Our History
Begun in 1993, Project Censored Canada (PCC) is a joint effort of the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ), the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Windsor and the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. PCC seeks to examine the gaps, or 'blindspots,' in the Canadian 'news agenda' by researching and rating the top 'under-reported' stories each year. By 'news agenda' we mean 'patterns of reporting' that result from a range of circumstances that influence what does and does not become news. For the past two years PCC has solicited nominations of under-reported stories from librarians, members of the CAJ and other journalists, alternative periodicals and the general public. Undergraduate students enrolled in PCC seminars in the communication program at Simon Fraser University (this past year they were joined by students at the University of Windsor) research each nominated story and collectively select those which seem to best exemplify the evaluation criteria. (Chapter Four describes this process in detail). Synopses of this shortened list of nominated stories (this year there were eighteen) are submitted to our national panel of judges who individually rank each story. We calculate our 'top ten list of under-reported stories' from our judges' rankings. What follows is a brief history of PCC, its two separate (yet complementary) purposes, and its past and proposed activities.Some journalists were becoming frustrated by changes in Canadian newsrooms (and more generally in their profession). During this period, Bill Doskoch, a reporter with the Leader-Post in Regina, was a member of the CAJ's board of directors from 1989 until 1994. With the board's endorsement, he explored the possibility of creating a public research project that would try to determine whether those changes were adversely affecting the public's right to know. He approached schools of journalism and departments of communication across Canada, looking for an academic partner for the project. Both the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University and the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Windsor expressed interest and Project Censored Canada began as a partnership of three (although the University of Windsor was not able to begin its involvement until this past year).
The three partners used an American project (then in its eighteenth year) as a model on which to base their work. Carl Jensen, a professor of Communication Studies at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, California, launched Project Censored-USA in 1976. Jensen began Project Censored because he wished to explore and expose the systematic omission of issues from the mainstream American news media. In particular, Jensen's quest was stimulated by his bewilderment with the landslide election of Richard Nixon after the Watergate break-in, one of the most sensational political crimes of the century. In his book-length analysis of the US media, Good News, Bad News, Edwin Diamond describes conducting a similar research project in 1975 (the year before Jensen's project began), but Project Censored-USA is the longest running project researching blindspots in the US media.
Each year since 1976, students enrolled in Jensen's fall semester seminar research and verify the accuracy of the stories nominated by a wide range of individuals throughout the world. Then a national panel of judges rate the stories. The 1994 panel of Project Censored-USA judges included the following well-known authors and communications scholars: Ben Bagdikian, Noam Chomsky, Susan Faludi, George Gerbner, Edward Herman, Sut Jhally, Michael Parenti and Herbert Schiller. Other areas of expertise represented on the panel include the fields of law, economics and public policy analysis. Other judges come to Project Censored-USA as journalists, editors and as activists interested in public access to information.
Similarly, the PCC judging panel draws from a wide range of professional and political perspectives. The panel includes individuals identified with various positions on the political spectrum (those who have stood for election and those whose work in electoral politics has been less high profile); those employed in the journalistic profession (through employment by mainstream news outlets, alternative outlets or through freelance/self-employment); and those who study the media from the university. What these individuals, with their seemingly divergent (and sometimes conflicting) views on society share is a professional and personal interest in the news media's role in our society and a belief that the media could be doing a better job.
PCC is indebted to Project Censored-USA and Carl Jensen and applies many of the same principles to its research as its American counterpart, but there are differences between the two projects and the contexts which affect their respective approaches. The large geographic size, small population and linguistic duality (or plurality) of Canada makes PCC a necessarily partial examination of gaps in the news agenda. While we would welcome a similar project exploring the French-language news media (both inside and outside Quebec) and while we welcome nominations of stories found in the electronic media, PCC has, in practice, become an examination of the English-speaking press. PCC developed research methods, using Project Censored-USA as a starting point, but differences in the media systems and academic research obligations provide PCC with a slightly different role and purpose than Project Censored-USA. In the next section we outline the two different, yet complementary, paths that PCC takes.