But our story is about another petrochemical giant — Chevron — and a major threat to independent journalism. In New York last Thursday, Federal Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ordered documentary producer and director Joe Berlinger to turn over to Chevron more than 600 hours of raw footage used to create a film titled Crude: The Real Price of Oil.

Released last year, it’s the story of how 30,000 Ecuadorians rose up to challenge the pollution of their bodies, livestock, rivers and wells from Texaco’s drilling for oil there, a rainforest disaster that has been described as the Amazon’s Chernobyl. When Chevron acquired Texaco in 2001 and attempted to dismiss claims that it was now responsible, the indigenous people and their lawyers fought back in court.

Some of the issues and nuances of Berlinger’s case are admittedly complex, but they all boil down to this: Chevron is trying to avoid responsibility and hopes to find in the unused footage — material the filmmaker did not utilize in the final version of his documentary — evidence helpful to the company in fending off potential damages of  $27.3 billion.  

This is a serious matter for reporters, filmmakers and frankly, everyone else. Tough, investigative reporting without fear or favor — already under siege by severe cutbacks and the shutdown of newspapers and other media outlets — is vital to the public awareness and understanding essential to a democracy. As Michael Moore put it, “The chilling effect of this is, [to] someone like me, if something like this is upheld, the next whistleblower at the next corporation is going to think twice about showing me some documents if that information has to be turned over to the corporation that they’re working for.”

In an open letter on Joe Berlinger’s behalf, signed by many in the non-fiction film business (including the two of us), the Independent Documentary Association described Chevron’s case as a “fishing expedition” and wrote that, “At the heart of journalism lies the trust between the interviewer and his or her subject.  Individuals who agree to be interviewed by the news media are often putting themselves at great risk, especially in the case of television news and documentary film where the subject’s identity and voice are presented in the final report.  

“If witnesses sense that their entire interviews will be scrutinized by attorneys and examined in courtrooms they will undoubtedly speak less freely. This ruling surely will have a crippling effect on the work of investigative journalists everywhere, should it stand.”

Just so. With certain exceptions, the courts have considered outtakes of a film to be the equivalent of a reporter’s notebook, to be shielded from the scrutiny of others. If we — reporters, journalists, filmmakers — are required to turn research, transcripts and outtakes over to a government or a corporation — or to one party in a lawsuit — the whole integrity of the process of journalism is in jeopardy; no one will talk to us.

In his decision, Judge Kaplan wrote that, “Review of Berlinger’s outtakes will contribute to the goal of seeing not only that justice is done, but that it appears to be done.” He also quoted former Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis’ famous maxim that “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”

There is an irony to this, noted by Frank Smyth of the Committee to Protect Journalists. Brandeis “made his famous sunlight statement about the need to expose bankers and investors who controlled ‘money trusts’ to stifle competition, and he later railed against  not only powerful corporations but the lawyers and other members of the bar who worked to perpetuate their power.”

In a 1905 speech before the Harvard Ethical Society, Brandeis said, “Instead of holding a position of independence, between the wealthy and the people, prepared to curb the excesses of either, able lawyers have, to a large extent, allowed themselves to become adjuncts of great corporations and have neglected the obligation to use their powers for the protection of the people.”

Now, more than a century later, Chevron, the third largest corporation in America, according to Forbes magazine, has hauled out their lawyers in a case that would undermine the right of journalists to protect the people by telling them the truth. Joe Berlinger and his legal team have asked Judge Kaplan to suspend his order pending an appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

As the Independent Documentary Association asserts, “This case offers a clear and compelling argument for more vigorous federal shield laws to protect journalists and their work, better federal laws to protect confidential sources, and stronger standards to prevent entities from piercing the journalists’ privilege. We urge the higher courts to overturn this ruling to help ensure the safety and protection of journalists and their subjects, and to promote a free and vital press in our nation and around the world.”

In those faraway days before 24-hour cable news, the details were hazy and slow in coming. That night, friends huddled around the tiny TV I had in my room — one of those early Sony tummy tubes with a fuzzy, black and white picture the size of your palm. With each sketchy report, anger and frustration grew in the room but didn’t start to go over the top until, believe it or not, “The Tonight Show” came on after the 11 o’clock news. Johnny Carson’s guest was Bob Hope, and when the sexagenarian comedian launched into what was his standard routine those days — lots of jokes about long-haired hippies and smelly anti-war protesters — the kids crowded into my tiny dorm room were furious. On this of all nights how could he be so crass as to trot out those tired one-liners about, well, us?  

