In the frames of US Embassy Speaker program, Los Angeles Times investigative journalist and writer Bill Rempel met Georgian journalists working in investigative field in Frontline Georgia.
Photo By Medea Kavelashvili
Bill Rempel’s long and eventful career at the Los Angeles Times, both as a writer and an editor, produced an impressive collection of high-profile projects and change-makers. His reporting triggered government investigations, exposed White House and Pentagon scandals, and prompted reforms of state courts and consumer protection laws.
Groundbreaking reports on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were published before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and his extensive coverage of supertanker safety flaws began years before the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster.
The datelines on his overseas investigative reports range from Kiev to the Turks and Caicos Islands. He has co-authored exclusive reports detailing secret U.S. arms deals with Iran, tracking tons of explosives smuggled to terrorist camps in Libya, tracing embargoed nuclear technology out of South Africa and documenting sales and leases of Ukrainian cargo planes to Colombian drug lords.
He left the Times in 2009 to complete work on his book, At the Devil’s Table. His current project for Harper Collins is a biography due for delivery in 2016. The more about him you can find here – William Rempel
Photo by Frontline Georgia
The meeting continued for several hours. Journalists asked loads of interesting questions and the answers were also promising. Here are some important lines from the discussion.
Bill Rempel about internet and social media: “It’s make investigative journalism unbelievably easy, It took me several weeks and months to fly from one place to another to get information, now it’s easy, it gets you only minutes surfing on internet. As for social media, it made possible to make every citizen investigative reporter and yeah, if we say that information is power, then everything is in our hands.”
His view about imprisonment of Khadija Ismayilova for seven years, the question was asked by young reporter from Azerbaijan: “You should seek public support, that’s the only way, because the public needs you and the public should to defend you, there is no other way, the same goes with Rustavi 2.”
Photo By Medea Kavelashvili
He on censorship: “I was never ever censored, threaten from anyone during my whole career, so it’s hard to me to talk about it, knowing how brave you all are working under hard pressure, especially in Azerbaijan.”
Rempel about Edward Snowden: “If we lie in order to say true, it’s wrong, it puts down our authority, so it;s wrong in the beginning and also he fled to Moscow to our enemy, this says a lot.”
He on abandoned stories: “I stop to work on the project when I’ve not enough facts, it happens not often, but it happens. Just take into consideration that sometimes you’ll need much more time to collect the facts, then it supposed to take, for example, I spent 8 years on story about Cali Carter, you can find out more from my book Devil’s Table.”
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