The word on the street is that the Freedom of Information Act may no longer apply to the Pentagon, Federal whistleblowers are going the way of the dodos, and the Internet may soon be government-regulated. If these events do not sound familiar, relax; chances are, no one else knows either.It is most likely because these are several news stories listed in the Tucson Weekly’s “Censored Stories: The 10 stories the nation’s mainstream news media ignored, neglected, or missed last year.”

The Tucson Weekly takes a lead from Project Censored, the longest-running media censorship project in the nation, which reports news that slips through the cracks of corporate media. Since 1993 they have criticized what is called “junk food news” – stories that are blown out of proportion and saturate mainstream media in place of important information.

Most of the articles mentioned in ‘Censored Stories’ are from independent news sources, mostly Web sites. Sometimes news magazines like The New Yorker and Mother Jones pick up the scraps and report less glamorous issues, but as sociologist Carl Jensen told the Tucson: “What’s known to some isn’t known to everyone. Not everyone reads The New Yorker.”

For example, here are three intriguing news stories from the Tucson’s list that went unnoticed in 2005 and what the media was reporting at that time:

“Halliburton secretly doing business with key members of Iran’s nuclear team”

Halliburton – the infamous energy company – sold the private Iranian oil company, Oriental Oil Kish, key nuclear reactor components.

Reported by the Centre for Research on Globalization, this story is fascinating because U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, president of Halliburton in the mid-’90s, may have presided over these dealings. Now he advocates stopping Iran’s nuclear program.

Jason Leopold, the article’s author, cites close but anonymous sources for the business dealings of Kish and Halliburton.

However, in August 2005 most American news was consumed with coverage of Hurricane Katrina. While New Orleans was one of the biggest disasters in American history and the conduct of FEMA was reprehensible, the reports of Katrina did not subside for months. By the time the media attention died down, the Halliburton-Kish story was months old.

“New report released shows increase in urban hunger, homelessness”

As the number of Americans living in poverty increases, the current administration is refusing to deal with the issue.

According to OneWorld, the 2007 proposed budget calls for the cutting of an important survey that causes great embarrassment for Bush: the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation. The survey tracks American families’ use of programs like Social Security, child care, temporary assistance for needy families and Medicaid, among others.

The survey highlights a serious yet mortifying problem in the United States, and is critical to improving the system.

The story was published in The New Standard in December 2005, while most of America was preoccupied with the escalating murder trial of Scott Peterson. Peterson was the main suspect in the disappearance and death of his pregnant wife, Laci Peterson. The story received major attention for months as the trial slowly proceeded and real news went unreported.

“Tracing the Trail of Torture: embedding torture as a policy from Guantanamo to Iraq”

U.S. operatives in Iraq and Afghanistan have used torture on detainees, to the point of death. Forty-four death reports and autopsies from U.S. facilities released by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reveal that 21 of the deaths were homicides and eight were possibly the results of abusive torture techniques.

Even though these are not the first reports of torture by the United States, the findings imply that the American military uses torture as a policy. Acts of torture include sleep deprivation, strangulation, beatings, gagging, hoods and extreme environmental conditions.

These finding were published on the ACLU’s Web site as early as October 2005, and TomDispatch.com published its own article in March 2005.

Meanwhile, the Karl Rove scandal was breaking in Washington, D.C. News media outlets were buzzing with Rove’s outing of secret CIA operative Valerie Plame. Once Plame’s cover blew, thanks in part to the international media, everyone in the world knew who she was and what she did.

Of course these were not the only mainstream news stories covered in 2005; it was a good year for junk-food news. We gorged ourselves on the trials of Michael Jackson and Terri Schiavo. We indulged in the White House scandals of Karl Rove and Tom Delay. We slurped up Hollywood gossip to the point of bursting.

As Peter Phillips, the current director of Project Censored told the Tucson: “It’s like selling drugs. But (advocacy groups) don’t tolerate the drug dealer on the corner. . To just give people entertainment news is an abdication of the First Amendment.”

Unfortunately, as 2006 comes to a close we have added yet another notch to American’s media belt. The problem is not getting better, thanks to increased media monopolization. Next year the nation needs to go on a low-fat news diet, with only lean cuts of vital information.