some of the propaganda around how good data centers are for your community, and highlight Fractracker tools to educate, engage and organize in your home place. 

Eleanor Goldfield & Mickey Huff host this week’s program.   First up, cohost Mickey Huff sits down with professor of communications Dr. Steve Macek to talk about Trumps war on epistemic institutions. Dr. Macek shares specific examples of attacks on vital research that leaves millions of Americans without the necessary knowledge to address basic needs such as hunger and thirst. Mickey and Steve also dissect some deja vu news - the where are they now for stories previously uplifted by Project Censored and ignored by corporate media. Such analysis not only tracks trends in corporate media but also highlights the importance of thinking of news less as a fleeting headline but rather as continuously developing stories that require attention on a rolling rather than 24-hour blip basis.  Next up, cohost Eleanor Goldfield sits down with researcher and associate director at the Eisenhower Media Network Christian Sorensen to talk about how the military is a tool of corporate capture, how the military industrial complex hurts the working class here at home, medias bedazzling of military life, and how the US empires greed actually in the long term hurts its own hegemonic objectives.    Notes:  Dr. Steve Macek is a media scholar and professor of communications at North Central College.    Christian Sorensen is a researcher focused on the bundling of military and big business. A U.S. military veteran, he is associate director at the Eisenhower Media Network. His research is available at thebusinessofwar.substack.com.

Eleanor Goldfield & Mickey Huff host this week’s program.   In the first part of the program we welcome back political and legal geographer Dr. Austin Kocher to talk about the immigration news that never makes the news. Dr. Kocher talks about overcrowded and deadly detention centers, the 287g clause that transforms your local law enforcement into ICE officers, the fundamental flaw in the US immigration legal system, and how we shouldnt think of borders as a matter of what they are, but rather what they do in service of the state.  Next up, Mickey Huff sits down with frequent guest and political analyst Nolan Higdon to dissect some recent news, focusing especially on AI: what can history tell us about the unintelligence of artificial intelligence, how deep fakes are crowbarring the political divide even further and deeper, the corporate capture of the classroom, and more.

This week, were covering two things youll never hear about on corporate media - or if you do, theyll be demonized: whistleblowers, and targeted boycott movements.  First up, were joined by a Capital One whistleblower who talks about how the companys internal dealings with Israeli weapons manufacturers chafes against the companys external PR campaign of progressive and diversity politics. The whistleblower outlines the so-called proper channels they attempted to utilize in addressing their concerns, and what organizing work theyre doing now to hold Capital One accountable to not only their clients but to international law.  Next up, were joined by two organizers with the Eject Elbit campaign focused on decoupling the Israeli weapons manufacturer from the financial institutions it relies on. Scotty and Liza share the BDS precedent for their work, recent wins, and upcoming goals. They talk about the medias framing of their work, not least of all using and twisting their Jewishness while continuing to silence and obscure Palestinian voices and calls for justice.  

Leonardo Flores is a co-founder of the Venezuela Solidarity Network. He previously worked as an organizer with CODEPINK and as an analyst with the Venezuelan Embassy in the U.S. Leonardo was born in Venezuela and maintains close ties to social movements that have transformed the country over the past twenty-six years. 

Dr. Shir Hever is a scholar of Israel's occupation, apartheid and genocide, born in Israel and now living in Germany. He is the managing director of the Alliance for Justice between Israelis and Palestinians and his latest book is The Privatization of Israeli Security. Brendan Ballou is a former federal prosecutor and served as special counsel for private equity in the Department of Justice's antitrust division. He is the author of "Plunder: Private Equity's Plan to Pillage America" and the forthcoming "When Companies Run the Courts: Forced Arbitration and America's Secret Justice System."   

Federico Campagna is an Italian philosopher and writer based in London.His is the author of Otherworlds: Mediterranean Lessons on Escaping History (Bloomsbury, 2025), Prophetic Culture: recreation for adolescents (Bloomsbury: 2021), Technic and Magic: the reconstruction of reality (Bloomsbury, 2018), and The Last Night (Zero Books, 2013). He is the director and co-founder of Agora, a fully funded school of art and philosophy produced by the Centre d'Art Contemporain Geneve. He is a Visiting Lecturer in world-building at the MA Fashion, Royal College of Art (London), Lecturer in Intellectual History at the MA Fine Arts, ECAL (Lausanne), and Associate Fellow at the Warburg Institute (London). Bill Yousman, Ph.D., is Professor and Director of the Media Literacy and Digital Culture graduate program at Sacred Heart University. Dr. Yousmans research focuses on media and the construction of ideology, the role media representations play in shaping perceptions of race, and the relationship between media and democracy.   

