Fearless, Adversarial Journalism – Spoken Edition

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin attend a campaign rally at Pima County Fairgrounds on March 26, 2010 in Tucson, Ariz. Photo: Darren Hauck/Getty ImagesWhat if John McCain hadn’t run for president in 2008? Donald Trump might not be sitting in the White House today. At first glance, that might sound odd.

It was 1793 in Paris, and an angry crowd had surrounded Tuileries Palace, demanding the surrender of King Louis XVI. Economic adviser to the king Pierre du Pont and members of his family held the crowd at bay until the king could flee. The monarch’s day would come soon. For du Pont’s son, Éleuthère Irénée du Pont, it was time to find refuge in the United States.

CNN’s blockbuster July 26 story – that Michael Cohen intended to tell Special Counsel Robert Mueller that he was present when Donald Trump was told in advance about his son’s Trump Tower meeting with various Russians – includes a key statement about its sourcing that crediblereportingnow suggests were designed to have misled its audience. Yet CNN simply refuses to address the serious ethical and journalistic questions raised about its conduct.

A few years before Jay Hammond, a Republican, was elected to serve as Alaska’s governor in 1974, he worked as mayor of the small borough of Bristol Bay. There, he watched as nearly all of his town’s rich salmon resources were extracted from the region, with virtually none of the profits or job opportunities going to locals.

On August 9, several reporters took a government-led tour through America’s largest detention facility for immigrant parents and their children: the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. Sprawling over 50 acres of a repurposed oilfield workers’ camp, Dilley, as the center is colloquially known, has room for 2,400 detainees. It currently holds about 1,500 people — all mothers and their children, including babies.

When executives from the Chemours Company met with top officials of the Environmental Protection Agency last year, they were seeking the Trump administration’s help to launch a new generation of chemicals and steer the nation through an important juncture. The U.S. — indeed the entire world — is in the process of phasing out chemicals used for cooling that, in a bitter twist, contribute significantly to climate change.

A hostage situation has emerged on the left. And progressive policies like Medicare for All, a $15 minimum wage, free public education, a Green New Deal, and even net neutrality, are the captives. The captors? Bad faith claims of bigotry.

Tom Carper is known as one of the most conservative blue-state Democrats in the Senate — a reliable hawk with close ties to the finance, insurance, and pharmaceutical industries and a voting record to match. His list of legislative accomplishments includes approving the Iraq War, a scale-back of Dodd-Frank’s post-2008 era regulations on the financial sector, and a consistent, 40-year bank-friendly record.

James Kacouris’ timing couldn’t have been worse. Just 24 hours after he purchased 140 shares of Facebook, the company’s share price plummeted 18.96 percent in the biggest one-day stock loss in U.S. market history. In an earnings announcement issued after the markets closed on July 25, the day he bought the shares, Facebook released numbers showing that ad sales and user growth had slowed.

Whistleblower Reality Winner was officially sentenced to 63 months in prison on Thursday, after a federal judge rubber-stamped a plea deal already agreed to by the prosecution and Winner’s lawyers. As the prosecution acknowledged, it is the longest sentence for a journalist’s source in federal court history. The defense agreed to the plea deal in part to bring closure to Winner and her family.

It was October 1987, and the House of Representatives was debating a bill written by then-Rep. Chuck Schumer that would disclose more information to prospective credit card customers. The legislation would ultimately create the “Schumer box” — the part of a credit card agreement that lists interest rates, terms, and fees in large type. Liberal Democrats wanted more than just disclosure. Illinois Rep. Levi Annunzio submitted an amendment to limit the allowable interest rate on all U.

Over the weekend, four opponents of the Bayou Bridge pipeline and an independent journalist covering their activities were arrested and charged under Louisiana House Bill 727, which makes trespassing on “critical infrastructure” facilities — a category that explicitly includes oil pipelines — a felony punishable by up to five years in prison, a fine of $1,000, or both.

From 1972 to 1991, a Chicago detective named Jon Burge led a group of police officers in torturing confessions out of suspects. They called themselves the “Midnight Crew,” and their behavioreventually resulted in the jailing of Burge and the creation of a reparations council to pay the victims. More recently, the Baltimore Police Department’sGun Trace Task Force was found to have planted evidence, assaulted innocent citizens, and committed overtime fraud.

Video footage of a police officer shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald sparked citywide protests in November 2015 and ignited Chicago’s ongoingmovement for police reform, but the Chicago Police Department’s records show the gaping racial disparities in everyday use of force that played a role in creating the deep distrust inthe city’s police departmentamong communities of color.

Today the Invisible Institute, in collaboration with The Intercept, releases the Citizens Police Data Project 2.0, a public database containing the disciplinary histories of Chicago police officers. The scale of CPDP is without parallel: It includes more than 240,000 allegations of misconduct involving more than 22,000 Chicago police officers over a 50-year period.