The Clinton administration’s aggressive promotion of U.S. arms sales around the world tops Project Censored’s list of censored or underreported news stories for 1997. Project Censored is an award-winning students and faculty media watch program at Sonoma State University in California.
According to Project Censored, the mainstream media have failed to report that the United States’ share of the global arms market has grown from 16 percent to 63 percent in the past 10 years—in spite of the 1997 Arms Transfer Code of Conduct that prohibits U.S. commercial arms sales to governments that are undemocratic, abuse human rights, or pursue international aggression.
Peter Phillips, the director of Project Censored, said, "Investigative journalists are writing and printing hundreds of important stories that are ignored by a major media too interested in celebrity news, infomercials, and titillation."
Other underreported news stories that made Project Censored’s Top 10 list include: the presence of carcinogens in personal care and cosmetic products; experimentation and forced implantation of the Norplant contraceptive on poor women in the Third World and in the United States; and the Army’s plans to incinerate obsolete chemical weapons at a plant in Oregon’s Columbia River basin.
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