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“Be Bold America!” Sunday, December 15, 2024 at 5:00pm (PT)

“First they came for the journalists. We don’t know what happened after that.” – Maria Ressa

Every year, Project Censored highlights the vital stories that corporate media underreported, exposes rampant news abuse, and tracks emerging threats against the press from financial and political powers

“State of the Free press 2025” comes at a time when trust in the media is at an all-time low. A 2024 Pew Research Poll found that a remarkable 73 percent of adult Americans believe a free press is either extremely or very important to the well-being of society—though only a third of those polled believe that US media are completely free to report news.

Half of those surveyed believe that US news organizations are influenced a great deal by corporate/financial or government/political interests. Reporters Without Borders gave the US a score of 66.59 out of a possible 100 points in their 2024 World Press Freedom Index—a drop of nearly five points from 2023.

Tragically, 2024 stands out as the year that the corporate media failed to adequately cover Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people and the threat it poses to the whole world. With their gaze trained elsewhere, the powerful got a pass from the very institution that should hold them to account.

In 2023 Reporters Without Borders labeled US press freedom “satisfactory;” in 2024, they called it “problematic.”

Interview Guest:

SHEALEIGH VOITL is the digital and print editor at Project Censored. She first began her research with the Project at North Central College alongside Steve Macek, co-authoring the Déjá Vu News chapter in the State of the Free Press 2022 and 2023 yearbooks, and the Top 25 chapter in SFP 2023.

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“Be Bold America!” Sunday,

December 1, 2024 at 5:00pm (PT)

“Severe problems of democracy are much in the news, but actually go way back to the beginning of the country. We now want to look at how both the deep state and American fascist forces played a key role from the very beginning of the United States.” – Charles Derber, Professor of Sociology at Boston College

The two “deep states” of cultural and ideological ideals, as well as their clashing trade and other economic interests, led, as in many marriages, to an increasingly troubled relationship, that led ultimately to a violent divorce and military destruction of the Confederate deep state. But it did not end the enduring legacy of both deep states that shapes our nation’s divisive politics today.

A MAGA conspiratorial concept is that there is a “deep state.” But could there be a very real “deeper state” that has been evident throughout history, back to the founding of American democracy?

Interview Guest:

Charles Derber is Professor of Sociology at Boston College and has written 26 books - on politics, democracy, fascism, corporations, capitalism, climate change, war, the culture wars, culture and conversation, and social change. His bestselling books include The Pursuit of Attention and the Wilding of America. He writes for and has been reviewed in the NY Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, Truthout, and other leading media.

His books are translated into 14 languages including Chinese, Korean, Tamil, German, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian and Polish- and he is a bestseller in South Korea, done extended book tours in German bookstores and blues coffee houses, and has lectured in Italy in June for seven years. Derber is a public intellectual - shortlisted in 2006 by the American Independent Booksellers Association for Hidden Power, the best book in current affairs - who believes that serious ideas should be written in an accessible and entertaining style. His most recent books include Dying for Capitalism(https://ksqd.org/are-we-dying-from-capitalism/), Welcome to the Revolution, Moving Beyond Fear, Sociopathic Society: A People's Sociology of the United States; Capitalism: Should You Buy It?

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“Be Bold America!” Sunday,

November 17, 2024 at 5:00pm (PT)

“Wishing that things worked one way or another is not the same as knowing how things work. It’s when we all know how things work that we can impact things, from democracy itself to a local development project in your neighborhood.” – Fred Keeley, the Mayor of Santa Cruz, California

How does the 5th largest economy in the world … work?

What are some true stories about how California is leading the world toward a better future, from protecting women’s and voter’s rights to building a sustainable energy infrastructure? These true stories are not naïve or full of starry-eyed optimism.

The book “How California Works”, acknowledges that many Californians, well, lets’ face it … people the world over … are confronting a myriad of crises. Yet, individuals and organizations throughout California, maybe imperfectly, are making our state better, fairer, and a safer place.

How are they doing it? The word “citizen” is a verb.

Interview Guest:

Jonathan Vankin is a senior writer for California Local and an award-winning journalist whose writing has appeared in such publications as The New York Times Magazine, Wired, Salon, L.A. Weekly and many others. He is the author of four previous nonfiction books, including Conspiracies, Cover-Ups and Crimes—the first comprehensive, journalistic investigation of America's conspiracy-theory underground, foreshadowing the current state of sociopolitical affairs by two decades—and more recently Close to Zero, a full account of Donald Trump's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Jonathan Vankin has also written comic books, TV, screenplays, and even the "book" for a hit Off-Broadway musical, Forever Dusty, about the great British pop star Dusty Springfield. He has made numerous media appearances on such networks as CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, FOX, the BBC and the CBC, as well as numerous podcasts and hundreds of radio stations.