Serving the reality-based community since 2002.
Notes and observations on
the press, politics, culture, technology, and more. To sign up for
e-mail delivery, click
here. To send
an e-mail to Dan Kennedy, click
here.
For bio, published work, and links to other blogs, visit
www.dankennedy.net.
Monday, December 13, 2004
THE PASSION OF GARY WEBB.
The accounts of investigative reporter Gary Webb's suicide over the
weekend are as conventional as you can get. Typical
is the lead in today's
Los Angeles Times:
Gary Webb, an
investigative reporter who wrote a widely criticized series
linking the CIA to the explosion of crack cocaine in Los Angeles,
was found dead in his Sacramento-area home Friday. He apparently
killed himself, authorities said.
Webb's three-part series on the
connection between the CIA, the Nicaraguan contras, and crack was a
sensation when it was published in the San Jose Mercury News
in 1996. It was also one of the first big breakthroughs in Internet
journalism: the Mercury put it all online, and people around
the country logged on to learn about how the CIA - at the very least
- looked the other way while right-wing death squads financed their
US-supported rampages by selling drugs.
Sadly for Webb, the Mercury
lacked the courage of its reporter's convictions. And after the
New York Times, the Washington Post, and the LA
Times published long pieces debunking Webb's reporting, Webb was
thrown overboard. Webb's reporting wasn't perfect, but his series,
"Dark Alliance," was full of valuable information - information that
the mainstream media had been notably lax in reporting during the
preceding decade.
Norman
Solomon's 1997 overview for
Extra!, published by Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, is
a useful corrective. As Solomon observes, the debunkers relied to a
large extent on unnamed CIA sources. Senator John Kerry, who headed
an investigation into contra drug-running in the late 1980s, was also
mocked by some of these same dubious characters.
In recent years Webb kicked around,
even doing some
work with Al Giordano at
NarcoNews.com.
Giordano has posted a
Spanish-language tribute to
Webb; perhaps the English version will be available soon for us
monolingual ugly Americans.
Robert Parry, whose reporting for
Newsweek and the Associated Press unearthed pieces of the
contra/CIA/crack connection as well, has uploaded an overview of
Webb's reporting here.
posted at 1:29 PM |
3 comments
|
link
3 Comments:
So the Mercury "lacked the courage"?? what? to print conjecture and conspiracy theories? What's next Dan? Are you going to note the passing of every author who penned some novel about the Sasquatch?
Well, the CIA confirmed core parts of Webb's story in, um, 1998:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1998_hr/980316-ps.htm
I recognize that the CIA chose to deny the findings of its own Inspector General, but you can decide which stories hold up better.
http://intellit.muskingum.edu/cia_folder/cia90s_folder/cia98_folder/cia98contras.html
Dark Alliance had its (significant) faults, but as Dan points out, in his basic claims Gary Webb was right. Not only right, but uncontroversially right. It is a shame only conspiracy theorists will remember that.
Anon
Suicide?
MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
