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/ <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]>
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--www.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--www.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--www.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--www.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--www.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--news.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--www.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--www.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--www.gregpalast.com/randi-rhodes-hunts-bushs-vultures-with-bbcs-greg-palast/>.
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--
Peter Parisi, Ph.D.
Dept. of Film & Media Studies
Hunter College
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"People don't change. They just find out who they are." -- Ray Skean