Consolidation of the media in the hands of a few corporate interests has so far resulted in much fewer voices bein able to genuinely speak and report back about the key issues and problems we should be paying attention to.

The main consequence of this is that slowly, silently and without most people being able to perceive this, our "apparent" range of options is drastically reduced. Another is the increasing lack of truly critical, inquisitive and honest investigative reporting.

Here are some of Project Censored's 10 biggest examples of major stories that have been relegated to the most obscure corners of the American mainstream news media world.

1. Wealth inequality in 21st century threatens economy and democracy

...the richest 1 percent of households owned 38 percent of the nation's wealth. The top 5 percent owned almost 60 percent of the wealth.

2. Bush administration manipulates science and censors scientists
Tampering with data that threatens corporate profits is much more widespread under Bush than we've been led to believe. And the Environmental Protection Agency has emerged as one of the administration's primary targets. The problem isn't limited to the EPA. In fact, government interference in scientific research has gotten so bad that 60 of the country's top scientists – including 20 Nobel laureates – issued a statement in February citing the ways the Bush administration has distorted scientific data "for partisan political ends" and calling for regulatory action.

3. High uranium levels found in troops and civilians
Last year Project Censored included the United States' and Great Britain's continued use of depleted-uranium weapons – despite ample evidence of their acute health effects – among its top 10 underreported stories. Almost 10,000 U.S. troops died within 10 years of serving in the first Gulf War, researchers had found. And more than a third of those still alive had filed Gulf War Syndrome-related claims. More recently, the Uranium Medical Research Center, an independent group of U.S. and Canadian scientists that has conducted studies of Afghan civilians, found overwhelming evidence that the United States is also using nondepleted uranium in its weapons, which is far more radioactive than depleted uranium. Leuren Moret, president of Scientists for Indigenous People, testified at the trial and later reported that a U.S. government study conducted on the babies of Gulf War veterans conceived after the soldiers returned home found that a full two-thirds suffered from serious birth defects or illnesses, including being born without eyes or ears, or with missing or malformed organs or limbs. In Iraq, Moret said, the defects are even worse. But those are just some of the images of war we never see on the evening news.

4. Wholesale giveaway of [US] natural resources
All in all, the administration has launched the greatest giveaway of public natural resources in more than a century. Yet few in the mainstream media have bothered to analyze these plans and uncover the lies behind the administration's rhetorical manipulations.

5. Sale of electoral politics
The Help America Vote Act required that states submit their blueprints for switching over to electronic voting systems by Jan. 1, 2004, and implement those plans in time for the 2006 elections. Some regions are already using the machines. But those who've bothered to look into the new systems are sending up serious warning flares. A switch to electronic voting might seem innocent enough at first – until you look at who's implementing it, and how. Indeed, the transfer represents the privatization of the voting process in the hands of a select few fervent GOP supporters who've insisted on keeping their operating systems and codes a trade secret – meaning they enjoy absolute control over the entire voting process, including ballot counting and oversight. There's no paper trail.

6. Widow brings RICO case against U.S. government for 9/11
As the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission, completed its first year, Ellen Mariani and her attorney held a press conference on the steps of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania to announce her own startling conclusions. Mariani, wife of Louis Neil Mariani, who died when terrorists flew United Airlines Flight 175 into the World Trade Center's south tower, had come to believe top American officials – including Bush, Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and others – had foreknowledge of the attacks, purposefully failed to prevent them, and had since taken pains to cover up the truth. The administration, she argues in a federal lawsuit, allowed 9/11 to happen so Bush and company could launch their seemingly endless, global "war on terror" for their own personal and financial gain.

7. New nuke plants: taxpayers support, industry profits
If you thought nuclear energy was dead, think again: the Bush administration's energy bill – yet another product of Cheney's industry-stacked energy task force – provides taxpayer cash for companies that build new nukes. The administration also removed terrorism protection provisions included in the House version of the bill and reversed a previous ban on the export of enriched uranium, which may be used to construct nuclear bombs.

Read about the other key issues not covered in the mainstream media, as well as references to original sources and in-depth details for each in the original story by the San Francisco Bay Guardian.