Unholy Alliances: Working the Tawana Brawley Story by Mike Taibbi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Previously, I had only known dimly about the Tawana Brawley Story: a young girl's extremely poor decision making engaging a neighorhood, local/national news and lies so deep she couldn't find her way out. In a way, that is merely a footnote, a setting for Al Sharpton to re-cast his image from traitorous government informant to champion for African-Americans. I have to admire Sharpton's ability to completely re-create his persona, regardless of how disengenuous and underhanded his motivations and techniques are as revealed in this book co-authored by the father of Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi.
I especially liked the business-of-journalist sub-plots in the telling: how investigations led to other stories that made air time, how editing and content decisions were made, how jury-rigged innovations made a key difference before the era of ubiquitous satellite trucks.
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