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STORIES BY PAUL ROSENBERG
Senior Editor, Random Lengths News
PROJECT CENSORED TAKES A HARD LOOK AT THE MEDIA’S BLIND SPOTS—
AND THE OVERLOOKED STORIES THAT THREATEN OUR COUNTRY.
C
hecking the news hardly seems necessary
these days. The news fi nds you.
Push notifi cations interrupt your dreams
with dire bulletins. The president has turned the
White House into a stage for his Twitter beefs—
which now include the threat of nuclear war. Each
day brings a fresh outrage or a new monster.
At the same time, the proliferation of mysteri-
ously sourced stories on social media makes it
harder than ever to discern which stories matter.
American confi dence in the media is rebound-
ing from an all-time low. Part of that distrust stems
from a wave of lies spread by President Donald
Trump and his supporters.
But a large helping of blame belongs with the
corporate press and cable TV networks, who
enabled the rise of a demagogue. The media aided
Trump by failing to recognize his nihilistic and rac-
ist populism, and by growing addicted to the spec-
tacle of entertaining blarney—no matter how cruel
or untethered to reality.
That failure—the inability to distinguish what’s
important to our democracy and stubbornly cover
it—is why many Americans have lost faith in their
press.
It also gives renewed relevance to Project Cen-
sored. Since 1976, the annual book and reporting
effort has catalogued each year’s most important
but underreported news stories. This year’s book,
Censored 2018, was published last week.
The project, headquartered at Sonoma State
University in Rohnert Park, Calif., is the joint effort
of 310 student researchers and 27 faculty, who
evaluate thousands of independent news stories
looking for ones that demand national attention—
but haven’t received it. A panel of judges then ranks
the stories from 1 to 25.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY
VEE CHENTING QIAN
12
Willamette Week OCTOBER 11, 2017 wweek.com
The name notwithstanding, Project Censored
isn’t about the muzzling of a free press by govern-
ment. It instead grapples with how the press has
censored itself, by refusing to amplify stories with
massive effects on readers and viewers. Consider it
an eye test that looks for the media’s blind spots.
By at least one measure, Portlanders should be
heartened by this year’s list. The top story is one to
which this city’s media paid close attention in the
past year: lead in drinking water. (WW’s reporting
of how Portland Public Schools administrators cov-
ered up lead testing results won special recognition
from the Bruce Baer Awards, Oregon’s top investi-
gative journalism prizes.)
But even here, Project Censored provides an
eye-opener. The findings show that the greatest
danger to public health from lead may be hidden—
because the financial burden of fixing toxic pipes
could soon make water unaffordable for a big chunk
of the country. That’s one of the patterns this year’s
list establishes: the way that public health is being
held hostage by unaccountable companies and gov-
ernments.
“The ‘inconvenient facts’ underlying each of
these stories challenge not only fundamental insti-
tutions in our society, but also cherished notions
about who we are and the values we hold sacro-
sanct,” writes Sonoma State University professor
Andy Lee Roth in the introduction to this year’s
book.
The 10 stories you’ll read in the following pages
are fi lled with such unpleasant facts. You may not
agree with all the conclusions Project Censored
draws. But grappling with news you don’t like—and
not just dismissing it as “fake”—is this country’s
best shot at digging itself out of its collective mess.
Start digging.
—Aaron Mesh, News Editor
Lead in Pipes
Could Soon
Make Water
Unaffordable for
One-Third
of Americans
After President Barack
Obama declared a federal
emergency in Flint, Mich.,
because of lead contamination of the
city’s water supply in January 2016,
Reuters reporters M.B. Pell and Joshua
Schneyer began an investigation of lead
contamination nationwide, with shocking results.
In June 2016, they reported that although many states and
Medicaid rules require blood lead tests for young children, mil-
lions of children were not being tested. In December 2016, they
reported on the highly decentralized data they had been able to
assemble from 21 states, showing that 2,606 census tracts and
278 ZIP codes across the United States had levels of lead poison-
ing more than double the rates found in Flint at the peak of its
contamination crisis. Of those, 1,100 communities had lead con-
tamination rates “at least four times higher” than Flint.
In Flint, 5 percent of children screened had high blood lead
levels. Nationwide, the Centers for Disease Control and Preven-
tion estimate that 2.5 percent of all U.S. children younger than
6—about 500,000 children—have elevated blood lead levels.
But Pell and Schneyer’s neighborhood focus allowed them
to identify local hot spots “whose lead poisoning problems may
be obscured in broader surveys,” such as those focused on state-
wide or countywide rates. They found them in communities
that “stretch from Warren, Penn.,…where 36 percent of children
tested had high lead levels, to…Goat Island, Texas, where a quar-
ter of tests showed poisoning.” What’s more, “In some pockets
of Baltimore, Cleveland and Philadelphia, where lead poisoning
has spanned generations, the rate of elevated tests over the last
decade was 40 to 50 percent.”
But there’s a deeper infrastructure problem involved, as
Farron Cousins reported for DeSmogBlog in January 2017.
“Lead pipes are time bombs,” and water contamination is to be
expected, Cousins wrote. The U.S. relies on an estimated 1.2 mil-
lion miles of lead pipes for municipal delivery of drinking water,
and much of this aging infrastructure is reaching or has exceeded
its lifespan.
In 2012, the American Water Works Association estimated
that a complete overhaul of the nation’s aging water systems
would require an investment of $1 trillion over the next 25 years,
which could triple household water bills. As Cousins reported, a
January 2017 Michigan State University study found that “while
water rates are currently unaffordable for an estimated 11.9
percent of households, the conservative estimates of rising rates
used in this study highlight that this number could grow to 35.6
percent in the next fi ve years.”
As Cousins concluded, “While the water contamination crisis
will occasionally steal a headline or two, virtually no attention
has been paid to the fact that we’re pricing a third of United
States citizens out of the water market.”
“ WHILE
THE WATER CONTAMINATION CRISIS
WILL OCCASIONALLY STEAL A HEADLINE OR TWO ,
VIRTUALLY NO ATTENTION HAS BEEN PAID TO THE
FACT THAT WE ’ RE PRICING A THIRD OF UNITED STATES
CITIZENS OUT OF THE WATER MARKET .”
CONT. on page 14