This week, a special roundtable discussion with your Project Censored cohosts and the Freedom of the Press Foundation. Director of Advocacy Seth Stern and Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy Lauren Harper come back on the show to dive into the viscous morass of rights violations, including those of ICE, and the complicit courts and judges that could do more to rein them in, SLAPP suits as a weapon to silence truth-tellers, the issue of over-classification that serves to paper over the publics right to know what our government is doing in our name, and much more.  

In the first half of the show, we welcome back the editor-in-chief of Jewish Currents Arielle Angel to talk about the need for new Jewish institutions that reflect not only antizionist Judaism but the myriad traditions of Judaism which zionism has always tried to negate and erase. Arielle also highlights the connections between zionism and American exceptionalism, ideologies that fuel and feed off one another, the power of a grassroots leftist Jewish memory culture, and the pitfalls of self-denial on the Jewish left. Next up, editor for Workday Magazine, Sarah Lazare comes on the show to discuss the purposefully obfuscated connection between labor organizing and immigrants rights. Sarah outlines ways in which workers are building solidarity in the face of violent raids and harassment, and how shallow and extractive corporate media practices perpetuate misinformation and violence.

Mickey Huff hosts this week’s program.   This week we are rejoined by media scholar Nolan Higdon to discuss his latest work, "Unmasking Epstein: Power, Blackmail, and the Press's Failures." We also delve into the increasingly problematic world of Artificial Intelligence, the challenges and threats AI poses, and the importance of critical AI literacy.  Next, Mickey speaks to Brown University first year student James Libresco about his latest Dispatch on Media and Politics for Project Censored titled, "A Direct Attack on Freedom of Speech: Trump Takes on Higher Ed." Libresco addresses media freedom and the student press, as well as the massive pushback to Trump's so-called "Compact for Excellence in Higher Education," which actually poses major threats to academic freedom.   Notes:  Nolan Higdon is is a political analyst, author, host of The Disinfo Detox Podcast, curator of the Gaslight Gazette, a lecturer at Merrill College and the Education Department at University of California, Santa Cruz, and a Project Censored National Judge. Higdons areas of concentration include critical AI literacy, podcasting, digital culture, news media history and propaganda, and critical media literacy. He is a regular commentator on current affairs for several media networks in the San Francisco Bay Area. All of Higdons work is available at Substack.  James Libresco was co-editor in chief of Theogony, his high school paper for the 2024-25 school year, where he covered education, city politics, and breaking news. His work has been published in The Alexandria Times, The Alexandria Gazette Packet and The Zebra, among other outlets. James recently published a Dispatch on Media and Politics for Project Censored on Trump's attacks on higher education and is currently a first year student at Brown University studying political science. 

In the first part of the program, Palestinian-American journalist, translator, photographer, and media analyst Laura Albast joins the show to discuss journalism as memory work, and the narrative as a battlefield upon which ever more advanced technology takes aim at Palestinian voices and lived experiences. Laura frames journalism as a commitment - to people and their stories, and talks about how the chasing of headlines and by-lines in the 24-hour news cycle leads to extractive journalism, and how and why movement media can be the antidote. Next up, Economics PHD students Shakked Noy and Aakaash Rao discuss their recent report: The Business of the Culture War which links the contemporary culture wars to changes in media technologies as well as economic incentives for cable news. Shakked and Aakaash discuss how their research shows that the economic drive for viewership has incentivized corporate media to turn away from actual political news and towards sensational infotainment, and how the commodification of legitimate rage leaves us dumber and more divided than ever before. 

Eleanor Goldfield hosts this week’s program.   We start this week off with news that didn’t make the news from Sudan. Researcher and analyst Mosaab Baba joins us to contextualize the recent atrocities in El-Fasher, Sudan, highlighting decades-long power struggles not only inside the country but internationally as well. Mosaab explains the goals of these new imperialists and their genocidal beneficiaries, the importance of Sudan’s rich mineral and agricultural assets, and how the guns and money always lead to the familiar players of the UAE, Egypt, the US and Israel.  Next up, John Collins of Weave News comes back on the program to discuss news abuse, using a specific example in upstate New York to highlight how even regional media that did previously stand up to power falls in line behind the fallacy conflating antizioinism with antisemitism. John also discusses the Palestinization of the globe, and prescriptions for both media and media consumers on how to stay critically media literate in these critical times.  Notes:  Mosaab Baba is a researcher and analyst on Sudan, and has been a lead consultant for the Ayin Network (@AyinSudan) John Collins is emeritus professor of global studies at St. Lawrence University and editorial director at Weave News. He is the author of the 2011 book Global Palestine, which explores the globalization of Palestine and the Palestinization of the globe. 

