RAISING HELL: How the Center for Investigative Reporting Gets the Story

by David & Dan Noyes Weir ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1983

Eight recent magazine exposÉs, mostly tied to the San Francisco-based Center for Investigative Reporting, and the stories behind them--presented, not-so-smartly, as both a guide for aspiring ""muckrakers"" and a review of the Center's first five years. Weir and Noyes, executive director and co-founder respectively, tell nothing directly about the Center itself--its founding, financing, or mode of operation. The least impressive articles are those they co-authored: ""Nuclear Nightmare,"" on suppressed incidents of domestic nuclear terrorism; ""The Boomerang Crime,"" on the export of banned pesticides to the Third World (which then return in our food); ""Operation Wigwam,"" about the 1955 ""atomic sea war"" and its radiation after-effects. And the failing of those stories--hokey, trite dramatization instead of straightforward reporting--is also the failing of the third-person backgrounders, compounded by self-puffery. (""The chairs in the living room were a little too comfortable for David Weir""--exhausted from his labors, he began to nod. ""To Noyes, the Kellys represented the classic American story of decent people trying to correct what they felt to be an injustice. . . the kind of story that had attracted Noyes to journalism in the first place."") There are some first-rate pieces nonetheless, along with some instructive fill-in. One highlight is Karen Rothmeyer's dossier on Richard Mellon Scaife, chief backer of The Heritage Foundation and sundry other New Right efforts to shape military and economic policy. Rothmeyer, almost alone, conveys the sense of an unfolding story (""Scaife himself has never publicly discussed his motivations or goals""); she offers insights (not expostulation), and elicits varying interpretations from others. She also had a confrontation with Scaife (""You fucking Communist cunt, get out of here"") destined for journalistic immortality. (""Citizen Scaife,"" the one piece totally unconnected with the Center, appeared in Columbia Journalism Review. Of the others, four are from Mother Jones, two from New West, one from New Times.) The second standout is Suzanne Gordon's ""Let Them Eat est."" Werner Erhard's Hunger Project, Gordon wryly recounts, ""does not. . . do anything about ending hunger"": it's a recruitment arm for est, it raises money for est coffers, it gives Erhard ""a legitimate issue through which he can reach people in government"". . . and it obscures the reasons for famine and starvation in a haze of estian doubletalk. Two Center decoys, and a Center finance-expert, helped Gordon get the evidence--while she went through ""the front door"" for a juicy Erhard interview. The three remaining articles, valuable in content if flawed in execution, are: Douglas Foster's ""Teamster Madness,"" about the machinations of the ""bizarre"" ""cryptofascist"" US Labor Party; Kate Coleman's ""The Party's Over"" (with Paul Avery), about the gangster-end of Huey Newton and the Black Panthers; and Mark Dowie's ""The Bechtel File."" Whatever the flaws of the packaging and some of the items: a fair sampling of post-Sixties concerned/advocacy journalism, with intimations of what an outfit like the Center can contribute.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1983

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Addison-Wesley

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1983

Categories: NONFICTION