State of the Not So Free Press with Mickey Huff

“We've been trying to get people to stop saying ‘mainstream media.’ I’ve got to do it now too, for the same reason that you just described: because there's nothing mainstream about 90 percent of the media being controlled by 6 private, for-profit corporations or 5 other big tech companies. There's nothing mainstream, or Main Street, about the ideas and the views that they platform. It's corporate media or establishment legacy press, and then there's independent media which means very little.” — Mickey Huff

Project Censored was founded by a communications and sociology professor in the 1970s. He asked himself how it was that Richard Nixon was elected by a landslide despite ample coverage of his misdeeds and corruption in the independent alternative media. And why did it take so long for the establishment press to catch up?

Steve’s guest Mickey Huff discusses the work of Project Censored today and the current state of the press. They talk about how the corporate media's coverage is based on American exceptionalism and propaganda efforts, as well as the receding role of independent local outlets. They emphasize the importance of critical media literacy and how the media landscape has become more complicated with the rise of social media. They touch on the influence of big tech and billionaires on the media, and look at it as another example of corporate exploitation of workers.

Mickey Huff is an educator, radio broadcast producer/host, podcaster, author/editor, the current director of Project Censored, and the president of the nonprofit Media Freedom Foundation. Since 2009, he has coedited the annual volume of the Censored book series and has contributed numerous chapters to these works since 2008. His most recent books include United States of Distraction: Media Manipulation in Post-Truth America (and what we can do about it), co-authored with Nolan Higdon, and Project Censored’s State of the Free Press In 2024, co-edited with Andy Lee Roth. Mickey is currently a professor of social science, history, and journalism at Diablo Valley College where he co-chairs the History Area and is chair of the Journalism Department.

https://www.projectcensored.org

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