James O’keefe - American Muckraker: Rethinking Journalism for the 21st Century

A POST HILL PRESS BOOK

ISBN: 978-1-63758-090-5

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-63758-091-2

American Muckraker:

Rethinking Journalism for the 21st Century

2022 by James OKeefe

All Rights Reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Post Hill Press

New York Nashville

posthillpress.com

Published in the United States of America

For Mom; who instilled in me humility, authenticity, forgiveness, and balance.

For Dad; who taught me drive, resilience, indefatigability, and common sense.

For my Sister; who was with me during the nadir.

Table of Contents

The quality of a revolutionary is inversely proportional to the system he fights against The more oppressive and cruel the system, the more heroic and self-sacrificing is the rebel; in other words, the better and more indulgent the system, the more flippant the revolutionary.

-Leopold Tyrmand, Polish Anti-Communist, Tyrmands Law

T here are two questions the American muckraker is asked repeatedly. Number one: Do you fear for your life? Number two: What can I do? The first question calls upon a library of material written by past muckrakers, broadcasters, lawyers, judges, and academics who risked their lives and careers to expose corruption and maleficence in societys institutions. Professional truth-seekers do not fear for their life when they are called to this higher purpose, for their life is the vehicle in which defenders of press freedom conduct their crusade in our brave new world of video journalism. When people ask, What can I do? what theyre really askingwhat theyre truly seekingis what Viktor Frankl describes as the striving and struggling of some goal worthy of themselves. The muckrakers revolution is not one of reform or radicalism, but a return to truth, for there is only one true reality.

The Pursuit of Happiness vs. The Pursuit of Meaning

Rebellion against the system will inevitably cause the muckraker a fair share of pain, political persecution, even prosecution, so piercing, so excruciating, that his continuation down this path risks crossing the line into masochism. He will enter into what Empedocles described as a region of adversity fraught with suffering and toil, enduring failures of insight and character along the way.

Outside observers feel a combination of wonder and fascination with the muckrakers art. This creates a curiosity that the muckraker has a hard time understanding. We all know the tale of Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who said that his former friends and colleagues regarded him with neither admiration nor censure, but with wonder, as though he were a space-walking astronaut who had cut his lifeline to the mother ship.

The muckraker finds himself identifying with Sisyphus, the sufferer of Greek lore consigned to push a rock up a hill for eternity only to see it roll back down every time. Despite his manifest successes, even legendary muckraker Upton Sinclair felt his task more than a little Sisyphean. You are listening, he wrote in The Brass Check , to a man who for fourteen years has been in a battle, and has seen his cause suffering daily wounds from a cruel and treacherous foe.

Over time, the muckraker finds himself increasingly alienated from those who marvel at his mission. He wonders how these good people cannot themselves be doing what he is doing. When thanked, the muckraker wonders what he is being thanked for. His job is not over. It is never over. He has barely scratched the surface.

Training and experience have coached him, wrote Rudyard Kipling, to meet with triumph and disasterjust the same. The muckraker knows the fragility of his success because of what he has endured, what he imagines he will endure, and the price he will have to pay for his endurance.

David Daleiden, whose expos of the baby parts trafficking racket that almost brought down Planned Parenthood, glimpsed into that future. Daleiden vividly recalls taking out the trash on an idyllic southern California spring day when the unthinkable happened:

As I rounded the corner, the door of a large, white, windowless van swung open, and a tall, uniformed officer stepped out and blocked my path. Are you David Daleiden? he asked. Yes, I said nervously as I started to freeze from confusion and surprise. We have a search warrant for your apartment from the California Department of Justice, he said as he shoved papers at me. No less than 11 armed CA DOJ agents, accompanied by K-9 dogs, filed out of the van and sprung out of surrounding police cars. Only half of them fit in my apartment to search it, the rest waited outside with their dogs and assault rifles. The leader of the agents tried to prevent me from calling my lawyer and threatened to seize my phone while I was talking to legal counsel. They overturned my entire apartment, looking behind statues and icons of the Virgin Mary for evidence. They thumbed through invoice printouts for fetal body parts from StemExpress, Advanced Bioscience Resources, and the admitted criminal DaVinci companies but left those behind, instead seizing all my hard drives and equipment with the original undercover footage and my laptops going back to high school. I felt powerless, like I was drowning, and it felt like the search lasted forever.

Daleiden was targeted because of the institution he investigated and the truth he uncovered. His success was his undoing. So was Andy Ngos. Working with just a phone and a GoPro camera, the young citizen journalist was doing Americas best reporting on the mounting Antifa terror in Portland, Oregon. In June 2019, Antifa decided they had had enough:

Suddenly, clenched fists repeatedly struck my face and head from all directions. My right knee buckled from the impact. The masked attackers wore tactical gloves - gloves hardened with fiberglass on the knuckles. Its likely some of them used brass knuckles as well. I put my arms up to surrender, but this only signaled to them to beat me more ferociously. Someone then snatched my camera - my evidenceThe mob roared in laughter as I stumbled away.

As was true with Daleiden, the mainstream media either ignored Ngos plight or quietly cheered on his attackers. As to the authorities, writes Ngo, At no point did police intervene to help.

Having observed the fate of truth-tellers like Ngo and Daleiden, the American muckraker has nightmare visions of text exchanges laid bare, freedom of association rights stripped away, donor names illegally leaked and published, police turning a blind eye, and federal agents pounding at his door. The muckraker watches with disgust as the governor of New York defends himself during a 2021 press conference, proclaiming, Im not going to argue this issue in the press when it comes to allegations of his own professional misconduct. Yet they said they did not try cases in the press.

This muckraker had broken no laws in New Orleans, yet was stripped of his freedoms, incarcerated, broken, and made an example. His SD chip with the footage that would have set him free was destroyed by a federal magistrate judge, and the powers that be escaped all liability precisely because this fact of evidence destruction was not mentioned in the press. In shackles, this muckraker gave up his Miranda rights and spoke to the FBI, and even the muckrakers allies would ask, Why would you do such a thing? In shackles, youd be surprised at what youd do.

You are under arrest the verist simpleton amongst us, drawing on all lifes experience, can gasp out only: Me? What for? in your desperation the fake circus moon will blink at you: Its a mistake! Theyll set things right!