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=FC37F4B5EC10D27C&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 19th 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/ <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/>.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> To Unsubscribe, please click here
> <http://mailings.gregpalast.com//box.php?funcml=unsub2&nl=1&mi=34&[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