Saturday, December 09, 2023

Overlaps

"You're right from your side / I'm right from mine," Bob Dylan wrote in one of his less-known songs. Similar sentiments from other artists capture the convoluted nature of antagonistic truths.

This raised a particular dilemma for journalists as we attempted to cover corporate and civic affairs.

Take foe example an incident from the "Circle of Poison" investigation in the 1970s. I was initially focused on the practice of U.S. companies that shipped banned pesticides to Third World countries, exposing farmworkers and their families to health risks, and the pollution of their environment.

Then, at a conference in Mexico, an executive of Dow Chemical asked me, "I understand your concern but what's wrong with helping a hungry world eat?"

His point was that even if the pesticides were considered too dangerous for us here in the U.S., food scarcity was such in poorer countries that such compromises made sense. After all, at least in the short term, pesticides boost food productivity.

His comment motivated me to look into exactly which crops the hazardous pesticides were being applied to. That research led to a breakthrough when I discovered that almost all of the crops sprayed in Third World countries were for export crops destined to end up right back here in the U.S. and other rich countries.

This completed the "circle" analogy and guaranteed our book would cause many more waves than it would have had we solely focused on the impacts overseas.

So an industry representative indirectly helped me complete my investigation. My guess is that he didn't know himself what the pesticides were used for; he had probably just assumed, as I had, that they were part of our “foreign aid” effort to boost local food production in poor countries.

This example is one reason why I always counseled student journalists to probe all sides of the issues they investigated. Environmentalists and worker safety activists may have one perspective; manufacturers and farmers may have another; regulatory agencies may reflect yet another point of view.

In the interest of achieving the highest quotient of the publishable truth, journalists have to consider whether everybody might be right, at least in certain ways, at the same time. In my example, the guy from Dow was right -- there’s nothing wrong with helping hungry people get food. The environmentalists were right -- pesticides harm the environment. And the regulators that push for more sustainable methods of agricultural production were right about what's best for the long term.

Everyone was partially right. The truth could be found in the overlaps.

[NOTE: This is an update of an essay I first published three years ago and is based on lectures I gave at U-C, Stanford and SF State over the decades.)

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Friday, December 08, 2023

Friday Links



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Thursday, December 07, 2023

Relics


Today I was thinking that I should really be in the salvage business -- rescuing the old castoffs of this throwaway society, lovingly restoring them, and presenting them as the artifacts they truly are from former times.

After all, I've been collecting things for at least half a century. Old bottles, coins, stamps, magazines, books, photos, postcards, baseball cards -- the list goes on.

Tonight's major find was this old "compact" typewriter -- the laptop of its time. I used to work on a machine like this, and in fact, I still had one until relatively recently, when it found its way to the recycling bin. My kids have been asking me whether I have any old typewriters (they think they are "cool"), and I've only been able to answer, "I used to..."

Thanks to one of my neighbors, following the local custom of putting whatever you don't want anymore out on the sidewalk for anyone passing by to claim (We don't bother to add a "Free" sign, because we all know the language of our streets), I now have retaken possession of this sweet portable Remington. 

It makes that old comforting sound, you know, clickety-click, that a century ago came from the open windows in Rudyard Kipling's compound in old India, as that masterful story-teller pounded out his stories at night.

Or Conrad, Hemingway, Faulkner, take your pick. For many decades, this was the sound of literature and the sound of journalism. Even as recently as the Watergate scandal of 1974, the signature film made of Woodward and Bernstein's legendary reporting that ended Richard Nixon's presidency, closes with a series of headlines typed on an old manual typewriter.

Because that's what we used at that time. 

(This is an excerpt of a piece from 2007.)

HEADLINES:

  • GOP presidential hopefuls target Nikki Haley more than Trump (AP)

  • Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the ousted speaker, announces he’s leaving Congress (NBC)

  • 'Dictator' Trump warnings spook America (AFP)

  • Trump declines to rule out abusing power to seek retribution if he returns to the White House (AP)

  • ‘Test case’ for America: Colorado’s top court poised to weigh Trump’s eligibility to run again (Politico)

  • Nevada grand jury indicts 6 fake Donald Trump electors (AP)

  • Wisconsin Trump electors settle lawsuit, agree Biden won in 2020 (WP)

  • House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Republicans are blurring faces in security footage from inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to protect rioters from prosecution. [HuffPost]

  • The true extent of damage to schools from Covid-19 (Economist)

