OMNI
INVESTIGATIVE
JOURNALISM
NEWSLETTER #1, Nov. 21,
2014.
Compiled
by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology.
What’s at stake: Nothing less than our democracy. With whistleblowers, our investigative
reporters are the front line of truth for informed teachers and citizens
necessary to a democracy. Support strong
protection and funding for democracy’s truth-tellers.
Blog
http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/
Newsletters:
http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/
Index:
Contents Investigative
Journalism Newsletter #1, Nov. 21, 2014
Successful Investigative
Training and Reports
IRE Journal (Spring 2014), Special No.
on Investigative Ethics
Kroeger,
Undercover Reporting
Failure to Investigate
during Crises: Wall Street 1980, Iraq
Invasion 2003
Starkman,
Financial Power USA vs. Investigative Journalism (Guess Which Lost)
Investigative
Journalism After 9/11 and War: 2 Reports
Investigative Journalism
in China: Two Reports
Alterman,
Non-Investigation of Apple’s Harmful Working Conditions in China,
Importance of IJ
Importance of IJ
PBS/POV,
China’s Citizen Reporters
New Online Investigative
Magazine: The Interceptor
Franklin,
Omnidyar’s New Online Investigative Magazine, The Intercept, Glenn
Greenwald Editor
Greenwald Editor
More Investigative
Journalism: Books, Newspapers, Magazines
2011
IRE Investigative Books List
Ziva
Branstetter, Media Providing Investigative Reporting
Investigative
Journalism, Google Search
Some Recent Books and
Films
Priest
and Arkin, Top Secret America, from
Newspaper to Book to Film, Series in
Washington Post, Interview of Arkin by Democracy Now, Review of Book by Rogin
in LAT
Washington Post, Interview of Arkin by Democracy Now, Review of Book by Rogin
in LAT
James
Risen, Pay Any Price (Risen
threatened with prison)
Film,
Kill the Messenger, on Reporter Gary
Webb (who exposed the contra-crack
connection)
connection)
Journalism
Student Opportunities with IRE
Recent
OMNI Newsletters 2014
TRAINING
JOURNALISTS FOR INVESTIGATION AND ITS SUCCESSESS
IRE
JOURNAL (Spring 2014)
Special
no. on “Investigative Ethics,” articles including “New Values in Journalism Ethics,”
“Getting It on Tape,”Undercover Reporting,” “Ethical Infographics.”
IRE Journal, Spring
2014 –
“Undercover Reporting: An American Tradition.”
The history and best practices of reporting undercover.
BY BROOKE KROEGER — NEW
YORK UNIVERSITY, pp. 20, 23-24 (full text below) IRE Journal – Kroeger – Spring 2014
TO ANYONE WHO STILL THINKS significant
undercover
reporting stopped in the late 1970s, when ethical concerns
about the method first flared, please consider this:
From Jan. 1, 2013 to the end of April 2014, I posted 42
significant
new undercover investigations to the open-access database
at undercoverreporting.org. Those added in the first four months
of this year include a new human trafficking exposé by Ghana
Anas Aremeyaw Anas; the infiltration of a Wall Street secret
society by Kevin Roose for New
York Magazine; David Spears’
book, Exit Ramp, which
chronicles his 80 hours panhandling
off Interstate 205 in downtown Oregon City
trafficking investigation by Tobore Ovuorie for Premium Times
and a BBC “Panorama” elder care investigation that led to one
firing and seven staff suspensions.
The 37 entries for 2013 include the Upton Sinclair redux by
my colleague, Ted Conover, who got hired as a federal inspector
to gain access to a Nebraska
Jungle, Sinclair
didn’t go any further than dressing the part and
toting a lunch pail. Conover’s 18-page report for Harper’s was a
2014 National Magazine Award finalist.
The
undercover tradition
The point is, undercover reporting has continued, ethical
conundrums
and all, in a steady and uninterrupted flow since at least
the 1840s. That’s when reporters for Horace Greeley’s New York
Tribune posed as
auction buyers in Virginia and Louisiana
on the evils of slavery. In another case, a reporter signed on
with a
Civil War infantry regiment of the Petersburg Grays to get up
close
and personal at the hanging of the abolitionist John Brown.
