Project Censored expands p.

By: M. L. Stein

CARL JENSEN, THE California professor who founded Project Censored at Sonoma State University, announced that the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) and Simon Fraser University in British Columbia have jointly launched Project Censored Canada as an annual media research effort "to explore issues and events that don't receive the coverage they deserve in the Canadian media."
The Canadian project originated with Bill Doskoch of the Leader Post in Regina, Saskatchewan, and will be coordinated by professor Bob Hackett and lecturer Don Gutstein in Simon Fraser's Department of Communication.
Jensen's annual report, Project Censored USA, lists issues and events that he claims are ignored or underreported in the American media.
Doskoch said there are differences in the media culture of the U.S. and Canada, explaining: "We have had the benefit of a strong, independent public broadcasting culture that has . . . permitted a slightly wider range of debate in the mass media than in the U.S. However, U.S. alternative media are more developed, and it's the alternative media that have provided the grist for Project Censored's mill in the U.S."
CAJ issued a statement saying that the time is ripe in Canada for Project Censored.
CAJ said that in its own awards for investigative reporting, "The focus has been drifting away from the political stories of the 1980s that exposed wrongdoing by powerful institutions. None of these, we suggest, bode well for the future of a vigorous investigative news media."