In the old days before reporters got holy—at least in their collective minds—freeloading was a perk of journalism. Tickets to sporting events, rock concerts, theme parks, free drinks and meals were accepted without a second thought given to the impropiety of sponging off politicians and other people we wrote about.

And I was as guilty, if not more so, than most news people. My freebie habit was particularly bad in the booze days when I hung out in bars frequented by an array of public officials and career scoundrels. Freeloading even overlapped my early years as a self-righteous investigative reporter. 

I still squirm recalling my acceptance of season football tickets from a Florida state representative who was an alumni of the University of Miami. In my defense, receipt of the gratuity was inadvertent. He invited me to sit in his block of 50 seats at one game. Two days after accepting the invitation, season tickets arrived in the mail. I called to return the tickets, however, he convinced me I was doing him a favor because none his friends attended games during the era that the Hurricanes were a second rate team. That was true. Only a half dozen fans occupied the seats around me. But that barely eased my conscience. Fortunately, except for the interview that prompted him to send me the tickets, he was not part of any future stories I wrote.

About the time I was sitting in Orange Bowl Stadium watching the Miami Hurricanes lose, reporters stumbled over the word “ethics” in the dictionary. And in a moment of inspiration, the word “journalism” was attached. Ever since, reporters have tried to refine the phrase to improve our craft. The phrase has made it easy to say, “no thank you,” and mean it. Most news organizations now prohibit reporters from accepting free lunches, let alone season football tickets or family passes to Disney World—a perk that I am familiar with. Twice.

If politicians abided by the same standards as journalists, it would certainly make the job more challenging for FBI agents and other lawmen. “Lead me not into temptation” is a Biblical prayer that has been forgotten by a lot of folks wearing bracelets connected to the wrists of both hands. Entrapment is the easy way of enforcing bribery statutes. 

FBI ”sting” operation in Louisiana has resulted in the recent indictments of three black Mayors in small towns along the west bank of the Mississippi River. They were offered proverbial “carrots on a stick” in the form of free tickets to football games, cash payments, expensive meals and offers of debauchery in New Orleans strip clubs.

Were the targets of the sting already predisposed to take bribes? Or were the favors orchestrated by the FBI so subtle and tempting that the officials unknowingly committed crimes? The entrapment issue is already being raised in a motion filed this week in federal court in Baton Rouge.

http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/100410409.html

Over the course of my muckraking career, I exposed law enforcement misconduct in at least eight “sting” operations. One of the most outrageous and far-reaching was the so-called Brilab case covering a half-dozen states and a waste of millions of dollars. The Brilab exposé was part of an ABC Close Up documentary I worked on in the late 1970’s.

Even more egregious than Brilab abuses was a 1990’s U.S. Customs sting operation called Exodus. It was the subject of a series of reports I did for CNN. I write about the investigation in Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger.

A Congressional staffer suggested I investigate the flagrant entrapment of two men caught in a Custom’s “sting” of arms dealing—a legal but sinister business. Agents had lured two German buyers to the United States by misrepresenting the legality of the merchandise being offered for sale. The men were secretly videotaped buying today’s equivalent of B.B. guns.

The Exodus arrests were announced with great fanfare. Then Attorney General Richard Thornburg portrayed the two indicted men as “merchants of death.” In reality, it was the first arms venture for both buyers. Neither had been in trouble with the law before. And they would avoid prison in this case. Because of the unsavory tactics of investigators in assuring them that the deal was lawful, the charges were thrown out of court. The case led me to other Exodus abuses.

One target was a retired Egyptian Air Force General hailed as a hero in his country. He was considered a close friend of the U.S. military. But after responding to an ad in a weapons magazine, he became entrapped by agents, who repeatedly vouched for the legality of the sale.  By exploiting his lack of understanding of American slang, investigators elicited incriminating statements.

“There was a lot of talking, mostly by the government,” an irate federal judge said in dismissing the charges.

Exodus was not limited to arms sales. A California electronics salesman was secretly videotaped finalizing the sale of an obsolete supercomputer to a Belgium informant―a snitch being paid a bounty for ensnaring suspects. During negotiations, he assured the seller that the computer was Paris-bound. But at a final secretly-videotaped meeting in an Orlando, Florida hotel room, the informant said the computer was actually being shipped to an embargoed Eastern European country. On camera, the salesman backed out of the deal. It was too late.

Agents stormed his hotel room at the same time he was explaining the turn of events to his lawyer in a telephone call.  Again, the arrest was portrayed at a news conference as ensuring the safety of U.S. citizens. And again, the charges were eventually dismissed.

I have no idea about the guilt or innocence of the three Mayors and other officials indicted in the recent Louisiana case. Coincidentally, one of the three Mayors was the subject of an exposé I did more than 20 years ago. Because of the time that has elapsed, he will remain nameless. Besides, I don’t recall the outcome of the mini-scandal, although I collected an Investigative Reporters and Editors citation for the story.

Maybe the guy was an easy target given his background. I don’t know. What I do know is that everytime the word “sting” creeps into a story, my skeptics antenna goes up.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.