By the next morning, groups of students gathered around the campus taking about Kent State and the events leading up to the killings. A few days before, President Nixon had announced the invasion of Cambodia, justifying the so-called “incursion” as necessary to protect our troops in Vietnam.  Protests had broken out at schools all over America. With the Kent State deaths, we wondered what to do — and what would happen — next.

A crowded meeting in the school’s main assembly hall lasted late into the night, filled with the earnest bombast of callow youth and plans of action that ranged from Do Nothing 101 to Advanced Anarchy. The bookstore’s stock of Georgetown t-shirts sold out as kids scooped them up and stenciled defiant red fists on the backs. My friend Romolo Martemucci trimmed his red fist in green, a gesture of Italian-American solidarity.

By mid-week, two parallel strategies emerged: a national strike that would shut down the country’s colleges and universities — both as a protest and to give students the freedom to devote all their time to mobilizing against the war — and a massive rally in Washington, DC on Saturday, May 9.

As did approximately 450 American schools, the Georgetown administration yielded to the strike. We were given the option to finish finals or take the grades we already had for the semester. We went to Capitol Hill and tried to see our hometown members of Congress to let our opposition to the war be known, then turned our attention to the big Saturday rally. Because we were already in DC, much of the logistics fell to us and the other colleges in town.

I volunteered to be a rally marshal, directing crowds and hoping to prevent violence. On the main campus lawn, we were given a crash medical course in how to cope with dehydration, tear gas attacks and gunshot wounds.

At breakfast Saturday morning, with macho-laced concern, we told our girlfriends to stay away from the rally; there might be trouble. Instead, we suggested they go to the protest headquarters to help out. As it turned out, they wound up more in danger than we were — a small group of neo-Nazis attacked the rally offices. Luckily, no one was seriously hurt.

As for me, I was given a powder blue armband and stood with other marshals on the periphery of the 100,000 person rally, enjoying a lovely sunny day. For its protection, the White House had been ringed with DC Transit buses parked nose to tail. Nothing happened until late in the day, when an army water truck came barreling toward us and we linked hands, as if that somehow would ward it off. In fact, the truck veered away just before it reached our paltry line of defense. In the next day’s paper, I read that the vehicle had been hijacked by Yippies and was last seen barreling across a Potomac River bridge into the wilds of Virginia.

And then it was over. That night, rumors spread that police were going to clear out groups of out-of-town demonstrators who were camped out in Potomac Park near the monuments and that they would flee to the college campuses. We stayed up all night waiting to take them in but it never happened.

On May 15, two more students were killed and 12 wounded at Jackson State University in Mississippi, with nowhere near the attention Kent State received. The Jackson State students were African-American. The mobilization that was supposed to continue with the close of school fizzled out. Most Georgetown students took advantage of the early end of the semester to bask in the sun and play on the lawn or simply go home. A friend wrote an editorial in one of the campus newspapers headlined, “The Frisbee Revolution.” Those of us who were trying to keep the protests alive were annoyed at the time, but he was right. Once the impetus of the big rally was over, motivation vanished and kids went back to being kids. The war retreated, out of sight, out of mind. But it went on for another five, bloody, futile years. Despite all the anger and worry today: an economy in shambles; the loss of jobs and security; wars continuing in Afghanistan and Iraq; and a dysfunctional government hobbled by the stranglehold of campaign cash and political hackery, there’s a similar lack of interest afflicting many of those of those who rallied to the cause of Barack Obama in 2008, knocking on doors, contributing money — voting. With that exciting and historic election over and done, the attention of many of them wandered elsewhere, consumed by self-interest or distracted by media’s oxymoron, reality TV, where ex-astronauts dance with chorus girls and parents juggle eight children under the omniscient gaze of the camera.

Friday’s edition of the Financial Times was headlined, “US shares tumble amid fears over debt,” but also featured a glossy magazine insert titled, “How to spend it.” Options include a Kevlar racing kayak, a game darting safari in Kenya and a white gold lace bracelet with diamonds and rubies, a steal at $220,000.  On the same day came word that US unemployment for April hit 9.9 percent, despite a reported 290,000 new jobs.