For more than 160 years since, examples of important work
involving
undercover reporting have numbered in the thousands.
That’s a lot, considering the time, editorial deliberations,
effort,
ethical consternation, expense, exertion and risk these
undertakings
so often demand.
MORE http://brookekroeger.com/ire-journal-undercover-reporting-an-american-tradition/
COLLAPSE OF INVESTIGATION
DURING NATIONAL CRISES: FINANCIAL CRISIS OF 1970- AND IMPERIAL/WAR CRISES
The Watchdog That Didn’t Bark: The Financial Crisis and the
Disappearance of Investigative Journalism by Dean Starkman
January,
2014 , 368 pages,
In this sweeping, incisive post mortem, Dean Starkman exposes the critical shortcomings that softened coverage in the business press during the mortgage era and the years leading up to the financial collapse of 2008. He locates the roots of the problem in the origin of business news as a market messaging service for investors in the early twentieth century. This access-dependent strain of journalism was soon opposed by the grand, sweeping work of the muckrakers. Propelled by the innovations of Bernard Kilgore, the great postwar editor of the Wall Street Journal, these two genres merged when mainstream American news organizations institutionalized muckraking in the 1960s, creating a powerful guardian of the public interest. Yet as the mortgage era dawned, deep cultural and structural shifts—some unavoidable, some self-inflicted—eroded journalism’s appetite for its role as watchdog. The result was a deafening silence about systemic corruption in the financial industry. Tragically, this silence grew only more profound as the mortgage madness reached its terrible apogee from 2004 through 2006.
Starkman frames his analysis in a broad argument about journalism itself, dividing the profession into two competing approaches—access reporting and accountability reporting—which rely on entirely different sources and produce radically different representations of reality. As Starkman explains, access journalism came to dominate business reporting in the 1990s, a process he calls “CNBCization,” and rather than examining risky, even corrupt, corporate behavior, mainstream reporters focused on profiling executives and informing investors. Starkman concludes with a critique of the digital-news ideology and corporate influence, which threaten to further undermine investigative reporting, and he shows how financial coverage, and journalism as a whole, can reclaim its bite.
In this sweeping, incisive post mortem, Dean Starkman exposes the critical shortcomings that softened coverage in the business press during the mortgage era and the years leading up to the financial collapse of 2008. He locates the roots of the problem in the origin of business news as a market messaging service for investors in the early twentieth century. This access-dependent strain of journalism was soon opposed by the grand, sweeping work of the muckrakers. Propelled by the innovations of Bernard Kilgore, the great postwar editor of the Wall Street Journal, these two genres merged when mainstream American news organizations institutionalized muckraking in the 1960s, creating a powerful guardian of the public interest. Yet as the mortgage era dawned, deep cultural and structural shifts—some unavoidable, some self-inflicted—eroded journalism’s appetite for its role as watchdog. The result was a deafening silence about systemic corruption in the financial industry. Tragically, this silence grew only more profound as the mortgage madness reached its terrible apogee from 2004 through 2006.
Starkman frames his analysis in a broad argument about journalism itself, dividing the profession into two competing approaches—access reporting and accountability reporting—which rely on entirely different sources and produce radically different representations of reality. As Starkman explains, access journalism came to dominate business reporting in the 1990s, a process he calls “CNBCization,” and rather than examining risky, even corrupt, corporate behavior, mainstream reporters focused on profiling executives and informing investors. Starkman concludes with a critique of the digital-news ideology and corporate influence, which threaten to further undermine investigative reporting, and he shows how financial coverage, and journalism as a whole, can reclaim its bite.
About the Author
Dean Starkman is an editor and
Kingsford Capital Fellow of the Columbia
Journalism Review. A former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers, he was part of
an investigative team that won a Pulitzer Prize for the Providence Journal. He is
working as a fellow for the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute in New York and also holds a fellowship at the Center for
Media and Communications at the Central
European University ,
Budapest
WAR VS. INVESTIGATION: INVASION OF
IRAQ
Many
Americans forget how intimidating it was a decade ago for any U.S. citizen to
speak out against President George W. Bush’s rush to war with Iraq. For
example, the Dixie Chicks got death threats and actor Sean Penn was denounced
as “a stooge of Saddam,” as Norman Solomon recalls.