Against my better judgment many years ago, I signed off on hiring a relatively inexperienced wire service reporter to work with me in a television investigative reporting unit. It turned out to be a disaster, especially when I allowed her to conduct an important on-camera interview with a character vital to an ongoing exposé. She didn’t allow man a chance to complete a single sentence. Her constant confrontational interruptions rendered the interview useless. I don’t blame the reporter. It was my mistake in hiring her. She was simply trying to do a Mike Wallace imitation, not realizing that he allowed people to rattle on until their egos entrapped them. The Mike Wallace technique, by the way, won me a lot of journalism awards.

Anyway, watching the unbelieveable rudeness of Fox “News” anchor Megyn Kelly early this week reminded me of the long ago interview disaster that I facilitated. Kelly’s boorish interview of New York Post columnist and political commentator Kirsten Powers had all the class of a drunken honky-tonk brawl. Powers—a moderate voice regularly heard on the Republican propaganda network—was not allowed in this instance to express any opinion contradicting Kelly’s obvious racial prejudice.

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/fnc/megyn_kelly_to_kirsten_powers_with_respect_you_dont_seem_to_know_what_youre_talking_about_167499.asp

Megyn Kelly’s screech on her program, America Live, may explain why she gave up the practice of law to enter broadcasting. Had she displayed similar demeanor in a courtroom, Kelly would be spending time in a jail cell for contempt of court. 

The context of the interview was obviously Kelly’s belief that the U.S. Department of Justice engaged in a form of reverse racism by failing to pursue default judgments in lawsuits accusing members of the Black Panthers of imtimidating voters outside a precinct in Philadelphia during the November, 2008 Presidential election. A malcontent, who formerly worked in the Justice Department’s Civil Right’s Division, claims that the Obama Administration and African American Attorney General Eric Holder are going easy on black activist groups like the Panthers. Media Matters covered the issue pretty thoroughly this week.

In short, conservative media outlets have been aggressively promoting the charge by GOP activist J. Christian Adams that President Obama’s Justice Department engaged in racially charged “corruption” when it partially dismissed a case against members of the New Black Panther Party for allegedly engaging in voter intimidation outside of a Philadelphia polling center on Election Day in 2008.

As we have documented extensively, Adams should not be trusted. He is a long-time right-wing activist with extensive ties to the Bush-era politicization of the Justice Department. Adams himself has admitted that he lacks first-hand knowledge to support his accusations. Additionally, Adams’ charge that the DOJ’s action in the New Black Panther case shows unprecedented, racially motivated corruption is undermined by the fact that the Obama DOJ obtained judgment against one of the defendants, and that the Bush DOJ declined to pursue similar allegations against a group of Minutemen — one of whom was carrying a gun — in 2006.

Even the Republican vice chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights called the New Black Panthers case “very small potatoes” and said an investigation into the DOJ’s decision is full of “overheated rhetoric filled with insinuations and unsubstantiated charges.”

And yet again, the fact that this is a completely manufactured scandal didn’t stop conservative media figures from engaging in one of their time-honored traditions: attempting to obscure their own problems with race by accusing others of racism.

Radio host Jim Quinn — who once told “race-baiting” African-American “ingrates” to “get on your knees” and “kiss the American dirt” because slavery brought them to the U.S. — hyped the New Black Panther story by calling the civil rights community “race-baiting poverty pimps.”

Rush Limbaugh — who earlier this week announced that if Obama wasn’t black he’d be a “tour guide in Honolulu” and claimed Obama is using the office of the presidency to seek “payback” for the country’s history of racism — forwarded Adams’ charge that the case was dropped because of racially charged corruption.

Beck, who infamously called President Obama a “racist” with a “deep seated hatred for white people or the white culture,” declared that the Obama administration is “full” of “people that will excuse” the “hatred” of the New Black Panthers. He also relied on falsehoods to try to connect Obama to the New Black Panthers, and claimed today that the New Black Panthers are part of Obama’s “army of thugs.”

If the U.S. Justice Department has adopted a policy of not prosecuting black activists, word of the change has not reached Louisiana. On the west bank of the Mississippi River,African American mayors of Port Allen, New Roads and White Castle were indicted earlier this month, along with a black police chief. A fourth African American mayor is under investigation in the same case. Unless the Justice Department has changed its procedures, the Public Integrity Division in Washington reviews cases involving public officials prior to indictments. Regardless, the recent arrests tends to dispute claims of racial favortism.

Sadly, I sometimes get the feeling that our country is on the verge of returning to the bad old days of race divisions. The NAACP adopted a resolution this week condemning the tea party movement for providing aid and comfort to bigots. If some of the demonstrations are an indications, white hate groups have found a place to spew their hatred. Granted, they are a small minority. But their very presence undermines the legitimacy of the tea party.

I would hope the country had reached a point that resolutions such as the one adopted by the  NAACP were unnecessary. But the election of Barack Obama has triggered the worst in many people. And disgracefully, they are being cheered on by the Fox “News,” its pundits and anchors, and scores of right-wing characters polluting the nation’s airwaves.

Racism is still alive in America. If you don’t believe it, look up the definition of the word in your dictionary.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.