Last week, thousands marched on Wall Street to protest the cynical abuse for profit perpetrated by banks and corporate America. On May 17, others will march on Washington’s K Street, where lobbyists roam, not free, but in pursuit of princely paychecks from those who seek influence and clout.  

All well and good. But in the great American elsewhere, the Frisbees are flying.

Blankenship hates unions (Upper Big Branch is a non-union mine), thinks global warming is a figment of our imaginations and that those who do believe in climate change are crazy; supports destructive, mountaintop-removal mining; serves on the board of the conservative, free market U.S. Chamber of Commerce and now, lucky us, shares his pearls of right-wing wisdom via Twitter. “America doesn’t need Green jobs,” he tweeted pithily last month, “but Red, White, & Blue ones.” David Roberts of the environmental magazine Grist described him as “the scariest polluter in the U.S. …The guy is evil and I don’t use that word lightly.”

Just one example of Massey Energy’s earlier history of environmental malfeasance was described in a May 2003 issue of Forbes Magazine:

“In October 2000 the floor of a 72-acre wastewater reservoir built above an abandoned mine in Kentucky collapsed, sending black sludge through the mine and out into a tributary of the Big Sandy River. The sludge killed fish and plants for 36 miles downstream. Water supplies were shut down in several towns for a month. In total, 230 million gallons spilled out, 20 times the volume of the crude oil from the Exxon Valdez. Lawns nearby were covered in as much as 7 feet of muck…

“… The reservoir had shown signs of leaking right before the accident and Massey failed to report that fact to regulators as required, according to the U.S. Mine Safety & Health Administration. The cleanup has cost $58 million so far.”

This week’s Upper Big Branch mine disaster is the latest in a string of environmental and safety-related calamities linked to Massey and Blankenship. In 2008, the company paid a $20 million fine to the Environmental Protection Agency, and that same year, a Massey subsidiary, the Aracoma Coal Co., pled guilty to safety violations and agreed to $4.2 million in civil penalties and criminal fines connected to the 2006 deaths of two miners in a fire. According to the New York Times, “After the fire broke out, the two miners found themselves unable to escape, partly because the company had removed some ventilation controls inside the mine. The workers died of suffocation. Federal prosecutors at the time called it the largest such settlement in the history of the coal industry.”

The Upper Big Branch mine has a long history of violations. Last month alone it was cited by the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration for 53 safety violations, many of them for inadequate venting of dust and methane and improperly maintained escape passages. Last year, the Times reports, “the number of citations against the mine more than doubled, to over 500, from 2008, and the penalties proposed against the mine more than tripled, to $897,325.” So far, only $168,393 of those fines have been paid. Blankenship’s response? “Violations are unfortunately a normal part of the mining process,” he told a radio interviewer.

West Virginia and federal laws were toughened after the Sago mine disaster in 2006 that killed 12 men. But as the number of safety citations has increased, so, too, has the number of appeals by the mining companies, and while that long bureaucratic process unfolds, it’s business as usual.

Blankenship and Massey Energy play our political system like a country fiddle, a system corrupted by money and influence. A certified public accountant (he’s actually in the national CPA hall of fame — I’m not kidding), Blankenship apparently sees the world as one big balance sheet, with human life an expendable commodity and — especially if they’re judges or other officials — something to be bought and sold. The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics says that since 1990, those associated with Massey and its political action committee have given more than $300,000 in campaign contributions to federal candidates. And in 2006, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, Blankenship spent more than $100,000 trying to elect pro-business candidates to the West Virginia state Legislature.

But it’s in the courthouse that Blankenship has really tried to spread the wealth. In 2008, photos were published of him wining and dining West Virginia Supreme Court Justice “Spike” Maynard along the Riviera. They were popping corks in Monaco as Massey Energy was before the court appealing a $50 million judgment that had been won by smaller mining companies charging Massey with fraud. Subsequently, Maynard recused himself from the case and was defeated for reelection. Now he’s running for Congress.

Blankenship had better luck when he went on the offensive against West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals Justice Warren McGraw, creating a PAC called “And for the Sake of the Kids.” He contributed $3 million and created campaign ads described by USA Today as “venomous.” They made particular hay with a case in which Justice McGraw was part of a majority that voted to free a mentally disturbed child molester, who got a job as a school janitor. McGraw was defeated by Blankenship’s candidate, Brent Benjamin.