  • Senate careens toward failed vote on Ukraine aid as GOP pushes for border measures (WP)

  • Ukraine Aid Falters in Senate as Republicans Insist on Border Restrictions (NYT)

  • At least 3 dead after shooting on UNLV campus, Las Vegas police say (CNN)

  • UNLV gunman was a professor who applied to work at the university (USA Today)

  • War Intensifies in Southern Gaza, Where Civilians Say No Place Is Safe (NYT)

  • Generation after generation, Israeli prison marks a rite of passage for Palestinian boys (AP)

  • Suspect identified in Austin shooting rampage that left 6 dead, 2 police officers injured (Austin American-Statesman)

  • A new bill introduced by Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) aims to limit easy access to high-powered rifles that can fire dozens of rounds with blazing speed. The legislation reflects a more sophisticated understanding of how guns work and has spread optimism among gun reformers that it could garner bipartisan support. [HuffPost]

  • Putin lands in UAE for rare foreign trip (BBC)

  • Putin, escorted by fighter jets, lands in Saudi Arabia for MbS talks (Reuters)

  • 'Time' magazine names Taylor Swift its 2023 Person of the Year (NPR)

  • Elon Musk’s messiah complex may bring him down (Economist)

  • A judge sentenced a woman to work in a fast-food restaurant. Rosemary Hayne, 39, screamed and hurled a scalding chicken burrito bowl at a worker in an Ohio Chipotle in September. She was found guilty of assault last month. (WP)

  • A ‘thirsty’ generative AI boom poses a growing problem for Big Tech (CNBC)

  • Google‘s ‘Gemini’ is the latest AI software entering fierce competition (WP)

  • How AI assistants are already changing the way code gets made (Tech Review)

  • 6 Giveaway Signs Of ChatGPT-Generated Content (Forbes)

  • Nvidia is developing new chips for China to comply with US export curbs (CNN)

  • How Nations Are Losing a Global Race to Tackle A.I.’s Harms (NYT)

  • Phone Lifted Up By Headphone Cord Like Prize Fish (The Onion)

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Wednesday, December 06, 2023

The Ghost of Anna Mae Aquash

When I first visited Pine Ridge Reservation, site of the Wounded Knee massacre, it left an indelible impression on me. It was an eerily beautiful place of wind-swept plains that seemed haunted by the voices of the dead echoing from the Black Hills in the distance.

Home to the Lakota (Sioux) people, Pine Ridge was central in the 1970s to a concerted effort by Native Americans to demand their rights and reclaim their land from the U.S. government.

The American Indian Movement (AIM) emerged as the leading voice of the activists in that uprising. The occasion for my visit to Pine Ridge was the mysterious murder of AIM activist Anna Mae Aquash, a 30-year-old mother of two and member of the Mi'kmaq tribe who traveled from Nova Scotia to join the rebellion.

Aquash organized demonstrations and spoke out eloquently on behalf of native rights. She also was AIM co-founder Dennis Banks' lover at a time when AIM had been placed under FBI surveillance by President Richard Nixon.

“These white people think this country belongs to them,” Aquash wrote in a letter to her sister at the time. “The whole country changed with only a handful of raggedy-ass pilgrims that came over here in the 1500s. And it can take a handful of raggedy-ass Indians to do the same, and I intend to be one of those raggedy-ass Indians.”

Violence haunted AIM and by 1975, more than 60 Indians had been killed, mostly in unsolved cases. Activists accused the U.S. government of waging a deadly war against their people. Tensions between AIM and the FBI on Pine Ridge reached a boiling point. In an armed battle with AIM members, two FBI agents were killed. 

Afterward, authorities grilled Aquash about the killings and then released her, leading her AIM colleagues to suspect she might be an informer. 

Five months later, she disappeared.

In February 1976, her badly decomposed body was discovered by a rancher working his property line; she had been killed execution-style by a single shot to the head.

For Rolling Stone, Lowell Bergman and I traveled to Pine Ridge to try and find out who was behind her murder. With investigative stories of this kind, sometimes you solve the mystery but usually you don't.

In Anna Mae's case, we discovered a lot of salient details but we did not solve the mystery. We did write a long storyabout the case, which may have helped raise awareness beyond South Dakota. 

Over the years, the mystery bubbled to the surface from time to time until finally (in 2004 and 2010) authorities were able to convict two low-level AIM members of her killing.

But according to a piece in the New York Times Magazine by Eric Konigsberg, these two were essentially the fall guys for the crime, which was in fact engineered by a group of AIM women known as the Pie Patrol.

