I definitely intend to check them out, because I have no doubt that
Palast is capable of indignation, evidence, and clarity. In fact, I have
seen just such pieces of his.
I guess you just got me at a moment when the issue of meanness has
simply started to eat at me. Honestly, I remain uncertain about where I
will come out on all this. Sometimes I honestly think I need a tougher
hide.
It's not that I don't share Palast's outrage. It's the tone. But I also
know that indignation without passion is not possible. Perhaps I have to
learn to take Palast as a package if I want his incisive insights into
official misconduct.
Steve
________________________________
From: HCJ [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Peter
Parisi
Sent: Monday, June 25, 2007 1:08 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The Tears of a Clone --Greg Palast's feisty investigative
journalism
I had suffered a twinge of conscience when I posted a column by Greg
Pallas and recommended that we talk about it as an example of a more
impassioned journalistic style that is provided by the professional code
of objectivity.
My concern had to do with the fact that these postings by palace are not
straight examples of what he puts on BBC or in the Guardian, and I knew
I had never really track those down.
In the wake of Steve's perceptive concerns about the incivility of
Pallas's approach, I hunted up one of his video news reports that ran on
BBC's Newsnight program. In other words, this work has the sanction of
publication by an august journalistic outlet. This is a piece about
investment companies that buy up the debt of underdeveloped nations at
discounted rates on student countries to get the full original amount.
The rock star Bono and many other celebrities and young people have
campaigned for debt relief for these nations. This maneuver undermines
that effort, and the firms that engage in it are colloquially termed
"vulture funds.".
Please check out the piece. I think it really sharpens the question of
combining a values-based indignation with investigative reporting,
conveyed through graphic storytelling conventions (here in a "hunt for
the vultures") a la Michael Moore.
Again, I hope some of the graduate and undergraduate student members of
the list will chime in. I'm withholding my own views (which are actually
quite flexible) until we hear some younger voices in this thing.
Here's the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qbxj8azQb80&feature=PlayList&p=FC37F4B5EC
10D27C&index=0&playnext=1
Peter
On 6/24/07, Gorelick, Steve <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Hello from Berlin to Peter, Colleagues and Students:
Ah, Greg Palast.
Every time I read him I get the same feeling. There is a scene
in the Godfather when the character Virgil Sollozzo (Al Lettieri) asks
Captain McCluskey (Sterling Hayden) to frisk Michael Corleone (Al
Pacino) while they are packed in a car. McCluskey leans over the seat
and struggles and strains to find a weapon while they both contort
themselves. When he is done, McCluskey says something like: "I'm
getting too old for this."
Greg Palast makes me feel old. Because while his style of
delivering news - a mix of persuasive facts and evidence and snotty,
cruel tabloid-style comments - might be the way of the future, I won't
be joining him for the ride.
For a moment, I'll set aside the issue of language and civility.
I may simply have to come to terms with the fact that my probably quaint
ideas about how you do and do not talk to others - even through a news
article - are probably 19 th century relics.
But what about the stories themselves? How do they hold up?
This is not an easy question, precisely because of the way he
writes them. Absolutely dead-on evidence of possible official misconduct
is almost always there. But that evidence is often sprinkled piecemeal
into the polemic. I suppose I am tired of having to decode Palast's
stories and separate the wheat from the chaff. In fact, I just read the
story that Peter so kindly forwarded and I felt a little like I was
reading a computer file in which the words have become accidentally
jumbled. I eventually got the clear line of argument and evidence, and I
eventually got appropriately indignant, but not without some effort. I'm
not sure that clear arguments and evidence emerge most effectively out
of tabloid snark-talk.
Neither do I find Palast that witty. That is my problem. It
seems that in a violent and angry and unsubtle age, sledgehammer "wit"
has become the new "subtle." I am sure it will find its readership. To
Palast's credit, it has. It's just not my cup of Diet Pepsi.
Which leads to the meanness. I do feel more and more quaint
these days. Perhaps some crimes and corruption do call for making fun of
people in highly personal ways. Maybe when the subject of a story starts
to cry, and that subject is implicated in corrupt acts, it is
appropriate to make fun of their crocodile tears. I really don't know. I
just know I don't have it in me. I can see carefully and devastatingly
building a case of crimes and corruption. Just not the personal stuff.
Whenever I read Palast and his fascinating stories, I always
have the same fantasy: Why can't he put out two columns? Column #1 would
be for those who enjoy the unfunny polemic in which the evidence is
buried and Column #2 would have only the evidence. That way his piece
would impact both his loyal readers and those of us who share the
indignation but not the taste for his style of reporting.