When the appeal of the $50 million came before the court, ABC News reports,” Justice Benjamin refused to recuse himself from the case and twice provided the deciding vote in Massey’s favor. The jury verdict against Massey was overturned.” So egregious were Benjamin’s actions that even the current United States Supreme Court, so heavily pro-business in its recent decision-making, was appalled. It ruled that the judge and Blankenship were out of line. Even so — and even with Benjamin finally recusing himself — on a third vote, Massey again won its appeal. When you can’t beat ‘em, buy ‘em.

Meanwhile, miners working for Massey Energy and Blankenship continue to risk their lives deep below the earth, digging out the fuel that helps keep our lights burning at the price of never knowing if the tiniest of sparks will ignite the next fatal explosion.

 Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program “Bill Moyers Journal,” which airs Friday night on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog.

We sanctify his memory now, name streets and schools after him, made his birthday a national holiday. But in April 1968, as King walked out on that motel balcony, his reputation was under assault. The glory days of the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott and the 1963 March on Washington were behind him, his Nobel Peace Prize already in the past.

A year before, at Riverside Church in New York, he had spoken out — eloquently — against the war in Vietnam. King said, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death,” a position that angered President Lyndon Johnson, many of King’s fellow civil rights leaders and influential newspapers. The Washington Post charged that King had, “diminished his usefulness to his cause, to his country, and to his people.”

With his popularity in decline, an exhausted, stressed and depressed Martin Luther King Jr. turned his attention to economic injustice. He reminded the country that his March on Washington five years earlier had not been for civil rights alone but “a campaign for jobs and income, because we felt that the economic question was the most crucial that black people and poor people, generally, were confronting.” Now, King was building what he called the Poor People’s Campaign to confront nationwide inequalities in jobs, pay and housing.

But he had to prove that he could still be an effective leader, and so he came to Memphis, in support of a strike by that city’s African-American garbage men. Eleven hundred sanitation workers had walked off the job after two had died in a tragic accident, crushed by a garbage truck’s compactor. The garbage men were fed up — treated with contempt as they performed a filthy and unrewarding job, paid so badly that 40 percent of them were on welfare, called “boy” by white supervisors. Their picket signs were simple and eloquent: “I AM A MAN.”

A few weeks into their strike, which had been met with opposition and violence, King arrived for meetings and addressed a rally. Ten days later, he returned to lead a march through the streets of Memphis that ended in smashed windows, gunshots and tear gas.

Upset by the violence, he came back to the city one more time to try to put things right. The night before his death, King made his famous “Mountaintop” speech, prophetically telling an audience, “Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land!”

The next night he was dead. Twelve days later, the strike was settled, the garbage men’s union was recognized and the city of Memphis begrudgingly agreed to increase their pay, at first by a dime an hour, and later, an extra nickel.

That paltry sum would also be prophetic. All these decades later, little has changed when it comes to economic equality. If anything, the recent economic meltdown and recession have made the injustice of poverty even more profound, especially in a society where the top percentile enjoys undreamed of prosperity.

Unemployment among African-Americans is nearly double that of whites, according to the National Urban League’s latest State of Black America report. Black men and women in this country make 62 cents on the dollar earned by whites. Less than half of black and Hispanic families own homes and they are three times more likely to live below the poverty line.

The nonpartisan group United for a Fair Economy has issued a report that features Martin Luther King Jr. on the cover with the title “State of the Dream 2010: Drained.” King’s dream is in jeopardy, the report’s authors write, “The Great Recession has pulled the plug on communities of color, draining jobs and homes at alarming rates while exacerbating persistent inequalities of wealth and income.”

Nor will a recovery ameliorate the crisis. “A rising tide does not lift all boats,” United for a Fair Economy’s report goes on to say, “because the public policies, economic structures, and unwritten rules of racism form mountains and ridgelines, and hills and valleys that shape our economic landscape. As a result, a rising economic tide fills the rivers and reservoirs of some, while leaving others dry and parched.”

This is a perilous moment. The individualist, greed-driven free-market ideology that both our major parties have pursued is at odds with what most Americans really care about. Popular support for either party has struck bottom, as more and more agree that growing inequality is bad for the country, that corporations have too much power, that money in politics has corrupted out system, and that working families and poor communities need and deserve help because the free market has failed to generate shared prosperity – its famous unseen hand has become a closed fist..

