U.S. media have lost the will to dig deep - By Greg Palast

[kpete]

U.S. media have lost the will to dig deep
A changed news culture has let several important investigative stories slip through the cracks.

By Greg Palast, GREG PALAST is the author of "Armed Madhouse: From New Orleans to Baghdad -- Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild."
April 27, 2007


..............

I know some of the reasons why investigative reporting is on the decline. To begin with, investigations take time and money. A producer from "60 Minutes," watching my team's work on another voter purge list, said: "My God! You'd have to make hundreds of calls to make this case." In America's cash-short, instant-deadline world, there's not much room for that.

Are there still aggressive, talented investigative reporters in the U.S.? There are hundreds. I'll mention two: Seymour Hersh, formerly of the New York Times, and Robert Parry, formerly of the Associated Press, who uncovered the Iran-Contra scandal. The operative word here is "formerly." Parry tells me that he can no longer do this kind of investigative work within the confines of a U.S. daily newsroom.

One of the biggest disincentives to doing investigative journalism is that it jeopardizes future access to politicians and corporate elite. During the I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby trial, the testimony of Judith Miller and other U.S. journalists about the confidences they were willing to keep in order to maintain access seemed to me sadly illuminating.

more at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-palast27apr27,1,200401.story?ctrack=2&cset=true

[senseandsensibility]

1. Go, Greg!

He has to work for the BBC. The American "media" won't carry his work, but no one can challenge its truthfulness.

[mrfrapp]

3. Yes

Palast says that after he uncovered the Florida voter purge scandal for the BBC he took the story to the Washington Post. After a couple of days of it not being printed he made a telephone call to the Post. The reason they hadn't published the story was because they "had contacted Jeb Bush's office and they said it wasn't true." (paraphrase).

Yes, investigative journalism really is dead.

[blm]

5. I've been worried that McClatchy will find a way to dump Landay and Strobel, too.

As soon as we heard Knight-Ridder was being sold, many of us knew it was targeted by BushInc's buddies because of their reporting on Iraq intel and the Downing Street Memos.

A major stockholder insisted the company be sold shortly after the DSM story.

[seasat]

2. This is one of the biggest issues in our country today.

How can you hold our government accountable when no "infotainment" corporation is willing to do objective investigative journalism? The AG firing scandal would never have made the news if not for the actions of bloggers like Joshua Marshall. It's sad when bloggers with a fraction of the budget of these major corporations are mainly doing the investigative journalism in this country.

One of the first things that a Democratic president should do is reinstate some rules about media ownership and break up these media conglomerates. Perhaps some competition would encourage better journalism.

I like his closing line:

I've long argued that Britain needs a 1st Amendment right to press freedom. It could, of course, borrow ours. We don't use it.

[blm]

4. You got it Greg - and I HAVE to laugh cuz a few DUers complain Parry is a mere opinionator

and a conspiracy theorist because he has the nerve to tell some inconvenient truths they don't want mentioned.

Parry: Hey Democrats, Truth Matters
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/111106.html

[Peace Patriot]

6. A wonderful piece of writing by Greg Palast. He hits hard and he hits home--

but he also manages to convey his passion for his profession--investigative journalist--and for his beloved country, the USA, where he cannot find employment because he writes truthfully and without fear or favor, on the the heart of the matters that ail us: our stolen elections, our failed corporate news media.

His focus in this op-ed is heartbreaking: He had the story of the 2000 election. He knew what went wrong. He knew how they were stealing it. He had the data. He had done the analysis. And no one in the US corporate news media would print it.

He notes that they published it later, when it didn't matter. We had an illegitimate president that they were all kow-towing to. He had the story WHILE IT WAS HAPPENING--during the recount, before it was over. And it's very simple. Jeb Bush and Kathryn Harris purged the Florida voting rolls of enough perfectly eligible black voters to turn the tide for Bush.

None of our war profiteering corporate news monopolies bother with this kind of research any more, not just because budget cutting creates more profit for rich CEOs, but probably mainly because corruption, fascism and stolen elections serve the larger interests of the five rightwing billionaire CEOs who control it all. Bush is the president of the "haves and the have-mores," by his own account. That's THEM. That ain't us. And they don't just want ungodly profit from their newsgolopolies. They want ungodly profit from their war subsidiaries, and their pharmaceutical and insurance and banking interests and whatever else they have their fingers into. They want to loot our government and loot us, and use us as slave labor and cannon fodder. And so they are running a program of dumbing down the news, and giving a big trumpet to totally non-mainstream, rightwing, fascist views, to demoralize and disempower us, and make the great progressive American majority feel outnumbered.

They don't want intelligent reporting. They don't want investigations. Because they are thieves and murderers and liars themselves, just like the criminals in the White House whom they installed to do their bidding.

Well, I'm into organic metaphors lately, and I see Greg Palast as a variety of wild corn, off in a corner of the world, prospering on its little campesina farm, and, when the genetically modified monoculture that corporations have foisted upon much of our farmland finally ends in disaster, that wild seed--preserved as by a miracle (by the BBC!)--will enable us to restore the natural variety that creates abundance, health, prosperity and democracy. The wild seed corn of investigative journalism.

[blm]

9. I agree - the corpmedia has been complicit with BushInc's wars, murders, election coups

and dismantling of civil liberties since LONG BEFORE 9-11, even.

9-11 gave them the COVER they needed to be more blatant about their servitude to the BFEE and their corporate cronies.

[galloglas]

7. So true, ture, true...

Perhaps a new day will dawn?

[proud patriot]

8. Greg is touring the US right now , Go see him if you can

I had the pleasure of seeing him Thurs in Oakland Ca.
it was a very inspiring and energizing evening .