Almost certainly, according to Konigsberg, higher-ups ordered the Pie Patrol to have Anna Mae murdered. If so, the guilty parties apparently went to their graves with their secret. 

Dennis Banks died three years ago at age 80. 

According to Lakota legend, when the body of a murder victim is moved, a strong wind will blow. When you stand out on Pine Ridge today, you can feel that wind and hear the voices of ghosts echoing around you. 

One of those voices must be that of Anna Mae Aquash.

(I published this originally in December 2020.)

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Tuesday, December 05, 2023

What If?

Donald Trump has made it clear that if he becomes president he will attempt to end democracy as we know it and institute an authoritarian system instead.

A rising tide of voices have been issuing warnings about this for a while now, but what if an autocracy is exactly what Trump’s supporters want? A one-man rule, with him as dictator?

And what if that only alarms half of the population, or less?

If the recent debate between the California and Florida governors accomplished anything of value, it was to illustrate just how deep the divide between the world view of people in the blue and red states actually is.

That fissure has grown in intensity to the point where it resembles the North-South split 163 years ago on the eve of the Civil War.

Joe Biden came into office promising to try and heal the divide, but he has been utterly incapable of doing so. In fact, inside the echo chamber on the right, Biden is the one destroying democracy, though that is objectively and demonstrably not the case.

If our current system of governance is to prevail through next year’s elections, assuming Trump is the GOP nominee, it will be only because one tiny sliver of the population — moderates in six swing states — choose to vote Democratic over Republican.

In this case, it doesn’t really matter who the Democratic candidate is — none of them will dismantle the institutions that preserve our freedoms and rights like Trump promises to do.

I’d like to be hopeful about this but I sense a very dark cloud approaching that would stretch over the entire expanse of our nation. I hope I am wrong but what if I am right?

For historical context, see today’s first link.

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Monday, December 04, 2023

We Did It Together

(Photo by Laila Comolli)

Over the past 50 years, one of the subtle changes in journalism has been the way reporters have started working in teams. 

According to conventional wisdom, the way it worked historically was that a series of great men -- and a few great women -- achieved journalistic success individually. Partnerships were rarely mentioned.

The big names were John Peter Zenger (1697-1746), Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1912), Walter Lippmann (1889-1974), Walter Cronkite (1916-2009) ... and more recently Barbara Walters (1929-2022) and Tom Wolfe (1931-2018).

There were investigative reporters too, like Upton Sinclair, Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, Jacob Riis in the early 20th century and then Jessica Mitford, Seymour Hersh, Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein in our time. (These are the famous ones, there were many others.)

Meanwhile, the Center for Investigative Reporting and Mother Jones get credit for establishing the non-profit model of investigative journalism.

So concentrating on those two organizations, which encapsulated so much of my early career, we tended to produce our muckraking reports in teams much more than as individuals. 

Personally, I have published with many co-authors, both because I love working with collaborators and because we all uniquely bring different qualities to the partnership.

Some of us specialize in interviews, some in documents, some as investigators, some as writers or story-tellers; every reporter has his or her own strength.

Therefore, whenever I consider a memoir of my career, this pattern is so obvious that I almost think any such book ought to be titled: "We Did It Together."

(I published an earlier iteration of this one three years ago in December 2020.)

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Sunday, December 03, 2023

Remembering

Today is the 39th anniversary of the world's worst industrial disaster at a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India. Although this was duly noted in India and in the international press, I didn’t see any mentions in the U.S. media.

Perhaps I just didn’t look in any of the right places.

The explosion at the facility was specifically an American problem, however, because Union Carbide was an American company using American technology, which was demonstrably inferior at that time to safer methods developed by German and Japanese companies.

As I described in The Bhopal Syndrome, when they heard the emergency alarm ring, villagers living in the shadow of the plant ran toward it, to try and help out, not away from it, which would have saved their lives.

Thousands died as a result.

Union Carbide had never informed the people living nearby how dangerous the chemicals mixed there were, nor how to protect themselves should an explosion occur.

It's a shameful date in American history; one we ought not allow ourselves to forget. In the book, I argued that the best way to prevent similar disasters were global reforms like freedom of information acts and right to know legislation.

Two simple tools and two of the key building blocks of democracy — FOIA and RTK. The world has embraced those principles to a great extent in recent decades, which is positive because chemical plant explosions still occur.

And that’s one good reason to remember Bhopal.

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