It is hard to overstate the consequences of choosing more of the same — the very policies that have sundered our social contract. But hear the judgment of Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow, echoing Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and martyrdom. “The vast inequalities of income weaken a society’s sense of mutual concern,” Arrow said. “… The sense that we are all members of the social order is vital to the meaning of civilization.”

And there’s a new study this week, “Rewarding Failure,” from the public interest group Public Citizen, revealing that in the years leading up to the financial meltdown, the CEOs of the 10 Wall Street giants that either collapsed or got huge amounts of TARP money were paid an average of $28.9 million dollars a year.

In 2007, that amounted to 575 times the median income of an American family. Now, thanks in part to the banks’ monumental malfeasance that led to our economic swan dive, food stamps are now being used to feed one in eight Americans and a quarter of all the kids in this country. A new poll from the New York Times and CBS News reports that more than half of our unemployed have borrowed money from friends and relatives and have cut back on medical treatments. The Times wrote, “Joblessness has wreaked financial and emotional havoc on the lives of many of those out of work … causing major life changes, mental health issues and trouble maintaining even basic necessities.”

Yet according to the nonprofit Americans for Financial Reform, the reported $150 billion that Wall Street is paying itself in compensation and bonuses this year would be enough to solve the budget crisis of every one of the 50 states or create millions of jobs or prevent all foreclosures for four years.

All of this wretched excess is occurring as more and more people can’t afford a roof over their heads. Foreclosures were up another 5 percent in the third quarter — 23 percent more than a year ago. Fewer Americans are willing to buy foreclosed properties, and the Obama administration’s foreclosure prevention plan has been a bust so far — way too timid, critics say, and many of the banks won’t play ball, refusing to negotiate in good faith with homeowners desperate to hold on.

We got a firsthand look at the crisis this week when thousands lined up at the Jacob Javits Convention Center just a few blocks from our Manhattan offices to attend a mortgage assistance event sponsored by the nonprofit Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA). So many showed up for this leg of the “Save the Dream Tour” that on many days, staff and volunteers stayed to help until 1 in the morning.

NACA has had success getting homeowners and banks together to work out a deal to prevent foreclosure. But the big banks’ return to the government of the TARP bailout money with which we underwrote them over the last 14 months is a mixed blessing — great to have the cash returned so quickly, terrible because any leverage Washington held over the banks because of the loans virtually vanishes with the payback. They’re back in the saddle and not inclined to be of much assistance helping anyone else out, especially those in mortgage trouble.

As Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times wrote in the wake of Obama’s Monday meeting with Wall Street’s top guns (three of whom failed to show up because of airport delays)

Executive compensation, leverage limits and lending standards were all issues that Washington said it planned to change — and when the taxpayers were the shareholders of these firms, it probably could have done so. But now the White House has been left in the position of extending invitations, rather than exercising its clout. And in the figurative and literal sense, it is getting stood up.

Afterward, Obama said, “The problem is there’s a big gap between what I’m hearing here in the White House and the activities of lobbyists on behalf of these institutions or associations of which they’re a member up on Capitol Hill.”

That’s putting it mildly. This week, the American Bankers Association sent out an update and “call to action” memorandum crowing over its success in watering down the bank reform bill that was approved by the House and urging its members to beat back similar legislation in the Senate. Self-righteously, it concludes, “As one of your New Year’s resolutions, please vow to do everything in your power to show, and to have your colleagues in your bank show, your Senators the right path to true reform.”

It helps when the right path is paved with silver and gold. As “Crossing Wall Street,” a November report from the Center for Responsive Politics, notes:

The finance, insurance and real estate sector has given $2.3 billion to candidates, leadership PACs and party committees since 1989, which eclipses every other sector …

The financial sector has also been a voracious lobbying force, spending an unprecedented $3.8 billion since 1998, while sending an army of lobbyists to Capitol Hill to make its case. That’s more money than any other sector has spent on influence peddling. Not even the healthcare sector, which spun up a lobbying frenzy this year over health reform, has spent more.

The banks are making a list and checking it twice. And we shouldn’t forget that during his run for the White House, the finance sector filled Obama’s stocking with $39.5 million worth of campaign contributions, more than for any other presidential candidate.

God bless us, every one!

Research support provided by “Bill Moyers Journal” producer William Brangham and associate producer Katia Maguire.