March 18, 2013
Exclusive:
As the U.S. observes the tenth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, a key
question remains: Why was there almost no accountability for journalists and
pundits who went along with George W. Bush’s deceptions. The answer can be
found in the cover-ups of the Reagan-Bush era, writes Robert Parry.
COMPARING
CHINA: TWO REPORTS
Eric Alterman. “China Goes Dark: Hard-hitting Journalism is Unwelcome in a
Global Powerhouse.” The Nation (Jan. 6, 2014).
High praise for
the New York Times’ investigation
of harmful working conditions in Apple’s Chinese supply chain, showing
Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs to be a liar about those conditions. These
conditions and Jobs’ lying were not reported by China
CHINA’S CITIZEN REPORTERS
FILM: “High Tech, Low Life,”
(July 22, 2013)
PBS, POV.
HIGH TECH,
LOW LIFE follows the journey of two of China’s first citizen reporters as they
travel the country – chronicling underreported news and social issues stories.
Armed with laptops, cell phones, and digital cameras they develop skills as
independent one-man news stations while learning to navigate China’s evolving
censorship regulations and avoiding the risk of political persecution.
The
film follows 57-year-old “Tiger Temple,” who earns the title of China’s first
citizen reporter after he impulsively documents an unfolding murder and
27-year-old “Zola” who recognizes the opportunity to increase his fame and
future prospects by reporting on sensitive news throughout China.
MAJOR NEW ONLINE INVESTIGATIVE
MAGAZINE: THE iNTERCEPTOR
Glenn
Greenwald. $250 Million "Angel Investor" (Sunday,
20 October 2013)
Glenn
Greenwald, the author and blogger behind the publication of the NSA documents
obtained by former contractor Edward Snowden, announced Oct. 16, 2013, that he
is leaving British newspaper The
Guardian to join what he
described as a "once-in-a-career dream journalistic opportunity," a
new media organization designed to promote in-depth reporting.
According to news reports, a minimum of $250 million will be
invested in the all-digital, no-print project. The yet-unnamed media project [the
title The Interceptor was
chosen. –Dick] will be bankrolled
by Pierre Omidyar, the 46-year-old billionaire founder of eBay. Omidyar, who was considering buying The Washington Post this
year, decided that for the same price - $250 million - he could build his own
investigative journalism outfit.
In an interview with NYU journalism
professor James Rosen, Omidyar said the project "brings
together some of my interests in civic engagement and building conversations
and of course technology, but in a very creative way." Omidyar said,
"I have always been of the opinion that the right kind of journalism is a
critical part of our democracy." But until the uproar over the Snowden
revelations, he hadn't yet "found a way to engage directly."
Omidyar, chairman of the board at eBay, has a net worth
estimated at $8.5 billion. For the past three years, he has been publisher, CEO
and founder of Honolulu-based news site the Civil
Beat. While Civil Beat has been run via his nonprofit Omidyar
Network, the new venture will be managed separately, with revenue plowed back
into journalism. Given Omidyar's initial quarter-billion-dollar financial
commitment and tech credentials as eBay founder, the project is likely to
reshape popular concepts of what's possible in modern journalism.
Initial hires reportedly include Greenwald, his co-reporter and
documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill of The Nation. The project is
likely to focus on privacy, surveillance and what Scahill dubbed America's
"Dirty Wars" executed in secrecy by the Tampa, Florida-based Special
Operations Command. But Omidyar has stressed that he wants the new organization
to cover entertainment and sports news, as well. . . .
Given the stark revelations from the Snowden documents and the
dearth of resources to fund long-term reporting projects, the announcement by
Omidyar is likely to resonate for years. As for the final form of his company
and the journalism to be pursued, a good bet is to look at Omidyar's brief
forays into journalism at that Honolulu news site, Civil Beat. In a searing
defense of Julian Assange in 2010, an editorial from Civil Beat speaks to the inherent rights of a citizenry
to be informed of its government's actions. Referring to US government pressure
to strangle WikiLeaks by threatening online payment services, the Civil Beat
editorial board wrote "by taking the steps they have to shut down
WikiLeaks, governments create a chilling effect on other publishers, making it
less likely that information that sheds light on government policy and actions
that citizens should know about becomes public."
It's not often those powerful statements are backed up by
quarter-billion-dollar commitments. This story, I would wager, has just begun.
Jonathan
Franklin is an author and reporter based in Santiago, Chile. He writes
frequently for The Guardian and is author of 33 Men,
the chronicle of 33 Chilean miners trapped underground. He is currently working
on a book about solutions to PTSD in US war vets. He can be contacted at chilefranklin2000@yahoo.com
or on twitter @FranklinBlog Copyright,
Truthout.
2011 IRE Investigative
Books List
IRE's annual list
of investigative books can be
viewed here and seen below. More than 200 books published in 2011 made
the list. The annual list is compiled by
Steve Weinberg. If you know of an investigative/explanatory book written
by an American journalist published last year for public sale and fail to see
it listed, please contact Steve Weinberg, weinbergs@missouri.edu.Here are Weinberg's thoughts on a few of the books:
Retirement Heist:
How Companies Plunder and Profit From the Nest Eggs of American Workers, by Ellen E. Schultz,
Penguin/ Portfolio. The embedded lesson in Schultz ... Read
more ...
“4 Slay
Journalist Well Known in India
J.C. Behrens. Typewriter Guerillas: Closeups of 20 Top
Investigative Reporters. 1977.
Ron Chepesiuk, Haney Howell and Edward Lee. Raising
Hell: Straight Talk with Investigative Journalists. 1997.
John S.
Friedman. The Secret Histories: Hidden
Truths That Challenged the Past and Changed the World . A one-of-a-kind collection of political
histories that have changed the way we look at the world. Includes pieces by
I.F. Stone, Seymour Hersh, Greg Palast, James Risen and others
Klein,
Woody. The Inside Stories of Modern Political Scandals: How Investigative
Reporters Have Changed the Course of American History. Praeger, 2010. A recounting of major investigative coups of
the past sixty years—Woodward-Berstein Watergate revelations, Bethany McLean on
Enron, Eric Lichtblau and James Risen on Bush admin. vast eavesdropping program,
Dana Priest and “extraordinary rendition,” et al. --
McLean,
Bethany. All the Devils Are Here: the Hidden History of the Financial Crisis. Penguin,
2011. Rev. The IRE Journal (Winter 2011).
Mitford,
Jessica. Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking. New
York
Philipps,
David. Lethal Warriors: Uncovering the Tragic Reality of PTSD. Palgrave
Macmillan, 2011. Rev. The IRE Journal (Winter 2011)
John
Pilger. Tell Me No Lies. 2005. This
collection of investigative journalism of the past 60 years includes pieces by
well-regarded reporters such as Seymour Hersh, Greg Palast, Edward R. Murrow,
Jessica Mitford, Eric Schlosser.
Politkovskaya,
Anna. Is Journalism Worth Dying For? Final Dispatches. Melville House, 2011. Trans. From the Russian and mostly pub.
originally in Novaya Gazeta. Rev. In
These Times (June 2011).
Investigative Reporting: A Study in Technique
(Journalism Media Manual) by David Spar. 1999.
Steffy,
Loren. Drowning in Oil: BP and the Reckless Pursuit of Profit. McGraw Hill, 2011. Rev. The
IRE Journal (Winter 2011).
MEDIA OFFERING INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING
I
sent Ziva Branstetter, investigative reporting editor of the Tulsa World, this list of investigative
reporting magazines (one online). Her
reply follows.
JOURNALS
PUBLISHING INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
--Columbia Journalism
Review.
--IRE Journal.
--Mother Jones.
--The Nation.
--ProPublica,
started in 2008 to publish
investigative journalism.
Compiled by
Ziva Branstetter
There's a lot I could add to this list in all categories just based on what I see as a contest judge for Pulitzers and IRE national contest. Here are some major ones:
Newspapers (all have either won or placed as a finalist in the Pulitzers since 2000.)
NY Times
Washington Post
Seattle Times
Tampa Bay Times
Chicago Tribune
Sarasota Herald Tribune
Tampa Bay Times
I would also add:
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (great work at a smaller market)
Tulsa World (of course!)
