For the past 27 years, Project Censored, a program based at Sonoma State University, in Rohnert Park, California, has compiled a list of the top 25 underreported stories from around the country. This year’s list, arranged and reviewed by approximately 200 students and faculty, again contains stories that, for whatever reason, were deemed unfit for American eyes by the mainstream media.

Censorship is lying by omission. With very few exceptions (such as not disclosing military strategy during wartime situations, for instance), censorship is the opposite of serving highest collective good.

Censorship is not only done by governments. In the United States, which prides itself on having a constitution that guarantees a “free press,” censorship is being practiced by major news networks such as Fox and CNN. (Censorship has also been practiced at times by drug companies who withhold damning data from the research studies they publish in medical journals — Vioxx is a particularly well-documented example — but that is another story for another time.)

Fox is one of many examples of news network that has a clear political agenda that it is forwarding, which in turn determines how it slants news stories the stories it features and the stories it buries.

Burying a story is a euphemism for censorship. But, by calling censorship by a less ugly name, the media are able to fool an undiscerning public into believing they are receiving objective reporting.

This is not only an example of lack of integrity. It is downright dangerous. When people form opinions erroneously believing they are basing them on objective truth, they make decisions about, for instance, who they vote for, based on incomplete pictures. This, in turn, can result in the public unknowing supporting corruption or in supporting foreign policies that damage their country’s standing in the international community rather than strengthen it.

I therefore applaud Project Censored for their efforts to bring into public awareness this most dangerous form of unintegrity.

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In a speech given by Nancy Pelosi, the incoming U.S. Speaker of the House, she said, “”The three biggest differences in how I would lead are integrity, civility and fiscal discipline.”  Will her actions be in integrity with her words or is she only saying what she believes people want to hear? Only time will tell…

One of the most frequent reasons given for the why people in the U.S. so widely voted to oust Republicans on Election Day had less to do with political affiliation and more to do with an issue that transcends political party: Integrity. The way the voters put into words their change of heart had to do with being fed up with scandals. Are the American people beginning to wake up to the fact that putting people in office who have high integrity is more important than their politcal party or ideological beliefs? I sure hope so. How about you?

By now you may have heard about the Colorado pastor who was the president of the National Association of Evangelicals. He was a crusader against homosexuality and drugs who stepped down in disgrace from both his national role and his congregational pulpit, saying to his congregants the following:

“The fact is I am guilty of sexual immorality. And I take responsibility for the entire problem,” Haggard wrote. “I am a deceiver and a liar. There’s a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life.”

People who try to war against that within them that feels “dark and repulsive” cannot win that ware through using willpower. Only through fully digesting the originating trauma and its healing it negative aftereffects can this occur. Too many people in leadership and spiritual positions deny the vital importance of doing psychological healing in order to live in integrity with one’s professed values.

The moral of the story is that, as I have put it for years now, “People function at the level of their wounds not their wishes.” Huge amounts of damage have been done in political, business and spiritual circles as a result of denying this vital fact.

To read more about this particular example, click here. I only ask you to compassionately keep in mind that this is but one of a vast universe of examples — today’s example. There are, sadly, plenty more where this came from, and in all walks of life and all religions.