‘AMERICA’S LAWYER’ BREAKS NEW GROUND
Mike Papantonio / Courtesy Photo
By Rick Outzen Pensacola attorney Mike Papantonio isn’t afraid to create controversy or challenge the media elite. His latest project, “America’s Lawyer” on RT America, promises to do both at a level that is unprecedented even for one of the country’s top trial attorneys. In his law offices overlooking Pensacola Bay and Blue Wahoo Stadium, Papantonio talked about his half-hour news program that will debut this winter. “The stories that you’ll hear coming from ‘America’s Lawyer’ are stories that couldn’t possibly be told in corporate media because simply their advertisers wouldn’t allow it,” he told Inweekly. “You can search all over the country, in fact almost all over the world, and not find another program where we’re talking about specific cases where corporate conduct has killed people, injured people with defective products, polluted entire ecosystems, defrauded ‘mom and pop’ investors with Wall Street banker scams.” Papantonio continued, “This program does more than just tells the story. We actually make the documents available, put them on a screen and read them right to the viewer. They see firsthand where a corporate CEO is making a decision to make a profit even though he
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understands that that decision would involve loss of life or incredibly severe injury. “America’s Lawyer” will give viewers insights into how the mega, international corporations operate. He said, “Too often the American public almost isn’t able to accept the truth because the truth really is very ugly, and they can’t believe that corporations exist throughout the world that operate in the way that we’re going to be showing them on the screen.” News programs, like “60 Minutes” and “20/20,” once made headlines with their investigations into corrupt greed and corruption, but that has changed, according to Papantonio. “A major shift with ‘60 Minutes’ took place during the tobacco wars when whistleblowers actually showed ‘60 Minutes’ producers documents that proved the tobacco industry knowingly was addicting people to nicotine and had research paper after research paper in their files that were unequivocal about the fact that tobacco would cause cancer, heart disease and a whole host of physical illnesses,” he said. The show never did an in-depth expose. Papantonio said, “At the end, even after the executives for tobacco testified in front of Congress and committed perjury, the way 60 Minutes handled it was just a softball for the tobacco industry. It was at that time that it became evident that there was a void.” That void is being filled by new media such as HBO’s “Vice News” and “The Young Turks,” a daily online political show created by journalist Cenk Uygur, Ben Mankiewicz, and Dave Koller. “We see ‘America’s Lawyer’ and social media stepping into that void, much like you do with the Inweekly and Rick’s Blog,” said Papantonio. “Some stories can’t be told by corporate media that you’re able to tell.” He said, “Corporate media are losing their audience on issues like investigative journalism because they don’t do it anymore. That’s happening because they have fully invested into the money aspect of media, which is making sure they have all the advertisers they can possibly handle. Because of that they
simply are directed not to tell these investigative stories.” The compromised corporate media led Papantonio to develop a relationship with RT America, an American-owned, Americanoperated extension of RT International. The RT originally stood for “Russia Today.” “The reason that RT right now is emerging is because there’s a void that exists in corporate media,” said Papantonio. “If I were to call MSNBC and tell them that there is a drug on the market that’s killing 1,000 women a year and the drug was manufactured by one of their advertisers, they would not do the story. I know that firsthand because that’s occurred several times when I was a contributor to MSNBC. The same holds true for CNN or FOX or any major network that relies on advertising.” RT America has been accused of being a propaganda machine for Russia President Vladimir Putin. In 2014, RT America reporter Liz Wald resigned during a live broadcast saying that she could not be a part of a network that “whitewashes the actions of Putin.” Papantonio said the true propaganda machine is corporate media. He said, “There is no more severe propaganda (at RT America) than what we see out of corporate media trying to protect their advertisers where they will not tell a story, no matter how disgusting the story is, because their advertisers won’t allow them to do it. Had I not seen it so many times firsthand I wouldn’t have believed that, but I have over the years.” For the past several years, Papantonio has been a contributor to RT America. He has also filled in for Thom Hartman on “The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann” that runs weekdays on RT America. “There’s not one time, not one single time, have they told me what I can and cannot say,” said Papantonio. “Even when reporters with RT America were talking about the Crimea crisis, they weren’t told that they could not engage in the discussion.” The Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign attacked RT International during the presidential campaign, es-
pecially when WikiLeaks began releasing DNC and campaign emails, according to Papantonio. “The DNC and the Hillary camp have tried to come up with so many reasons why Hillary lost the election rather than facing the fact that she was a deplorably weak candidate. They’ve tried to blame it on the FBI. They’ve tried to blame it on Russia leaking documents. They’ve tried to blame it on WikiLeaks. They’ve tried to blame it on progressive sites that did not support her.” He said, “RT International was the brunt of an attack by the DNC to try to move attention away from the inept quality of the way that campaign was run. Fortunately, Trump, at this point, realizes that the notion of a new red scare in America is insane, and his relationship with Russia is far better than we ever would have seen with Hillary Clinton.” RT America has invested $250,000 to build a state-of-the-art studio in the Levin Papantonio law firm offices. Papantonio has a staff of seven working on the show locally, which will be produced out of RT America’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. A new half-hour show will be broadcast weekly and rerun three times both nationally and internationally. Papantonio said, “The rundown for the first shows will be Erin Brockovich, Ralph Nader, Gloria Allred and Cornell West. We will introduce the facts of a case, present the news coverage, and have an interview with a newsmaker every show.” The show will cover more than corporate misdeeds. He said, “We will also turn the spotlight on the misconduct of attorneys and judges.” The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, no friend of trial attorneys, has shown interest in the show. He said, “They actually wrote RT America and asked for all the details months before it even came on the air, once they heard about it.” Papantonio said, “Corrupt mega, international corporations will hate this program because it’s going to be shown in every Englishspeaking country in the world.” And that doesn’t bother Mike Papantonio one bit. {in}
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