Dallas Morning News
The Guardian UK (has a US operation)
Wire services that have won or placed in Pulitzers very recently:
AP
Reuters
Magazines are a dying breed because everything is going online now, but I would add
Rolling Stone.
Online:
Center for Public Integrity (Pulitzer this year)
Center for Investigative Reporting
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIR)
A growing contender hiring a lot of investigative reporters: BuzzFeed (really!)
Ziva Branstetter Enterprise Editor
Tulsa World
918-581-8306 (o)
918-520-0406 (c)
@zivabranstetter
There's a lot I could add to this list in all categories just based on what I see as a contest judge for Pulitzers and IRE national contest. Here are some major ones:
Newspapers (all have either won or placed as a finalist in the Pulitzers since 2000.)
NY Times
Washington Post
Seattle Times
Tampa Bay Times
Chicago Tribune
Sarasota Herald Tribune
Tampa Bay Times
I would also add:
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (great work at a smaller market)
Tulsa World (of course!)
Dallas Morning News
The Guardian UK (has a US operation)
Wire services that have won or placed in Pulitzers very recently:
AP
Reuters
Magazines are a dying breed because everything is going online now, but I would add
Rolling Stone.
Online:
Center for Public Integrity (Pulitzer this year)
Center for Investigative Reporting
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIR)
A growing contender hiring a lot of investigative reporters: BuzzFeed (really!)
Ziva Branstetter Enterprise Editor
Tulsa World
918-581-8306 (o)
918-520-0406 (c)
@zivabranstetter
Google Search, Investigative Journalism
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigative_journalism
Investigative
journalism
is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of
interest, often involving crime, political corruption, ...
centerforinvestigativereporting.org/
Jun
26, 2007 – Investigative reporting on the Web. CIR, California Watch win
2 Society of Professional Journalists awards. CHRISTA SCHARFENBERG ...
www.propublica.org/
ProPublica
was a recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting and a 2010
Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting. See a full list of our awards
» ...
investigativereportingworkshop.org/
Oct
19, 2011 – The Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University
seeks to derive new models of supporting investigative reporting.
projects.publicintegrity.org/icij/
Sep
28, 2011 – The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists was
launched in 1997 as a project of the Center for Public Integrity to extend
globally ...
mashable.com/2010/11/.../investigative-journalism-social-w...
|
|
by
Vadim Lavrusik
- In 11,985 circles
Nov
24, 2010 – Social tools are making the work of investigative reporters
more efficient and comprehensive. Take a look at these examples on the
cutting ...
|
fij.org/
Click
here to hear veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh tell how - with
financial support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism - he
learned about the ...
www.iwatchnews.org/
iWatch
News produces original investigative journalism about significant public
issues to make institutional power more transparent and accountable. iWatch ...
www.ire.org/
17
hours ago – The blog also covers issues of general interest to investigative
reporting, including discussions of recent projects, new sources and
reporting ...
 |
www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVKGUctuoXE
Jun
25, 2009 - 5 min - Uploaded by WashingtonPost
Bob Woodward explains the three ways journalists get their information and comments on the future of in-depth journalism in ... |
|
Business
Recorder (blog) - 1 day ago
The
initiative, known as AGAHI covered areas such as Investigative Journalism,
Media Ethics, Anti-Money-Laundering and Terrorist Organisation Funding, ...
|
Searches
related to investigative journalism
TOP
SECRET AMERICA
NEWSPAPER to
BOOK to FILM
Priest, Dana and Bill Arkin. “Top Secret America”
series in Washington Post, 2010. Interview
of Arkin on Democracy Now (7-19-10): On privatization of intelligence work on levels
above top secret intelligence administration, “super-users,” from information
gathering to assassination. These
companies are dangerous to US security because they work for profit, not public
good, and they constitute a secret police state above congressional/public
oversight. Started by Bush but no change under Obama. The 5 pp. in the WP are only the tip of the iceberg of
information online. This two-year investigative study involving many people and
a large budget from the WP is a great
achievement of IJ. Their book has been
published and PBS presented their documentary.
