Journalist Ira Silverman will speak on “The World of Investigative Journalism: Confidential Sources, Cut-outs, Dangles, and the Hunt for the Big Story” at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, November 3 in the Park Auditorium. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Silverman spent thirty-one years at NBC News and served primarily as chief investigative producer for the NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw and as a writer and producer of award-winning documentaries and special reports.
Lecture Description:
Your most trusted source may have a hidden agenda. He or she may be a "cut-out" for someone else. Your "big story" may be a "dangle" coming out of an intelligence agency or a rogue group within such an agency. Someone inside your news organization may have a big mouth, may violate a confidence, and put you and your story in jeopardy. Or, you may get on the air or in print without any of those problems. You are elated and on to your next story when a subpoena arrives inviting you to a grand jury to tell just how you broke that big story and to identify your sources.
Ira Silverman was chief investigative producer for NBC News. He lived in the world of cut-outs, dangles, hidden agendas, and newsroom betrayals. He's had his share of subpoenas, but he's agreed to be "cross-examined" at Ithaca College without one.
About Ira Silverman:
For many of his thirty-one years at NBC News, Ira Silverman was chief investigative producer for the NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw and a writer and producer of award-winning documentaries and special reports.
He was the recipient of two Emmys, two Dupont-Columbia Awards, two Overseas Press Club awards, the Peabody, and the Polk.
He was a part of NBC News reporting teams that broke major national and international stories: Saddam Hussein’s bungled attempt to build a nuclear bomb, the grand jury investigation and pending indictment of General Manuel Noriega, the FBI Abscam investigation of corruption in the U.S. Congress, the payola scandals in the rock music business, and the collapse of BCCI, the world’s most corrupt bank.
On assignment for the New Yorker magazine, Silverman tracked down and interviewed an American fugitive who had carried out a murder in the United States for the government of Iran. On another assignment for the New Yorker, he caught up with “Fat Larry” Iorrizo, a mobster and fugitive, who had just made off with hundreds of millions of dollars in stolen gasoline taxes.
After breaking major stories on NBC and in the New Yorker, Silverman and veteran Secret Service agent Steve Berthold are now at work on Intaglio, a screenplay, which will reveal how terrorists around the world have financed many of their operations by printing virtually-undetectable fake American $100 bills.
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20051026093032965