Just read between the lines...

Red Text is the real story hiding between the lines.
Violet Text is a notable quote from a specific blogger.
Blue Text is my own personal commentary.
Gold Text is a link to the original sources.

One word of advice I would offer to everyone who reads this blog;

....Each and every day, take just a moment of your precious time to pray for Peace and Justice.

Friday, April 27, 2007

A new book by Greg Palast...

Busy day ahead, so in lieu of my regular news dissection, I'm uploading an article written in today's LA Times by Greg Palast, and a link to his new book, which looks to me like the whole umbrella of Bush administration scandals uncovered, by one of the most qualified and colorful investigative journalists on the world scene today.
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

IN AN E-MAIL uncovered and released by the House Judiciary Committee last month, Tim Griffin, once Karl Rove's right-hand man, gloated that "no [U.S.] national press picked up" a BBC Television story reporting that the Rove team had developed an elaborate scheme to challenge the votes of thousands of African Americans in the 2004 election.
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Griffin wasn't exactly right. The Los Angeles Times did run a follow-up article a few days later in which it reported the findings. But he was essentially right. Most of the major U.S. newspapers and the vast majority of television news programs ignored the story even though it came at a critical moment just weeks before the election.
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According to Griffin (who has since been dispatched to Arkansas to replace one of the U.S. attorneys fired by the Justice Department), the mainstream media rejected the story because it was wrong. "That guy is a British reporter who accepted some false allegations and made a story up," he said.
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Let's get one fact straight, Mr. Griffin. "That guy" is not a British reporter. I am an American living abroad, putting investigative reports on the air from London for the British Broadcasting Corp. I'm not going to argue with Rove's minions about the validity of our reporting, which led the news in Britain.
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But I can tell you this: To the extent that it was ignored in the United States, it wasn't because the report was false. It was because it was complicated and murky and because it required a lot of time and reporting to get to the bottom of it. In fact, not one U.S. newsperson even bothered to ask me or the BBC for the data and research we had painstakingly done in our effort to demonstrate the existence of the scheme.
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The truth is, I knew that a story like this one would never be reported in my own country. Because investigative reporting — the kind Jack Anderson used to do regularly and which was carried in hundreds of papers across the country, the kind of muckraking, data-intensive work that takes time and money and ruffles feathers — is dying. (at least in the mainstream media, which is why the irreverent, unpredictable and unmanageable blogs have inherited the 4th Estate.)
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I've been through this before, too many times. Take this investigative report, also buried in the U.S.: Back in December 2000, I received two computer disks from the office of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris. Analysis of the data, plus documents that fell my way, indicated that Harris' office had purged thousands of African Americans from Florida's voter rolls as "felons." Florida now admits that many of these voters were not in fact felons.
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Nevertheless, the blacklisting helped cost Al Gore the White House. (between the Greens and their Naderisms, and these cult-connected data miners and their purge lists and blatant Dieboldisms, Gore got robbed both legally and ideologically)
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I reported on the phony felon purge in Britain's Guardian and Observer and on the BBC while Gore was still in the race, while the count was still on. Yet the story of the Florida purge never appeared in the U.S. daily papers or on television. Until months later, that is, after the Supreme Court had decided the election, when it was picked up by the Washington Post and others. U.S. papers delayed the story until the U.S. Civil Rights Commission issued a report saying our Guardian/BBC story was correct: Innocents lost their vote. At that point, protected by the official imprimatur, American editors felt it safe enough to venture out with the story.
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But by then, George W. Bush could read it from his chair in the Oval Office. (and six long, trying years down the road, look at the mess he's created!)
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Again and again, I see this pattern repeated. Until there is some official investigation or allegation made by a politician, there is no story. Or sometimes the media like to cover the controversy, not the substance, preferring an ambiguous and unsatisfying "he said, she said" report. Safe reporting, but not investigative.
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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."
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In America's cash-short, instant-deadline world, there's not much room for that."
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For the rest of this story, and some historic insight into our own US Media's abdication of its 4th Estate crown, here's the link;
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Marcy Wheeler, at The Next Hurrah;
author of Anatomy of Deceit, gets the blog quote of the day:
"Last night, DOJ provided Congress with a list of Kyle Sampson documents it wasn't going to turn over. They begin on December 19, not long after the firings, and continue until March 8, when Sampson resigned. The withheld emails suggest some of the key issues the WH is trying to hide, particularly:
Harriet Miers' involvement in the Cummins firing
Efforts to pretend Gonzales had not told Pryor Griffin would be appointed with or without Senate approval
The exchange between Domenici and Iglesias leading to the latter's firing
The real reason behind Chiara's firing
Efforts to withhold James Comey and the DOJ clique's testimony from Congress"

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