Project Censored presents "State of the Free Press 2026: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition"

Project Censored presents "State of the Free Press 2026: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition" with Mickey Huff, Mischa Geracoulis, Maximillian Alvarez, Allison Butler, and Eleanor Goldfield

Highlighting the year’s most significant independent journalism—including original, investigative reports on ICE surveillance, Meta censorship, and police violence—State of the Free Press 2026 illuminates issues that the establishment press have obscured and raises voices that corporate media have throttled.

Balancing critical analysis with optimistic vision, the volume’s diverse contributors champion press freedom and critical media literacy to empower individuals and unite communities in the battles to hold the powerful accountable and defend democracy from authoritarian assaults.

Mischa Geracoulis is the Outreach & Engagement Officer at Project Censored and the Production Lead at the Project’s publishing imprint, The Censored Press; contributor to Project Censored’s State of the Free Press yearbook series; a Project Judge; and author of Media Framing and the Destruction of Cultural Heritage (Routledge, 2025).

Mickey Huff is the third director of Project Censored and is the president of the nonprofit Media Freedom Foundation. Huff joined Ithaca College in New York during the fall of 2024, where he now also serves as the Distinguished Director of the Park Center for Independent Media and Professor of Journalism. He 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.

Maximillian Alvarez is the Editor-in-Chief of The Real News Network and the host of Working People, “a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today.” Prior to joining The Real News, he was an Associate Editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education and graduated with a dual-PhD in History and Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan. His work has been featured in a range of outlets, including The Nation, In These Times, Boston Review, Truthout, and The Baffler. He has a book of interviews with OR Books titled The Work of Living: Working People Talk about Their Lives and the Year the World Broke.

Allison Butler is Senior Lecturer, Associate Chair, and the Director of the Media Literacy Certificate Program in the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she teaches courses on critical media literacy and representations of education in the media.

Butler co-directs the grassroots organization, Mass Media Literacy, where she develops and runs teacher trainings for the inclusion of critical media literacy in K-12 schools. She holds an MA and a PhD from New York University. She is the author of numerous articles and books on media literacy, most recently, The Media and Me: A Guide to Critical Media Literacy for Young People.

Eleanor Goldfield is a queer creative radical, journalist and award-winning filmmaker. Her work focuses on radical and censored issues via photo, video and written journalism, as well as artistic mediums including music, poetry and visual art. She is a board member of the Media Freedom Foundation, host of Radical Nuance, co-host of the nationally syndicated Project Censored radio show along with Mickey Huff, and co-host of Common Censored along with Lee Camp.

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