Gary Webb's Original Series Back Online
Thanks to the great folks at Narco News, Gary Webb's amazing stories on the CIA-Contra-Los Angeles Crack market nexus, complete with the supporting evidence, are back online.
Gary is no longer with us, but I'd like to think his spirit lives on. As Al Giordano so eloquently stated, "Gary never wrote with mere ink or pixels. Gary opened up a vein every time he sat down to tell us a new truth and he signed his byline, always, in blood. If you think that his suicide did not send as powerful a message as the stories he investigated and penned in life, think again: Gary was The Last North American Career Journalist. He presided over a transitional era and his death marks the end of that era. Fellow and sister journalists: The canary has died in the coal mine. Run out of that mine now, and seek alternate routes to truth-telling. There is no longer room for us inside the corporate machine."
If you value good, honest reporting, what can you do? At this point in history, you have to find the good reporters and support them. They will not be in any of the mainstream media. That's not to say the mainstream doesn't do good reporting from time to time - that would be a mistake. But if you are looking for people who will challenge high crimes of state, you will NOT find those people getting their articles printed in the LA Times, the NY Times, the Washington Post, or any other paper of "note." The simple reality is that the press relies on the government for access, and cannot afford to burn their sources by exposing their misdeeds. It's sheerly economic, really.
Go give a few dollars to your favorite blog. As badly as I need the money myself, there are others who are more deserving. I don't want to make recommendations. You know who they are.
Gary is no longer with us, but I'd like to think his spirit lives on. As Al Giordano so eloquently stated, "Gary never wrote with mere ink or pixels. Gary opened up a vein every time he sat down to tell us a new truth and he signed his byline, always, in blood. If you think that his suicide did not send as powerful a message as the stories he investigated and penned in life, think again: Gary was The Last North American Career Journalist. He presided over a transitional era and his death marks the end of that era. Fellow and sister journalists: The canary has died in the coal mine. Run out of that mine now, and seek alternate routes to truth-telling. There is no longer room for us inside the corporate machine."
If you value good, honest reporting, what can you do? At this point in history, you have to find the good reporters and support them. They will not be in any of the mainstream media. That's not to say the mainstream doesn't do good reporting from time to time - that would be a mistake. But if you are looking for people who will challenge high crimes of state, you will NOT find those people getting their articles printed in the LA Times, the NY Times, the Washington Post, or any other paper of "note." The simple reality is that the press relies on the government for access, and cannot afford to burn their sources by exposing their misdeeds. It's sheerly economic, really.
Go give a few dollars to your favorite blog. As badly as I need the money myself, there are others who are more deserving. I don't want to make recommendations. You know who they are.
posted by Real History Lisa at 4:58 PM - Permanent Link -
1 Comments:
Gary - I've just posted a Review of Gary May's "The Informant: The FBI, The Ku Klux Klan, and The Murder of Viola Liuzzo," (Yale University Press, 2005)on my blogsite http://mississippisovereigntycommission.com
Gary is an historian at the University of Delaware and his book is about the civil rights era in Alabama "when a Detroit housewife, Viola Liuzzo, a mother of five, was killed after she went South to do her bit to help win voting rights for blacks". Lots of good sleuthing.
"What is new and different about the book are May’s portraits of Klan members and primarily the FBI informant, Gary Thomas Rowe, a violent, angry liar, who loved nothing better than hanging around cops, was planted inside the Klan, in Bessemer, Alabama, where many members and sympathizers worked in the steel mills, their activities often approved, subtly and otherwise, by Birmingham’s ruling elite," reviewer Murray Polner stated.
A great book for sleuth-meisters, all.
Susan Klopfer
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