Overview

Highlighting the year's most significant independent journalism-including reports on ICE surveillance, Meta censorship, and police violence-Project Censored's State of the Free Press 2026 celebrates the Project's 50th year, illuminating issues the establishment press have obscured and raising voices corporate media have throttled. Balancing critical analysis with optimistic vision, the volume's diverse contributors champion press freedom and critical media literacy as essential tools to empower individuals and unite communities in the battles to hold the powerful accountable and to defend democracy from authoritarian assaults. Project Censored's State of the Free Press 2026 includes: Project Censored director Mickey Huff's Foreword, where he writes about the history and continued relevance of the Project, and why media literacy and press freedoms are more important than ever, as it celebrates its 50th anniversary; editors Shealeigh Voitl, Andy Lee Roth, and Mickey Huff introduction to this year's book, discussing the siege on public knowledge in the age of Trump 2.0, envisioning an interconnected and imaginative resistance to censorship; a Déjà vu News chapter, which updates on previous year's top stories, including how a Monsanto ""intelligence center"" targeted journalists and activists, journalist Abby Martin's challenge to Georgia's BDS ""gag law,"" and the Justice Department's secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) rules; a Junk Food News section that spans from Snow White and actress Gal Gadot, to Drake versus Kendrick and the gutting of public education, not to mention Elon Musk's chain saws, Cybertrucks, and creeping fascism, surveying the dubious reporting that's Making America Junky Again; John Collins of Weave News discusses the Long Shadow of News Abuse in the case of Elise Stefanik, Israel, and Antisemitism; Media Democracy in Action, featuring inspiring contributions by Ryan Grim of Drop Site News, Maya Schenwar and Lara Witt of the Movement Media Alliance, Joe Lauria of Consortium News, Lauren Harper with the Freedom of the Press Foundation, and Jodi Rave Spotted Bear of the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance; and Shealeigh Voitl and Reagan Haynie's zine-style guide to infographics equips social media users with the tools to responsibly evaluate the content they see online and become empowered media makers.

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Author Information

Shealeigh Voitl is Project Censored's associate director. 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, and the Top 25 chapter in SFP 2023. In addition to her contributions as a recent co-editor of the yearbook series, and work with the Campus Affiliate Program and on other Censored Press titles, Shealeigh helped develop the State of the Free Press 2024 teaching guide, the Project's Beyond Fact-Checking: A Teaching Guide to the Power of News Frames, and The Project Censored Show's forthcoming segment Frame-Check. Her writing has also been featured in Truthout, The Progressive, and Ms. Magazine. She lives in Chicago. Mickey Huff is the third director of Project Censored (founded in 1976) and is the president of the nonprofit Media Freedom Foundation. Huff joined Ithaca College in New York fall of 2024, where he now also serves as the Distinguished Director of the Park Center for Independent Media and Professor of Journalism. Since 2009, he has coedited the annual volume of the Censored book series with associate director Andy Lee Roth, published by Seven Stories Press in New York, and since 2021 with The Censored Press, the Project's new publishing imprint. His most recent books include Project Censored's State of the Free Press 2025, co-edited with Shealeigh Voitl and Andy Lee Roth (The Censored Press/Seven Stories Press, 2024); The Media and Me: A Guide to Critical Media Literacy for Young People (co-authored with Project Censored and the Media Revolution Collective, The Censored Press/Triangle Square, 2022), as well as Let's Agree to Disagree: A Critical Thinking Guide to Communication, Conflict Management, and Critical Media Literacy (Routledge, 2022) and United States of Distraction: Media Manipulation in Post-Truth America (and what we can do about it), published by City Lights Books, 2019, both co-authored with Nolan Higdon.Huff is executive producer and co-host of The Project Censored Show, a weekly syndicated public affairs program he founded with former Project Censored director Peter Phillips in 2010. Eleanor Goldfield is his current co-host. The program originates from the historic studios of KPFA, Pacifica Radio, in Berkeley CA, and airs on more than 50 stations around the US and is also a podcast online.Huff has been a professor of social science, history, and journalism at Diablo Valley College in the San Francisco Bay Area since 2000, where he was chair of the Journalism Department and the History Area, and helped launch the Social Justice Studies Program. He has been a lecturer in communications at California State University, East Bay and has taught sociology of media and censorship at Sonoma State University. Andy Lee Roth is editor-at-large for Project Censored and its publishing imprint, The Censored Press. He is co-editor of Project's State of the Free Press yearbook series, and a coauthor of The Media and Me: A Guide to Critical Media Literacy for Young People. Roth began working with the Project in 2006, and he served as associate director from 2012-2024. During that time, he helped coordinate and expand the Project's Campus Affiliates Program, which provides hands-on critical media literacy training for students at colleges and universities across North America. As a 2024-2025 Reynolds Journalism Institute Fellow, Roth developed Algorithmic Literacy for Journalists, a web-based set of practical resources to help journalists promote industry accountability and public understanding of how artificial intelligence systems are revolutionizing journalism, and those systems' potential for perpetuating biases, inequalities, and other social risks.He has taught courses in sociology at Sonoma State University, Pomona College, and Citrus College. His research and writing have been published in numerous outlets, including Index on Censorship, In These Times, YES! Magazine, Truthout, The Progressive, Media Culture & Society, and the International Journal of Press/Politics. Roth holds a PhD in sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a BA in sociology and anthropology from Haverford College, and he serves on the boards of the Media Freedom Foundation, Weave News, and The Censored Press.

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