Eleanor Goldfield hosts this week’s program.   In the first half of the show, Eleanor Goldfield sits down with Dr. Abdalhadi Alijila to talk about his forthcoming book Fearful in Gaza, an autobiographical work that details the lived realities, emotions, connections and contradictions of growing up in Gaza. Dr. Alijila remarks on the changing of academia, once the vanguard of progressive thought and action becoming ever more muted and intellectually impoverished. He speaks on the unending question of humanity, including how social media distorts our view, and the problem of dehumanizing by pedestaling what the occupation has buried beneath subhuman propaganda.  Next up, co-founder of Mutual Aid Disaster Relief Jimmy Dunson comes back on the program to offer up a perspective you wont hear on corporate media: how the Israeli Defense Forces target Jewish and Hebrew-speaking people. Jimmy shares his own experiences with this as well as the experiences of a colleague on a Mutual Aid Disaster Relief boat that sailed with the Gaza Flotilla. Jimmy discusses how his Jewish faith leads him to actively oppose genocide, how we can better be in solidarity with Palestinians and with one another while connecting our struggles as well as our efforts to build a better world.   Notes:  Dr. Abdalhadi Alijla is a Palestinian Swedish social and political scientist and science advocate. He is the author of Trust in Divided Societies: State, Institutions and Governance in Lebanon, Syria and Palestine and the forthcoming book, which were here to talk about today: Fearful in Gaza. His main research interests are divided societies, Social Cohesion, Rebel Governance, Social Capital, Middle East Studies, and Comparative Politics. Jimmy Dunson is a mystic, magic, warrior, healer, poet in love with all existence, cofounder of mutual aid disaster relief, and a volunteer with the international solidarity movement and ta'ayush in Palestine  

This week's Project Censored Show again focuses on the Israeli massacres in the Gaza Strip. To open the program, Eleanor's guest, Jacqueline Luqman, notes that the Black liberation struggle in the US has always supported the Palestinian cause as well, and explains the common ground between the two; she also debunks some Zionist talking points. Then in the second half-hour, Eleanor and Mickey analyze corporate media coverage of the Middle East, and the contextual information that isn't mentioned.

For the first half of this week's show, Mickey brings on three guests to discuss the upcoming 2022 Whistleblower Summit and Film Festival in Washington, DC (www.whistleblowersummit.com). They also make the case for a broader public understanding of what whistleblowing is, and who is a whistleblower. Then in the second half-hour, Eleanor Goldfield and her guest look at the recent election in Colombia, which saw leftist candidate Gustavo Petro winning the presidency and Afro-Colombian environmental activist Francia Marquez the vice-presidency.   Notes: Michael McCray and Marcel Reid are the co-founders of the International Association of Whistleblowers. McCray is also General Counsel for the Federally Employed Women Legal Education Fund. Reid is a former member of the Pacifica Radio National Board. Marsha Warfield is a nationally-known comedian and actress, and will be hosting some events at the Whistleblower Summit. Gimena Sanchez is a staff member at the Washington Office on Latin America (www.wola.org).

Program Summary:   New co-host Eleanor Goldfield speaks first with Benjamin Norton, to learn how President Biden is "out-Trumping Trump" on immigration. Norton also offers an update on political conditions in Latin America. In the second half of the show, Eugene Puryear explains racism's deep roots in US history, and how it cannot be defeated by superficial actions. He also looks at the significance of Black History Month.   Benjamin Norton is an independent journalist who focuses on Latin America; he's also the founder of the news web site www.multipolarista.com.    Eugene Puryear has been a peace-and-justice organizer since his high-school days; he's the author of "Shackled and Chained: Mass Incarceration in Capitalist America," and he writes at www.breakthroughnews.org      Notes:

Program Summary: Mickey spends the hour with historian Peter Kuznick, who examines the current U.S. confrontation with Russia over Ukraine, summarizes the recent history of Ukraine, and emphasizes the urgency of settling the crisis peacefully.   Notes: Peter Kuznick is Professor of History at American University in Washington DC, and also directs the Nuclear Studies Program at that institution. He and Oliver Stone wrote the groundbreaking book The Untold History of the United States, and also produced a Showtime documentary series based on the book. More information can be found at www.untoldhistory.com.