Reporters report. Detectives investigate

Career journalists quickly learn the rules, and grasp the acceptable boundaries within which a debate or story may unfold.

Cameron Duodu is right about the manipulation of the media (take the embedded journalists during the Iraq invasion - how sanitized was their perspective?!). On the other hand, we shouldn't underestimate the media's corresponding hunger for a good story - there must be days so horribly desperately dull.... day-dreaming comes into operation. Surely this is the only possible excuse for broadcasting Powell's WMD trailer diagrams, the staged toppling of the statue of Saddam or Bush's 'mission accomplished' presentation.

I don't know where that leaves us. Much of what we read and hear is reported half-truths or framed tightly so as to avoid the ugly truth which is the honest answer to the question noone dare ask. You can find the information you want if you search hard enough and use a bit of imagination, but this is time-consuming beyond the means of most hard-working people.

Here's something that might change your mind about the role of the mainstream press - a quote regarding its role in the Iran-Contra affair. I quote...

'Several reporters did some outstanding investigative work, but their findings were either ignored or scantily treated by major media organs like the New York Times and the Washington Post... '

'journalists (and politicians) remain reluctant to squarely address the recurring CIA-drug problem. One exception is Gary Webb*, whose stories on the CIA, Contras, and cocaine... appeared in the San Jose Mercury News in August 1996. After they received national attention through talk radio and the World Wide Web, his stories were soon attacked, at extraordinary length, in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post. Attacks on his stories soon became attacks on his personal integrity. As we go to press, Webb has been demoted...'

From Cocaine Politics (Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall) 1998

Given the imminent flooding of the UK with cheap heroin from Afghanistan (at a time when the UK military are tasked with overseeing the eradication of the poppy harvest), why do you suppose nobody is writing about these money flows?

If Iran-Contra is anything to go by, we'll need to wait at least another 4 years to find out more.

Ends | 8 Aug 2006 | The Leg

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*On Friday, 10 Dec 2004 , 49 year old Gary Webb was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head.

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