–Dick
Book review: 'Top Secret America'
Dana
Priest and William M. Arkin investigate the explosive growth of the country's
vast secret world since 9/11 and the staggering waste and ineptitude that have
followed.
October 17, 2011|By Bob
Drogin, Los Angeles Times
The
CIA was nominally in charge when Navy SEALs flew deep into Pakistan in
radar-evading Stealth helicopters in May to kill Osama bin Laden and when
Predator drones fired missiles to kill Anwar Awlaki in Yemen last month.
But
America's fabled spy service was eclipsed in both raids by a far more secretive
group that flies 10 times as many drones as the CIA. Based in North Carolina,
it runs its own intelligence division, flies its own reconnaissance planes and
has its own satellites. Its leaders don't speak in public. It has no media
spokesman or public website.
In
"Top Secret America," Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, two of
America's most relentless reporters, pull the curtains back on JSOC, or Joint Special Operations Command,
to reveal a self-sustaining secret Pentagon army that has captured or killed
more Al Qaeda militants "than the rest of the U.S. government forces
combined."
This is an invaluable book,
a breathtaking investigative account of America's vast new secret world. It is not light reading,
but it offers an indispensable guide to anyone who worries about the explosive
growth of what the authors call America's
terrorism-industrial complex since the Sept. 11 attacks a decade ago.
In
their book, based on several hundred interviews, Priest and Arkin map out a
largely invisible parallel universe of more than 1,300 federal agencies, nearly
2,000 private companies and 854,000 people doing "top secret" work.
Spending for counter-terrorism, they note, has skyrocketed without members of
Congress or anyone else really knowing what works and what does not.
A
few examples: Some $81 billion is spent to gather foreign intelligence. The
Homeland Security Department spends $58 billion, while the Pentagon spends
untold billions more on counter-terrorism and homeland security. With so many
duplicative agencies, bureaus, programs and gizmos, the counterterrorism effort
is beset with "disturbing dysfunction."
Priest,
who has won two Pulitzer Prizes for her reporting, is an intrepid tour guide to
this uncharted world. Visiting suspect sites around the country, she shares her
frustrations at chasing what she calls "buildings without addresses,
offices without floors, acronyms without explanation."
Arkin
is the kind of sleuth who mines impenetrable government documents to write
directories of nuclear weapons, classified code names and much more. So when
Priest searches for a mysterious underground bunker in rural Maryland, Arkin
digs into his stash of "contracts for guard and facility maintenance
services" and reports that the buried facility is 90,000 square feet and
has a helicopter pad on top.
And
it's hardly the biggest government bunker. In all, Arkin determines that 33
large complexes for top secret intelligence work have been built around
Washington in recent years — equivalent in size to three Pentagons. That doesn't
include five new buildings to house the ever-expanding CIA, a vast new complex
for the National Security Agency in Utah and scores of other facilities around
the country. Much of the top secret work is doled out to savvy corporate
contractors, which have boomed in the recession. Some offer shiny BMWs and fat
bonuses to hire away CIA analysts and others with top secret security
clearances so they can then offer them back to government agencies at inflated
prices.
The
burden is substantial. The authors cite a recent study by the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence (another group created in the last decade)
which found that private contractors make up 29% of the workforce in
intelligence agencies but cost 49% of personnel budgets.
Does
the bloated system work? The two plots that have come closest to causing mass
murder in the United States — the attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines jet
over Detroit in December 2009 and the attempt to detonate a car bomb in New
York's Times Square in May 2010 — both failed because the bombers were
incompetent, not because of U.S. efforts. Both were intelligence failures.
Robert
Gates, the former CIA chief and Defense secretary, tells the authors that he is
appalled at the constant fear-mongering about dirty bombs, killer germs, a
cyber Pearl Harbor and other threats. U.S. courts have tried 46 terrorism cases
involving 125 people in recent years, he points out. "So, I would say the
numbers of extremists are very small. Let's stay calm."
PBS, FRONTLINE, “TOP
SECRET AMERICA”
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/topsecretamerica/
PBS
Sep
6, 2011 - Join us for a live chat about “Top Secret America: 9/11
to the Boston .... FRONTLINE Managing Editor Philip Bennett reflects on this
week's film.
