“Muckrakers” Fight Back

By DEACON MIKE MANNO, JD

I wonder how many people reading this column know the name of Nellie Bly.
Nellie Bly was one of the forerunners of today’s investigative journalism, which is often described by the pejorative “muckraking.” Nellie came from the era of intense newspaper competition that not only produced muckraking, but also the term “yellow journalism.” Thus we tend to lump it all together and apply it to our least favorite news outlets and persons.
Muckraking, however, was a term Theodore Roosevelt coined, referring to the Man with the Muck Rake in Pilgrim’s Progress, who would not look up as he worked. While it was not intended to be a compliment, originally it was a neutral description used to describe reporters who dug up stories others might wish to hide.
But while Nellie’s life was colorful, with such stunts as sailing around the globe in 1889 attempting to beat the time in Jules Verne’s novel Around the World in Eighty Days (she did: 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes, and 14 seconds), she’s remembered for a historic report from the inside of an insane asylum. In 1887 as a 23-year-old reporter for Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World, she faked insanity and was court-ordered into the city’s Blackwell’s Island woman’s asylum.
After she’d spent ten days in the asylum, her editor got her out and the exposé Nellie (real name Elizabeth Cochran) wrote about the neglect and brutality she saw caused an upheaval which produced massive changes in the mental health system of the day.
Since Nellie’s time journalists have used that undercover technique to bring to the public’s attention corruption, malfeasance, and scandal that would otherwise have been buried. Thus the sins of the rich, famous, and powerful can be exposed for all to see. Unless, of course, the sins are committed by Planned Parenthood who would prefer to keep them under wraps.
Enter one David Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress who tried to expose the baby-parts selling operation of Planned Parenthood. Like Nellie Bly, David Daleiden went undercover, and posing as a buyer and using hidden cameras videotaped some of the most incriminating and disgusting conversations with abortionists about the acquisition of fetal parts from aborted children. The videos left nothing to the imagination and demonstrated conclusively that not only that these human remains were being sold, but some of the premier parts would fetch high prices.
But unlike Nellie, Daleiden didn’t get the chance to beat Phileas Fogg’s globetrotting record. Instead he was sued, indicted, and convicted of crimes that could cost him $2.2 million if he is forced to pay the verdict of the jury in favor of Planned Parenthood and several of its affiliates. Finally, Planned Parenthood brought the muckraker before a federal jury, charging him with racketeering over the videos.
Just before the jury was sent to render its decision, the judge in the case, Judge William Orrick, ordered the jury to find that Daleiden was guilty of trespassing at Planned Parenthood conferences and clinics where the tapes were made.
“I have already determined that these defendants trespassed at each of these locations. Because I determined that these defendants trespassed, the law assumes that Planned Parenthood has been harmed” and therefore the jury was told it had only to assess damages. In addition, the judge, an Obama appointee, suppressed the videos that Daleiden had produced, forbade them from being released to the public, and suppressed other evidence of Planned Parenthood’s baby parts sales scheme.
Early in the case when Daleiden’s attorneys found that the judge had financial ties to a Planned Parenthood clinic, they moved to disqualify him, but another judge ruled that Orrick could remain on the case. What can I say? California justice!
Anyway, now the muckraker is fighting back. Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress are suing Planned Parenthood, former California attorney general and one-time presidential candidate Kamala Harris, current California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, and numerous associates, staff, and other state officials in Los Angeles federal court for conspiracy to violate their civil rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, trampling their rights to free speech, freedom of the press, and due process.
In the 52-page complaint, Daleiden claims that the defendants conspired with abortion leaders to pursue an unconstitutional “content-based” selective discriminatory enforcement of California’s anti-eavesdropping law to cover up his videotaped findings about the abortion industry’s role in aborted babies’ body parts trafficking.
The lawsuit charges the defendants with a “brazen, unprecedented, and ongoing conspiracy to selectively use California’s video recording laws as a political weapon to silence disfavored speech.” The complaint, filed in mid-May, alleges:
“David Daleiden became the first journalist ever to be criminally prosecuted under California’s recording law, not because of the method of video recording he utilized in his investigation — which is common in investigative journalism in this state — but because his investigation revealed and he published ‘shock[ing]’ content that California’s Attorney General and the private party coconspirators wanted to cover up.
“Defendants seek their ‘pound of flesh’ from Mr. Daleiden and to chill other journalists from investigating and reporting on that same content.
“This ‘shocking’ content included video footage of leadership at Planned Parenthood Federation of America…and their fetal tissue trade partners…making multiple shocking and callous admissions about exchanging fetal body parts for money on a per-specimen basis, sometimes using special abortion techniques to deliver living fetuses as intact as possible for harvesting, and knowingly blessing these practices at the highest levels of the professional abortion industry, despite federal and state laws forbidding these activities.”
The complaint meticulously lays out the case against each defendant and how each one conspired with the others to suppress Daleiden’s work in order to protect Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry’s dark underbelly from being known by the public. It details numerous efforts to criminally prosecute Daleiden, most of which failed because local prosecutors and police did not find Daleiden had committed any criminal act, as in Pasadena where a Planned Parenthood official told the police, “I appreciate your time looking into this, because if we could brand them as criminals, that would be a plus for me.”
Thomas Brejcha, president of the Thomas More Society of Chicago, one of the two public-interest law firms representing Daleiden, said, “Mr. Daleiden was not prosecuted because of the method of video recording he utilized in his undercover investigation. What he did is nothing less than standard practice in the tradition of investigative journalism, in California and across the country.
“What Daleiden charges…is that he and his helper Sandra Merritt have been singled out for criminal felony prosecution because his…investigation revealed shocking, true, and accurate video content that Ms. Harris, Becerra, Planned Parenthood, National Abortion Federation, and other defendants wanted to keep in the dark.”
The other firm representing Daleiden is the Dhillon Law Group of San Francisco headed by Harmeet Dhillon, a frequent legal guest on FOX News; Brejcha and other attorneys from the Thomas More Society have been frequent guests on my radio program, Faith On Trial.
The suit notes that preliminary publication of Daleiden’s findings caused investigations of the abortion industry by Congress which concluded that “Planned Parenthood had committed systemic violations of the law” with their baby parts sales endeavor
“As a result, the defendants engaged in an all-out war to censor and remove the content that [Center for Medical Progress] had published, and chill future journalistic efforts to investigate the abortion industry and to ensure that the industry complies with all applicable laws,” the suit alleges.
Having been familiar with the events surrounding this matter, from the time it began back in 2015, and given my frequent interactions with Thomas Brejcha and other attorneys from Thomas More, both in Chicago and Omaha, I hold that this suit is long overdue. The pleading is well arranged and the connections between the defendants are detailed.
However, the suit was just filed and there is a long way to go. But, assuming an honest judge this time, if the allegations are proven, Daleiden, and his campaign against Planned Parenthood will prevail.
And Nellie Bly will be smiling down on it.
(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every Thursday morning at 10 o’clock on IowaCatholicRadio.com.)