SF Chronicle: Palast pisses in the punch.  Your turn?
 
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 12:28:55 -0600 (CST)

SF Chronicle:  Palast pisses in the punch.  Your turn?

The San Francisco Chronicle's story about Palast's receipt of the
PEN Censorship award lays out why we need your help to stay alive
and counter the jive.

"With a team of a half-dozen researchers largely supported by $50
donations from readers, Greg Palast ferrets out documents and
smoking-gun-toting insiders from Washington to Ecuador and uses
them to gird his bitingly sardonic investigative essays that most
American mainstream outlets wonbt touch."

Read it all below.

[And, if you donate by Friday, Greg will personalize your "Elections
Theft" DVD gift and get it to you for Xmas - all before he returns
to Ecuador for our latest investigation.]  See the "Elections Files
trailer here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqhKmyjJOgw

And Greg truly apologies for whizzing in the cocktail party punchbowl.

A Determined Voice Lost in the Wilderness

by Joe Garofoli, San Francisco Chronicle

Greg Palast may be the only journalist with a New York office who
works, as he says, bin journalistic exile.b There, with a team of
a half-dozen researchers largely supported by $50 donations from
readers, Palast ferrets out documents and smoking-gun-toting insiders
from Washington to Ecuador and uses them to gird his bitingly
sardonic investigative essays that most American mainstream outlets
wonbt touch.

Why? Palast figures itbs because he mercilessly attacks the status
quo. He was one of the first to write about the manipulation of
voter files in the 2000 election, and he used a combination of
unnamed sources, leaked documents and gumshoe reporting to critique
the Bush administrationbs handling of the Iraq War and Hurricane
Katrina.

While hebs long been a critic of the Republican Party, hebs only
somewhat kinder to liberals such as Sen. Hillary Clinton (bWhat do
you really know about her views?b) and MoveOn.org (bTheir idea is,
if we have enough cocktail parties and put enough ads in the New
York Times, we win. We may not have influenced any elections, but
hell, we feel terrific about ourselves.b)

Or maybe mainstream outlets have avoided him because, as he puts
it, bIbm an expensive guy to have around.b He estimates that it
cost bover a million dollarsb to lawyer the two books that hit the
New York Times best-seller list, the latest of which was bArmed
Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans - Sordid Secrets and Strange
Tales of a White House Gone Wildb (Penguin, 2007).

Other than Harperbs magazine and liberal online outlets, the best
place to find the work of the 55-year-old married father of two is
on BBC.com or his own site, www.gregpalast.com.

Palast has long had an enthusiastic following in the Bay Area, and
on Saturday PEN Oakland will award him the Literary Censorship Award
for several of the pieces that appear in bArmed Madhouseb and
elsewhere. Palast isnbt sure whether hebll be able to attend - hebs
been dashing back and forth to Ecuador for a series of BBC reports
on the effects of oil drilling in the Amazon.

bI donbt deserve this, but I accept it on behalf of my sources,
many of whom risk their lives and their jobs,b Palast said from New
York. bAll I do is report on the courage of others.b

How does a writer of best-selling books get classified as bcensored?b
The answer, according to PEN Oakland spokesperson Kim McMillon, has
much to do with the state of U.S. media.

bThe average American does not see the type of reporting that Greg
Palast is doing,b McMillon said. bThe average American gets their
news from FOX, CNN and the talking heads at ABC, NBC and CBS. What
has taken the place of real journalism is reporting that is safe
and will keep the public calm.b

Palast is the working-class kid with a University of Chicago MBA.
He never studied journalism; he was more fond of the informal writing
education he received from hanging out with Charles Bukowski in
Hollywood. He wanted to become a poet, until Allen Ginsberg read
some of his work and told him, bYoubd be a great journalist.b

He reads little mainstream press other than the Wall Street Journal
(bwhich is extraordinarily importantb) and the New York Times (bto
know what Ibm supposed to knowb).

Palast says his desire to expose class-warfare stories is rooted
in his upbringing in the bass-end of Los Angeles,b a neighborhood
wedged between a power plant and a dump. Kids in the neighborhood
had two choices, he said: go to Vietnam or work in the auto plant.
bWe were the losers,b he said. He was saved from the war by a
favorable draft number.

bA lot of people didnbt make it out. Because I made it out, and my
sister (Geri, a former Clinton administration assistant secretary
of labor) made it out, I feel I have this obligation to tell these
stories on behalf of all of those people who didnbt make it out.b

After graduate school at the University of Chicago (where he studied
under free-market economic guru Milton Friedman - ban evil brilliant
mindb who btaught me to be skeptical of liberal nostrumsb), Palast
became an investigator, a bforensic economist,b unearthing documents
exposing fraud and racketeering on behalf of labor unions and
consumer groups. In the late 1990s, frustrated by the toothless
reporting he saw in much of the mainstream press, he turned to
writing. One of the first stories that received widespread attention
- initially first in England - was about the manipulation of the
Florida vote count during the disputed 2000 election.

In a new afterword to bArmed Madhouse,b Palast predicts the 2008
election wonbt be stolen by faulty touch-screen voting machines or
even through computers at all. It will be done by making it hard
for voters - particularly people of color in traditionally Democratic
enclaves - to register and vote by a series of challenges to their
registration.

bIbm seriously concerned that people see Florida 2000 as a fluke.
But in fact, what we see is a systematic manipulation of the electoral
system.b

Sadly, Palast said, little of this is discussed in coverage of the
2008 White House campaign. And neither is much else of substance.

bI donbt think anybody knows a goddamn thing about Barack Obama.
We know that (former GOP Arkansas Gov. Mike) Huckabee lost weight.
John Edwards has some pretty substantive policy papers, but all we
know about him is that his wife has cancer. Basically, (the coverage)
is an endless, endless, endless discussion of B.S.,b he said. bAnd
NPR (National Public Radio) is no better. Theybre just Connecticut
accents repeating the same information.b

At the same time he criticizes American mass media, he longs to
appear there. He wants mainstream television to broadcast his
muckraking work to the more politically conservative heartland. He
so wants to reach a mass broadcast audience that he used to accept
invitations to appear on Fox News programs (bIbll agree every once
in a while to go on to be beat upb), but the invitations have largely
dried up in the past year.

So to support his investigative work, three years ago he created a
nonprofit fund. It raises more than $100,000 a year - most of it
in $50 and $100 donations from individuals. bItbs the only thing
thatbs kept us alive,b said Palast, who takes no money from the
fund. The BBC didnbt pay for his teambs airfare to Ecuador, so he
used $15,000 from the fund.

He wouldnbt have these problems if he could crack the American
broadcast market.

bBroadcasting means just that - youbre capturing a wide audience
that isnbt looking for you. I have a huge Web presence and a huge
readership. But theybre self-selecting; they want to hear me,b
Palast said. bI want the people who donbt want to hear me, or have
never heard of me or have no idea about me. Thatbs a tough thing -
reaching out to those who have never heard of me.b

Greg Palast was honored at the 17th annual PEN Oakland-Josephine
Miles National Literary Awards this past Saturday.

**************************** Greg Palast's investigative reports
for BBC Television are compiled in the new DVDs, "The Election
Files:  Theft of 2008" and "The Assassination of Hugo Chavez."

The Palast Investigative Fund (a 501c3 ) is supported by your
donations please give today at www.PalastInvestigativeFund.org and
receive a gift in time for the holidays. www.palastinvestigativefund.org