Steve
________________________________
From: HCJ [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Peter Parisi
Sent: Monday, June 18, 2007 2:56 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Fwd: The Tears of a Clone --Greg Palast's feisty
investigative journalism
I don't know how many of the younger members of this list have
heard of Greg Palast, an American-born investigative journalist who
works for the BBC and the Guardian newspaper. His reporting is also
collected in books like "Armed Madhouse," which has been a New York
Times bestseller.
Here is a recent piece by him. I thought you would find it
interesting as an example of an unusual journalistic approach. Palast
adopts a feisty, even nasty voice, which he links to hard-core
investigative reporting and tough questioning.
The question of forging a journalistic style that mixes
passionate indignation with solid facts is ever more important as the
mainstream profession struggles to find a voice that will engage
citizens -- especially young citizens, who increasingly get their news
from "fake news"& satiric journalism. The American Journalism Review's
current cover story provides a measure of the concern <
Http://www.ajr.org/>. It asks what the profession can learn from Jon
Stewart. But it's no easy thing to combine the professional code of
objectivity with excited/exciting reporting emerging that carries an
attitude and isn't afraid to call absurdity and evil what they are.
In this context, what do you all think of Palast's work? Is it a
viable, affective journalistic approach?
One more thing -- The enclosed piece is about the issue of the
GOP using "caging lists" to disenfranchise voters, particularly
African-American voters. The piece has the details, but here's the
striking thing. If you get interested in this problem, and go to
Lexis-Nexis to see what has been in the papers, you will find
essentially _no_coverage by the US press. (The single, puzzling
exception was the Grand Rapids (Michigan) Press. Go figure. But try
searching "caging lists" and "election" and see what you get.
Maybe the problem of "caging lists" is total nonsense. Read
Palast's piece and see what you think. But it isn't nonsense, and the
extraordinary silence of virtually the entire journalism establishment
demonstrates how the press keeps truly controversial issues (like the
possibility that the 2004 election was fixed) completely out of public
discussion (even as it does many laudable, excellent projects).
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Greg Palast < [log in to unmask]
<mailto:[log in to unmask]> >
Date: Jun 18, 2007 12:51 PM
Subject: The Tears of a Clone - Conyers Closes in on Karl and
his Rove-bots...
To: [log in to unmask]
The Tears of a Clone
Conyers Closes in on Karl and his Rove-bots ...
By Greg Palast | June 18, 2007
Special to BRAD BLOG
<http://mailings.gregpalast.com//lt/t_go.php?i=34&e=MTY3NjQ=&l=-http--ww
w.bradblog.com/--Q-p--E-4696>
Boo-hoo! I made Tim Griffin cry.
He cried. Then he lied.
You remember Tim. Karl Rove's right hand (right claw?) man. The
GOP's ragin' cagin' man.
Griffin is the Rove-bot exposed
<http://mailings.gregpalast.com//lt/t_go.php?i=34&e=MTY3NjQ=&l=-http--ww
w.youtube.com/watch--Q-v--E-IkvWkwv7UVo> by our BBC Newsnight
investigations team as the man who gathered and sent out the infamous
'caging' lists to Republican state chairmen during the 2004 election.
Caging lists, BBC discovered, were used secretly as a basis to
challenge the right to vote of thousands of citizens - including the
homeless, students and soldiers sent overseas. The day after BBC
broadcast that the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, John Conyers,
sought our evidence on Griffin, Tim resigned his post
<http://mailings.gregpalast.com//lt/t_go.php?i=34&e=MTY3NjQ=&l=-http--ww
w.bradblog.com/--Q-p--E-4620> as US Attorney for Arkansas. That job was
a little gift from Karl Rove who made room for his man Griffin by
demanding the firing of US prosecutor Bud Cummins.
Last week, our cameras captured Griffin, all teary-eyed
<http://mailings.gregpalast.com//lt/t_go.php?i=34&e=MTY3NjQ=&l=-http--ww
w.bradblog.com/--Q-p--E-4690> , in his humiliating kiss-off speech
delivered in Little Rock at the University of Arkansas where he moaned
that, "public service isn't worth it."
True. In the old Jim Crow days in Arkansas, you could get
yourself elected by blocking African-Americans. (The voters his caging
game targeted are - quelle surprise! - disproportionately Black
citizens.)
