I stumbled on his book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, and I am not sure what to think. My political leanings incline me to be sympathetic to his assertions, but some of them seem over the top even to an accused liberal like me. Here is the link I would appreciate any thoughts you have. Although I am not real interested in right wing bashing based on ideology, right wing bashing based on fact would be great. 
Greg Palast is the shiznitz. What claims of his were you skeptical of?
The TV programme where he pulled out a memo on a Florida government official (something to do with the dodgy elections) proving something that the guy had repeatedly denied and the guy took one look and literally ran away was superb!
Palast has a similar tack to Michael Moore, which may make you suspicious, but Palast is a serious journalist and backs up all his claims.
I am not so much skeptical but rather incredulous. If what he says on his weblog and books is true then this is a scary world we live in.
I am curious about many of the documents which he often claims to have aquired. He frequently refers to documents which mysteriously turn up on his desk, or fax machine. I understand the need to protect his sources and I am inclined to consider their validity. However, he also reproduces many portions of documents that do not clearly say what he claims they do. None of this should be taken a criticism of Mr. Palast or his journalistic abilities, rather just an attempt to learn what others think of his writings.
The government official was Clayton Roberts, Republican and Florida’s Director of Elections. The state had awarded a $4,000,000 contract to DataBase Technologies (DBT) to compile and verify a list of Floridians who had felony convictions and, therefore, inelligble to vote. Turns out, DBT never verified the list and when one county’s election supervisor went through the hassle and expense of manual verification, the list had a 95% error rate (most counties didn’t have the time or resources to verify and therefore used the unverified DBT list). Roberts was being asked to comment on why no verification had been done as required by law and was also going to be asked to comment on the claim by DBT’s vice-president that Roberts and the state of Florida, in fact, wanted an even longer list with more names than what they had provided.
The transcript is here, and there is a link at the top to view the actual piece in Real One player (direct link here).
His association with the highly regarded BBC definitely puts him among journalism’s best. His bio is pretty impressive (MBS from the U. of Chicago-studied under ultra-con. Milton Friedman).
If the U.S. did in fact have a “liberal” media, we would see Greg Palast rather than effetes like Sam Donaldson, Cokie Roberts or Alan Colmes reporting from the left.
Palast can be too smug and smirky for my tastes, even when I basically agree with him on an issue. When he sticks to a basic “Just the Facts, Ma’am” style and provides accompanying documentation, he can be very effective and even downright devastating.
For one thing, he’s a trained investigator and knows who to talk to and what questions to ask, something a lot of journalists apparently don’t. Sometimes the Washington press corps reminds me of a bunch of trained seals waiting for their daily feeding (Thanks, Molly Ivins!). Way too dependent on offical pronouncements and press conferences.
In Florida 2000, he was apparently the only one covering the election who had the idea to call county election supervisors and ask them what was going on in their districts. The big issues in Florida were not hanging chads, butterfly ballots, and recounts, but the contract with DBT and the “felon” scrub list, but no one except Palast even came up with that.