Transcript - Credits - DVDs
www.pbs.org
› ... › Iraq / War
on Terror › Top Secret
America
PBS
NARRATOR:
─Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Dana Priest investigates the creation ofTop
Secret America. ALLISON STANGER, Rohatyn Center for ...
JAMES RISEN, PAY ANY
PRICE: GREED, POWER, AND ENDLESS WAR, Google Search, Nov. 15, 2014
“No
single review or interview can do justice to Pay Any Price”—Huffington Post.
www.nytimes.com/.../james-risens-pay-any-price.html
The
New York Times
Oct
15, 2014 - In “Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War,” James
Risen holds up a mirror to the United States in the 13 years since 9/11,
and what it ...
www.nytimes.com/.../in-pay-any-price-james-risen-ex...
The
New York Times
Oct
12, 2014 - In “Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War,” James
Risen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for The New York
Times, sets ...
www.democracynow.org/.../read_excerpt_from_james...
Democracy
Now! Oct 14, 2014 - Read
"Pallets of Cash," an excerpt from Pay Any Price: Greed,
Power, and Endless War, the new book by New York Times investigative ...
www.alternet.org/.../new-york-times-journalist-james-risen-prepare...
AlterNet,
Amy Goodman interviews Risen,
http://www.alternet.org/media/new-york-times-journalist-james-risen-prepared-pay-any-price-report-war-terror
www.huffingtonpost.com/.../james-risen-undercover...
The
Huffington Post
Oct
28, 2014 - NEW YORK -– New York Times reporter James Risen acknowledged
in his new book, Pay Any Price, that he posed in one instance as
an ...
www.huffingtonpost.com/.../james-risens-new-book...
The
Huffington Post
Oct
14, 2014 - No single review or interview can do justice to Pay Any
Price -- the new book by James Risen that is the
antithesis of what routinely passes for ...
www.thedailybeast.com/.../speed-read-james-risen-indicts...
The
Daily Beast
Oct
14, 2014 - In his new book, 'Pay Any Price,' reporter James
Risen reports how billions were lost and American rights were
infringed when the government ..
Jeremy
Renner stars as Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb in Kill the
Messenger(Chuck Ziotnick/Focus Features).
CULTURE
» NOVEMBER 20, 2014
The
Reporter Who Paid a High Price for ‘Contra Crack’
A
new film, Kill the Messenger, shows how the CIA, theWashington
Post and the LA Times conspired to discredit a
journalist, and destroyed a life.
Webb’s
scoop of a lifetime was drawing a connection between two major 1980s news
stories so successfully that it’s almost hard now not to think of them
together, 'contra crack' tripping off the tongue like 'French bread' or
'English muffins.'
In Kill the Messenger,
Gary Webb, the investigative journalist who exposed the contra-crack
connection, is portrayed by Jeremy Renner—most familiar to a mass audience as
Hawkeye in The Avengers, but known to film buffs for appearing in
gritty, based-on-real-life films like The Hurt Lockerand American
Hustle. Kill the Messenger, which Renner also co-produced, is
in that docudrama genre. More specifically, it recalls films like the 2010
Valerie Plame biopic Fair Game, where the story is not only true,
but one that corporate news media would rather you not know. Kill the
Messenger is a story about the story that the San Jose Mercury
News reporter gave up his career to get out.
The
movie opens with historical footage of the war on drugs: presidents from Nixon
to Reagan declaring it, Nancy Reagan urging us to just say no, the Partnership
for a Drug-Free America comparing our drugged brains to breakfast, news outlets
reporting the crack epidemic. A later montage shows footage of the other “war”
of the time: speeches about the Cold War, along with shots of the contra war in
Central America, in which rebels organized by the CIA attempted to overthrow
the socialist government of Nicaragua. (In These Times was one of
the few outlets to cover the story while the war was still ongoing; for most in
corporate media, the cognitive dissonance was too much to handle.)
As
most people who go to see the film will know, Webb’s scoop of a lifetime was
drawing a connection between these two major 1980s news stories, so
successfully that it’s almost hard now not to think of them together, “contra
crack” tripping off the tongue like “French bread” or “English muffins.”
The
montages succeed in recalling how weird—and shocking—it originally was that
Ronald Reagan’s favorite foreign policy endeavor would be intimately connected
with a product so universally demonized.