But today, Griffin can't even get an unemployment check. When he
resigned two weeks ago following our broadcast, the cover story was that
the voter persecutor-turned-prosecutor had resigned to work for
Presidential wannabe Fred Thompson. But when Thompson's staff was asked
by a reporter why they would hire the 'cagin' man,' suddenly, the 'Law
and Order' star decided associating with Griffin might take the shine
off Thompson's badge, even if it is from the props department.
Griffin, instead of saying that public service "isn't worth it,"
should have said, "Crime doesn't pay." Because, according to experts
such as law professor Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 'caging,' when used to
target Black voters' rights, is a go-to-prison crime.
By resigning, Tim may not avoid the hard questions about caging
- or the hard time that might result. When I passed the first set of
documents to Conyers (a real film noir moment, in a New York hotel room
near midnight), the soft-spoken Congressman said that, resignation or
not, "We aren't done with Mr. Griffin yet..."
Tears Not Truth
Back in Little Rock, when asked about caging, Rove's guy linked
a few fibs to a few whoppers to some malefactious mendacity. That is, he
lied.
"I didn't cage votes. I didn't cage mail," Griffin asserted.
At the risk of making you cry again, Tim, may I point you to an
email dated August 26, 2004
<http://mailings.gregpalast.com//lt/t_go.php?i=34&e=MTY3NjQ=&l=-http--ww
w.bradblog.com/--Q-p--E-4594> . It says, "Subject: Re: Caging." And it
says, "From: Tim Griffin - Research/Communications" with the email
[log in to unmask] RNCHQ is the Republican National Committee
Headquarters, is it not, Mr. Griffin? Now do you remember caging mail?
If that doesn't ring a bell, please note that at the bottom is
this: "ATTACHMENT: Caging-1.xls". And that attachment was a list of
voters.
In last week's pathetic farewell, Mr. Griffin averred that the
accusation he was involved in caging voters, "Goes back to one guy -
whose name I won't mention." (FYI, Mr. Griffin: My mother calls me,
"Gregory.")
Yes, I first reported the story for BBC London
<http://mailings.gregpalast.com//lt/t_go.php?i=34&e=MTY3NjQ=&l=-http--ne
ws.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/3956129.stm> - back in 2004
which, as Griffin correctly noted, it was ignored by my US press
colleagues until, as Tim put it, "I became embroiled in the US Attorney
thing." By 'the US Attorney thing,' I assume you are referring to your
involvement in firing and smearing honest prosecutors and grabbing one
of their salaries for yourself.
You say, Mr. Griffin, that the unmentionable reporter, "Made
[it] up out of whole cloth." You flatter me, Mr. Griffin. We could not
possibly be so creative at The Beeb as to construct the thousands of
names of voters on your caging lists.
And by the way, we don't have just one of your "caging" emails,
but scores of them.
I want to take this opportunity to thank you for sending them to
us - even if that was not your intent. You copied your caging missives
to ' [log in to unmask] Mr. Doster was Chairman of the Florida
Bush campaign - but that address was not his but John Wooden's
pretending to be the Bush campaigners. Wooden then sent your notes to
me.
Rove in Range
By the way, Mr. Griffin, if you want an explanation of 'caging
voters,' just read an email dated February 5, 2007 by...Tim Griffin.
In that email, Griffin references the Bush campaigns mailing out
thousands of letters. The letters returned ('caged') as undeliverable
were used as the GOP's supposed evidence that these were "thousands of
fraudulent voter registrations." These voters were subject to challenge.
However, these caging lists of "fraudulent" addresses, like the 2000
"felon" lists which in fact contained no felons, contained no fraudulent
voters. But that wouldn't necessarily save them from the massively
successful Republican voter-challenge campaign.
During the appearance he made in Arkansas last week
<http://mailings.gregpalast.com//lt/t_go.php?i=34&e=MTY3NjQ=&l=-http--ww
w.bradblog.com/--Q-p--E-4690> , Griffin said he'd never heard of
'caging.' "I had to look it up," he said. Griffin discovered that
"caging" is "a direct mail term."
I don't doubt Griffin's ignorance. Griffin's just a good ol'
boy, a former military lawyer, who wouldn't know direct mail terminology
from a hole in the ground. Until he went to work for the RNC.
So where did Tim get this direct mail term he used in his
emails? Well, before Karl Rove signed on with George W. Bush, he owned
Karl Rove & Co
<http://mailings.gregpalast.com//lt/t_go.php?i=34&e=MTY3NjQ=&l=-http--ww
w.sourcewatch.org/index.php--Q-title--E-Karl_Rove_%26_Company> ....a
direct mail firm. Rove made millions making up lists of voters, doing
more 'caging' than a zoo-keeper.
