Killing the messengers
by digby
There’s a ton of demeaning stuff floating around about Glenn Greenwald’s lack of qualifications to be a member of the vaunted journalism profession because he’s just a “blogger”. And even though he’s written numerous books on civil liberties and railed with equal fervor against the Bush administration many members of the press that he’s set out to besmirch the reputation of Barack Obama for political reasons.
People can think what they want. But I can’t help but be reminded of an earlier story that exposed a secret program and was brutally assailed by members of the media which then systematically distorted it to the point at which the truth was no longer discernible. The original story was factual — the fun-house mirror version of it that was constructed by big-foot journalism was not.
By coincidence a new movie about this shameful episode has just started shooting. And some of the reporters involved are apparently having attacks of conscience:
Nine years after investigative reporter Gary Webb committed suicide, Jesse Katz, a former Los Angeles Times reporter who played a leading role in ruining the controversial journalist’s career, has publicly apologized — just weeks before shooting begins in Atlanta on Kill the Messenger, a film expected to reinstate Webb’s reputation as an award-winning journalist dragged through the mud by disdainful, competing media outlets.
Webb made history, then quickly fell from grace, with his 20,000-word 1996 investigation, “Dark Alliance,” in which the San Jose Mercury News reported that crack cocaine was being peddled in L.A.’s black ghettos to fund a CIA-backed proxy war carried out by contra rebels in Nicaragua.
Kill the Messenger is based on Webb’s 1998 book, Dark Alliance, in which he attempted to rebuild his ruined reputation, as well as my 2004 biography of Webb, Kill the Messenger, which shares the movie’s title. (I worked as a consultant on the script.)
The movie will portray Webb as a courageous reporter whose career and life were cut short when the nation’s three most powerful newspapers piled on to attack Webb and his three-part Mercury News series on the CIA’s crack-cocaine connection.
The New York Times, Washington Post and L.A. Times each obscured basic truths of Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series. But no newspaper tried harder than the L.A. Times, where editors were said to have been appalled that a distant San Jose daily had published a blockbuster about America’s most powerful spy agency and its possible role in allowing drug dealers to flood South L.A. with crack.
Much of the Times’ attack was clever misdirection, but it ruined Webb’s reputation: In particular, the L.A. Times attacked a claim that Webb never made: that the CIA had intentionally addicted African-Americans to crack.
Webb, who eventually could find only part-time work at a small weekly paper, committed suicide.
I remember this episode quite well and it was ugly. Professional jealousy, the usual insular clubbiness and the desire to use their hostility to this story to curry favor with the powerful were just some of the discreditable behaviors shown by the mainstream press as they set out to destroy the story and its author.
By the way:
Webb was vindicated by a 1998 CIA Inspector General report, which revealed that for more than a decade the agency had covered up a business relationship it had with Nicaraguan drug dealers like Blandón.
The L.A. Times, New York Times and Washington Post buried the IG’s report; under L.A. Times editor Michael Parks, the paper didn’t acknowledge its release for months.
The L.A. Times‘ smears against Webb continued after his death. After Webb committed suicide in a suburb of Sacramento in December 2004 — the same day he was to vacate his just-sold home and move in with his mother — a damning L.A. Times obituary described the coverage by the three papers as “discrediting” Webb.
Greenwald isn’t the suicidal type so I’m not worried about that. But this history should inform readers as to the ways and means of the big time press when it comes to stories by those whom they feel aren’t quite in the upper tier of respectability. They don’t consider Greenwald to be quite as loathsome as the “high school drop out” loser Edward Snowden. He is a lawyer after all. But many of them believe he’s just as worthy of disdain in his own way. He’s not a member of their club.
Update I: To be clear, I’m not referring to Rick Perlstein in this post, who is anything but a Big Foot Villager. (I hadn’t even read his piece when I wrote this.) I’m friends with both Glenn and Rick and I’m sorry to see them at odds. Rick’s point is different than the journalists I’m talking about who are questioning Greenwald’s credentials and looking for reasons to discredit his work.
Greenwald’s most rabid supporters are very difficult to deal with — I know, I’ve been in their crosshairs plenty of times myself. And Glenn is, right now, in the middle of a whirlwind, under tremendous pressure. I don’t really blame him for being prickly. I’d give anyone who is doing such important work a lot of room in that situation.
I do worry about Glenn and the Dan Rather effect that Perlstein references, but it will be interesting to see how this plays out — Glenn is not an institutional figure like Rather was.
I hope these two can come to some terms about this. Perlstein’s historical take on this stuff is invaluable and I know he admires Greenwald’s work. I admire both of them.
Maybe we all would be better served by taking Peter Maas’s advice:
One of the greatest problems in our political discourse today is the dominant focus on personalities rather than systems. While Assange and Manning have colorful backstories, who they are and what they have done (or not done) in their private lives is not the most important thing. The system of secrecy that necessitates and criminalizes their actions should be the star and the villain of a film about these issues
I blame twitter.
Update II:
Terrible news just now about another intrepid journalist — Michael Hastings who was killed in a car accident here in LA this morning. What a tragic loss for his family and the profession of journalism.
This Rolling Stone obit says it all:
Hastings’ hallmark as reporter was his refusal to cozy up to power…
Hard-charging, unabashedly opinionated, Hastings was original and at times abrasive, he had little patience for flacks and spinmeisters and will be remembered for his enthusiastic breaches of the conventions of access journalism.”
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