Having
established the real-life context, the film moves on to its fictional depiction
of Webb. One of the big questions you want a biopic of Webb to answer is how he
nailed a story so many others missed. Renner plays him, naturally, as an
old-school muckraker unable to let go of a story once he’s got his teeth into
it.
But
he’s also portrayed as a guy with a deep well of anger and the ability to focus
it at the right targets. (“What about this doesn’t piss you off?” he asks,
surveying crack’s devastating impact on an urban neighborhood.) He’s a
character who’s willing to break rules—bribing his way into a Nicaraguan
prison—and, when he’s frustrated, to break windows. This portrait seems
plausible—Webb’s personal recklessness goes a long way toward explaining why he
was the one journalist willing to go out on a limb.
His
colleagues, especially Mercury News Executive Editor Jerry
Ceppos, played by a perfectly cast Oliver Platt, live in a world of
cost/benefit analysis: They want to get out as much truth as they can afford
to. Webb does not, cannot, make that calculation. He will get the story even if
it destroys him, which is why he gets the story and why he is destroyed.
Halfway
through the picture, the hunter becomes the hunted: The triumphant publication
of Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series in the Mercury News—which
established that a key player in the spread of the crack epidemic was getting
his raw material from contra-linked drug-runners—provokes a backlash from both
journalistic and intelligence establishments.
Here,
the film jumps away from Webb’s point of view to show the editorial discussions
at two media giants scooped by a paper they would disdain to call a rival.
While both the Los Angeles Times and theWashington Post bought
into a CIA public affairs campaign to discredit Webb, the Los Angeles
Times is portrayed as particularly motivated by stung pride. The paper
dedicates a team to gutting the reporter who scored a big story on their turf,
devoting more journalistic energy to bringing down Webb than they ever gave to
investigating the origins of the cocaine that flooded South Central Los
Angeles.
The
Post comes
across as more of a cat’s paw for the CIA, with one staffer—clearly modeled on
longtime Post CIA correspondent Walter Pincus, who worked for
the agency’s precursor early in his career—relaying to attentive editors the
CIA’s views on how the story should be spun: that Webb was a conspiracy
theorist, a fabricator, not to be trusted.
Lest
you think this is Hollywood conspiracy-mongering, the CIA’s in house journal
published an article, only recently declassified, citing the Post’s Webb
takedowns as an example of how to “work with journalists who are already
disposed toward writing a balanced story.” CIA public affairs gave out
Pincus’ Post articles to other reporters, “helping to create
what the Associated Press called a ‘firestorm of reaction’
against the San Jose Mercury News,” in the agency’s words.
Webb’s
life did not have the shape of a traditional movie. The forces he antagonized
were successful in driving him out of journalism and into a downward spiral
that culminated, in 2004, in an apparent suicide. It’s hard to turn that into a
feel-good ending.
Instead,
the film ends as it begins, with real footage—home movies of Webb horsing
around with his kids. It brings home that the life you’ve just seen
destroyed was that of a real person—and a real hero.
Jim
Naureckas is the editor of Extra!, the magazine of FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy
in Reporting).
SCHOLARSHIP OPPORTUNITIES:
The Bill Moyers Travel
Scholarship
at the University of
Arkansas-Fayetteville Journalism Dept. sends student journalists to IRE’s
conferences. The scholarship is funded
by professor emeritus James R. (Dick) Bennett. Students at the UofA should contact the
Journalism Department.
The James R. Bennett Travel
Scholarship, administered by the Investigative
Journalists and Editors Center at the University of Missouri, Columbia, enables
college journalism students in Mississippi, Oklahoma or Louisiana to attend
IRE’s Conferences. The scholarships were established with IRE by Dr. James R.
Bennett, professor emeritus of English, University of Arkansas.
Recent OMNI Newsletters
UN Children’s
Day 11-20
Vegetarian
Action #13, 11-12
Armistice Day
#8, Part II, 11-11
Armistice Day
#7, Part I, 11-11
PTSD #4, 11-10
Capitalism and
Climate Change 11-4
UN Day #7, 10-24
END OF IRE NEWSLETTER #1
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