Photo credit: Jessica Jean Martin Photography
It took two Canadian prize winning filmmakers – Emmy award winning director Fred Peabody and producer Peter Raymont – to reach across the border to interview some of the best USA investigative reporters who followed the principles and spirit of I. F. Stone, Washington, DC’s feisty and legendary one-man wrecking ball investigative reporter. The results ended up at the Toronto International Film Festival as a documentary called All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception, and the Spirit of I.F. Stone, partly based on prolific journalist and author Myra MacPherson’s All Governments Lie: The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I. F. Stone. MacPherson joined panelists Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!; Nermeen Shaikh, Democracy Now!; Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone; Jeff Cohen, Ithaca College and Fred Peabody.
“For decades, maverick American journalist I.F. Stone took on the powers that be — from Red-baiting fearmonger Joe McCarthy to Lyndon Johnson to Ronald Reagan — in the pages of the tiny publication I.F. Stone’s Weekly (and later in the New York Review of Books and The Nation), most of it typed, two-finger style, by Stone himself. Working without the “access” to those in power so prized by establishment journalists, Stone took on the system regardless of personal risk. In All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception, and the Spirit of I.F. Stone, Fred Peabody pays tribute to Stone’s work and looks at those who carry on his legacy today.” Democracy Now!
Stone combed through government records to find his scoops and expose falsehoods behind government scandals in the 20th century. Today’s adversarial journalists in the film include Amy Goodman, Matt Taibbi, Jeremy Scahill and Glen Greenwald of Intercept, Michael Moore and Jeff Cohen, media critic and also a producer of the documentary. There are both chilling and hilarious scenes of mainstream fawning and shallowness. One clip shows a famous TV commentator cutting away from an interview for a “Breaking News” bulletin—something about teen idol singer Justin Bieber.
Alfred Peabody, Matt Taibbi, Jeffrey Cohen, Amy Goodman, Nermeen Shaikh, Myra MacPherson Peter Raymont, founder of Toronto based White Pine Pictures.
The Trailer:
