From Editor Robert Parry: As we continue to struggle to keep Consortiumnews afloat financially, I am sometimes asked why I started this journalistic experiment back in 1995, why didn’t I keep trying to do my reporting through the existing mainstream media which had a much wider reach.
Exclusive: Media critic Howard Kurtz has lost his job as Washington bureau chief for Newsweek/Daily Beast after a blog post in which he falsely accused basketball player Jason Collins of hiding his past engagement to a woman while coming out as gay. But Kurtz’s journalistic abuses have a much longer history, writes Robert Parry.
Starring Jeremy Renner as the late Gary Webb, the movie of Webb’s investigation of the CIA’s Contra-cocaine scandal – and of Webb’s destruction by mainstream news outlets – is set to begin filming this summer. If Hollywood gets the story right, it will be a dark and enlightening tale, says H. “Corky” Johnson.
From the Archive: Modern U.S. history is more complete because journalist Gary Webb had the courage to revive the dark story of the Reagan administration’s protection of Nicaraguan Contra cocaine traffickers in the 1980s. But Webb ultimately paid a terrible price, as Robert Parry reports.
From the Archive: The U.S. political/media world often operates without justice. Truth-tellers get punished and the well-connected get off. On this eighth anniversary of journalist Gary Webb’s suicide, we are re-posting one of the stories that Webb’s brave work forced out, albeit without a satisfying ending.
From Editor Robert Parry: We did fall quite a bit short of our end-of-year target of $45,000 – raising less than half that amount – but a late surge of donations did put us in position to soldier on into this important election year thanks to our readers.
From the Archive: While preparing the Dec. 9 article on Gary Webb, we pulled up a 1998 article that helps explain how inconvenient facts from recent U.S. history sometimes get “found” and then “lost” again. That summer, a CIA report exposing Nicaraguan Contra drug trafficking forced the New York Times to admit the point, but it soon forgot.
Special Report: Modern American history is more complete because journalist Gary Webb had the courage to revive the dark story of the Reagan administration’s protection of Nicaraguan Contra cocaine traffickers in the 1980s. However, Webb ultimately paid a terrible price, as Robert Parry reports.
From the Archive: The U.S. political/media world often operates without justice. Truth-tellers get punished and the well-connected get off. On this seventh anniversary of journalist Gary Webb’s suicide, we are re-posting one of the stories that Webb’s brave work forced out, albeit without a satisfying ending.
From Editor Robert Parry: As a new thank-you gift for donations over $100 to Consortiumnews.com, we are offering a wonderful new book, The Killing Game, a selection of investigative news stories by the late Gary Webb explaining the context of his remarkable life and tragic death.
Towards an Investigative 'War Chest' -- To expand our coverage of issues of war and peace, we are trying to build a $100,000 "war chest," believing honest information is the best way to avoid war.
