Clear Eyed Media

10/16/2026

“We’re gonna make them pay” is actually my job now. It’s more fun than being a journalist. But also a little scary.

When I make a settlement documentary, I’m presenting a case, sometimes on behalf of multiple plaintiffs.

It’s more than storytelling. It’s legal advocacy. And if I'm wrong, it's not just embarrassing or a career setback. Real people lose.

As a reporter, my responsibility was to be accurate, fair and informative. Basically, to tell people what they should know that powerful forces want hidden, in the most interesting way possible.

Now my job is to take on those powerful forces as part of a legal team.

I work with incredible people, attorneys and paralegals who build cases from the ground up.

They often bring me in late in the game to plow through discovery and craft a video version of the case that makes the other side want to settle sooner rather than later.

10/08/2026

Most documentaries are made for people who want to watch them. Mine are made for people who are ready and willing to tear them apart.

I constantly reassess where the video could be stronger because I know defense attorneys and insurance adjusters are looking for weak spots.

The question that drives me is: what can I show that makes the other side want to tap out and settle sooner?

I spend far more time reading documents and transcripts than my team spends shooting video.

Almost all the material comes from discovery. That includes surveillance footage, medical charts, imaging, police reports, deposition transcripts, timesheets, internal memos, policy statements, plus records I dig up myself. I mostly use deposition video because it's sworn testimony.

In a recent case, the defense operated under an unspoken premise: that what the defendant did was standard practice. So I spent a day and a half digging through training materials and professional standards to see whether that was true.

It wasn't. I put the pages on screen, highlighted the key language, and paired them with clips from the training videos themselves. That segment took the premise apart, and my clients ran with it.

It's a lot like the investigative reporting I did for nearly two decades in TV news. Now, discovery makes information gathering easier, and nobody tells me the story has to be done in 90 seconds or less.

Most of my videos run 15 to 25 minutes. The last one was 100 minutes long.

The audience wasn't happy. They settled.

10/02/2026

As a longtime video producer, every time I see someone holding a lav mic in a TikTok video, I think of this.

09/22/2026

Google reviews matter more than I realized before I started running a small business.

You do the work, deliver, and then hope clients will share something publicly.

This past week, two attorneys did. I now have four five-star reviews for Clear Eyed Media, and yes, I’m proud as hell of every one of them.

I make settlement and mediation documentaries for trial attorneys. I work hard for my clients, and I learn a ton from each case.

Thank you to the attorneys who have trusted me with their cases and taken the time to say so. It means a lot.

02/26/2026

Attorney Peter Janci has spent nearly 20 years representing survivors of s*xual abuse. In this clip, he discusses the critical blind spot many parents have and why early action is so important, even if nothing turns out to be wrong.

(Link to full podcast episode in the comments).

01/28/2026

Boys promised medical care instead met a "predator in a white coat."

And the abuse went on for decades.

Attorney Peter Janci describes conditions that led to an $18 million settlement in a child s*x abuse case against the federal government. It was part of $32.5 million paid to at least 20 victims.

In the latest episode of the Make Your Case podcast, Janci explains why enablers, not just the abuser, were to blame, how 170-year-old treaties played a part in the case, and what ultimately moved legal decision-makers.

Janci is based in Portland, Oregon. He's represented s*xual abuse survivors for nearly two decades.

Link to the full episode is in the comments.

01/21/2026

“The word 'betrayal' I don't think is strong enough."

That's how attorney Peter Janci describes conditions that led to an $18 million settlement in a child s*x abuse case against the federal government. It was part of $32.5 million paid to at least 20 victims.

In the latest episode of the Make Your Case podcast, Janci explains how 170-year-old treaties played a part in the case, why early notice is critical and the red flags parents should take seriously to help prevent abuse.

Janci, based in Portland, Oregon, has represented survivors of s*xual abuse for nearly two decades.

Link to the full episode is in the comments.

12/02/2025

Just broke another story in The Shoestring, an investigative news site covering western Massachusetts.

This one combines my passion for journalism and legal storytelling.

(Link in the comments.)

10/23/2025

It was great talking with Tim Semelroth. I learned a ton, and his thoughts on self-driving trucks were eye-opening.

Most people don’t realize trucking companies start defending themselves within hours of a crash. On the Make Your Case podcast by Clear Eyed Media, attorney Tim Semelroth explains how rapid-response defense works—and what it takes to fight back. Watch the full interview here: https://vist.ly/4ais3

10/23/2025

How one body-cam video turned into an accountability story.

I fought for months to get the footage, filing appeals with the district attorney’s office and winning after police refused to release it.

After that, I paid a $210 bill for the video from an agency that publicly claimed to “believe in transparency.”

It showed an off-duty deputy who admitted to drinking, fell to the ground, vomited, and blacked out, then, after being given no blood-alcohol test, was sent home without a charge.

It also had more than a dozen silent gaps where the officer’s mic appeared to be turned off, even though department policy required continuous recording.
That became the story.

I built the video package by cross-referencing the footage, redaction logs, department policy, and Oregon law to show how the record didn’t match the official explanation.

The result: the district attorney’s office referred the case to the Oregon Department of Justice for review.

These days, I work with a professional camera crew and editing setup to help attorneys do the same thing in their own way: build fact-based visual stories that expose what really happened.

That mindset never changed. Whether it’s journalism or law, the truth only matters if you can prove it.

If you’d like to see what that looks like on screen, I can show examples in a private, no-obligation meeting.