Am I saying caging-expert Rove had something to do with the
allegedly illegal caging games of his boy Griffin? Does a bear...?
Mr. Griffin wouldn't answer BBC's requests for comment. So I
suggested to an Arkansas local, Luther Lowe, a former army reservist and
himself a victim of a challenge to his vote, that at the Little Rock
send-off for Griffin, he ask the fallen US Attorney about Rove's
involvement in caging. Lowe did so, politely. Griffin wove, ducked,
blathered and blubbered. But wouldn't answer.
Maybe a subpoena would encourage a Griffin response. And a grant
of immunity from the Conyers committee. That's Rove's nightmare. Because
unless Griffin joins Alberto Gonzales in Club Amnesia, Griffin has a lot
to tell us about Mr. Rove and targeting Black voters.
Will he? It's not Conyers' style to hunt down Rove. The
congressman is not, despite what Republicans say, a partisan hit man. He
is, however, one tenacious legislator who told me he would like his
committee, "to follow where the evidence leads."
But that's not necessarily going to happen. Conyers told me he
sees the evidence in the prosecutor firing investigation leading to the
much bigger, nastier issue of voter suppression - in simpler terms,
fixing elections.
Unfortunately, many on his committee from both parties see the
hearings as limited to the single issue of the firing of prosecutors.
They want to scrutinize the elephant's trunk but refuse to acknowledge
it's attached to an elephant: election rigging. Racially poisoned,
direct-mail driven, computer implemented election rigging.
But Conyers may get there yet, to the issue of elections
manipulation. I didn't get that from the Chairman (too circumspect to
let his future intensions slip out). I got it from the Big Bubba. When I
ran into Ol' Silver Eyes himself at an Air America soiree, Bill Clinton
(man, he's gotten thin!) told me, "When we really get going on these
prosecutor hearings, when we really dig deep, we're going to get right
to the issue of voter suppression."
But what do you mean "we," Bill? Conyers is dean of the
Congressional Black Caucus, which has an abiding concern and painful
experience with illegal vote suppression of all types: caging, purging,
challenging, lynching. But whether Conyers can convince his committee,
mostly members of the Congressional White Caucus, to "dig deep" on vote
suppression, is an open question.
In the meantime, Conyers has convinced his committee to drop
subpoenas on Harriett Miers (the lady tight with Griffin, Rove and,
notably, George W. Bush) and Sara Taylor, Rove's Gal Friday. Conyers,
methodically, determinedly, is circling in on Rove, "Bush's Brain," a
man known to surrender the corpses of his allies in place of his own
(eh, Mr. Libby?). No wonder Griffin's in tears.
So here's a hanky, Mr. Griffin. This unnamable reporter would
rather you save your tears for Randall Prausa. The African-American
soldier was on active military duty when he ended up on one of your
caging lists, what you term a suspected 'fraudulent' voter subject to
GOP challenge because he was not home to get his fraudulent, 'Welcome,
voter,' letter from the GOP.
Can you guess, Mr. Griffin, why Prausa wasn't at home? Well,
unlike Messrs. Rove and Bush, Prausa was serving his country overseas.
And that's what caging is all about. If you're Black, you get
shipped to Baghdad and you lose your vote. Mission Accomplished, Mr.
Griffin. Mission Accomplished, Mr. Rove.
===
The confidential Griffin e-mail, "Subject: Re: Caging," is
reproduced in Greg Palast's New York Times bestseller, ARMED MADHOUSE:
Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild. Available
at www.GregPalast.com <http://www.gregpalast.com/>
Also: Catch the film of Randi Rhodes and Greg Palast on "Bush's
and Giuliani's favorite vultures," the men with connections to the Bush
Administration who have siphoned off the money meant for Africa's
poorest. Video online here
<http://mailings.gregpalast.com//lt/t_go.php?i=34&e=MTY3NjQ=&l=-http--ww
w.gregpalast.com/randi-rhodes-hunts-bushs-vultures-with-bbcs-greg-palast
/> .
To Unsubscribe, please click here
<http://mailings.gregpalast.com//box.php?funcml=unsub2&nl=1&mi=34&email=
[log in to unmask]> .
--
Peter Parisi, Ph.D.
Dept. of Film & Media Studies
Hunter College
695 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10021
212-772-4949
"People don't change. They just find out who they are." -- Ray
Skean
--
Peter Parisi, Ph.D.
Dept. of Film & Media Studies
Hunter College
695 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10021
212-772-4949
"People don't change. They just find out who they are." -- Ray Skean
|
