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Rob: If
you pull a thread...tell me more about that because I'm very interested in what
makes a journalist...an investigative journalist as successful as you are. What
are the secrets? What are the tools that you use pulling on threads?
JR: It's
pretty simple basically. I mean it's...you've got to be curious, you've got to
be a little fixated and obsessed on stories. You know, when I hear about
something that's really interesting, I just want to keep finding out more and
you know I think that's the difference between someone...an investigative
reporter and other kinds of reporters...a lot of reporters just do daily news
and they're happy to just do daily breaking news every day, but I just like to
dig into things deeper and find out more about what's going on. I've always...I
realized about myself that I really like getting into subcultures. You know I
wrote a book about the anti-abortion movement and what fascinated me about that
was the anti-abortion movement was a really interesting subculture of people.
And then I covered the CIA and I realized the CIA is its own little subculture
and I covered the Federal Reserve for a few years and that was like a little
subculture too, so what I really enjoy is digging into little groups, little
areas, and then getting to know people...and you realize eventually that we've
got all these different subgroups in America that are fascinating if you delve
into them deep enough.
Rob: Okay,
so are there tips that you could give to budding investigative
journalists/citizen journalists on the idea of looking for a subculture and
what you look for and how you delve in?
JR: I
think you have to be patient and that's the hardest...that's the thing that
separates I think investigative reporters from like regular daily reporters.
And partly it's not the fault of daily reporters, a lot of is the pressures
they face from editors or from their bosses. But you have to be willing to just
kind of fight the system and be patient and keep digging into stories, and
realize that it's going to take time to find things out; and that -- believe it
or not -- that's the hardest thing in the news business to get these days is the
time to do in depth reporting.
You
know people always say investigative reporting costs a lot of money and that's
why news organizations don't do it -- but that's not really true, it doesn't
really cost that much more money; it just...the only real cost is you've got to
be willing to have a reporter who's not writing or broadcasting everyday
because they're digging into something in depth. I mean I guess that's a cost,
but it's not any major cost -- it really requires just time and patience.
Rob: Okay.
Now you're with the New York Times. The book that you released that got you in
trouble, State of War, the key story in there that got you "in trouble" was the
disclosure of stuff that government and security agencies didn't want you to
tell and that the New York Times didn't want you to tell either -- you worked on
it for a long time and they kept it secret for over a year; they worked it out,
made a deal with the government...that doesn't sound like a very profitable
investment for you. I'm amazed that they keep you...did they ever threaten you
with...did you feel your job was secure after having invested all that time and
it never coming to light?
JR: Well
there was a...what happened was that they, you know, the government told the
New York Times that if our story...if they published the story on the NSA
domestic spying and on another story I did on the CIA screw up on the Iran
nuclear program, that both stories would damage national security so the New
York Times editors believed what the government was telling them and so they
didn't run either story. Then I decided to write a book and finally the New
York Times ran the NSA story a couple weeks before my book came out. So yeah, I
mean it was difficult...it was a very difficult time, it was the most traumatic
time in my life to go through that because I had to decide to put my career on
the line in order to get those stories out by putting them in a book.
Rob: it
seems to me that doing that you forced the New York Times.
JR: Yeah,
I did. Yes, that's exactly what happened (laughs).
Rob: It
seems to me that that was a really good thing for all of us.
JR: Well
it was tough, it was dangerous at the time. It was clear that...it was made
clear to me that I might get fired so...but then when the story came out it
was...everything worked out in the end.
Rob: Wow...you
might get fired. That kind of boggles my mind. I'm sorry...I'm tempted to ask
you who told you that...I wouldn't blame you if you didn't say (laughs).
JR: (Laughs)
Rob: Who
told you that?
JR: (Laughs)
Well you know, my editors. They said it was made clear that if...see the
problem was I told them I was going....the NSA story was going to be in my book
and that they should now run the story. And they wanted me to...for a while
they wanted me to take it out of my book rather than...if they decided not to
run it in the paper. And so it was a very weird and complex, difficult,
traumatic period in my life -- I didn't
sleep for about 6 months.
Rob: Well
it raises a question -- if you're doing the work in the investigating reporting
for them, and they don't publish it, do you have the right to publish it as an
author?
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Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.
Rob Kall Wikipedia Page
Over 200 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Rob is (more...)
The views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
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