Kill the Messenger

If you ever wondered how the mainstream U.S. media changed from the hard-nosed Watergate press of the 1970s into the brown-nose MSM that swallowed the Iraq War lies, a key middle point was the Contra-cocaine scandal of the 1980s/1990s, the subject of a new movie.

[...]

The movie, “Kill the Messenger,” is forcing the mainstream U.S. media to confront one of its most shameful episodes, the suppression of a major national security scandal implicating Ronald Reagan’s CIA in aiding and abetting cocaine trafficking by the Nicaraguan Contra rebels in the 1980s and then the systematic destruction of journalist Gary Webb when he revived the scandal in the 1990s.

Hollywood’s treatment of this sordid affair will likely draw another defensive or dismissive response from some of the big news outlets that still don’t want to face up to their disgraceful behavior. The New York Times and other major newspapers mocked the Contra-cocaine scandal when Brian Barger and I first exposed it in 1985 for the Associated Press and then savaged Webb in 1996 when he traced some of the Contra-cocaine into the manufacture of crack which ravaged American cities.

So, when you’re watching this movie or responding to questions from friends about whether they should believe its storyline, you might want to know what is or is not fact.

  Consortium News

For folks in the Columbia, Missouri, area, “Kill the Messenger” will open at the wonderful RagTag Cinema on October 17.

Check out Contra-cocaine journalist Robert Parry’s corroborating article in Consortium News.

To this day, none of the journalists or media critics who participated in the destruction of Gary Webb has paid a price. None has faced the sort of humiliation that Webb had to endure. None had to experience that special pain of standing up for what is best in the profession of journalism — taking on a difficult story that seeks to hold powerful people accountable for serious crimes — and then being vilified by your own colleagues, the people that you expected to understand and appreciate what you had done.

On the contrary, many were rewarded with professional advancement and lucrative careers. For instance, for years, Howard Kurtz got to host the CNN program, “Reliable Sources,” which lectured journalists on professional standards. He was described in the program’s bio as “the nation’s premier media critic.” (His show has since moved to Fox News, renamed “MediaBuzz.”)

The rehabilitation of Webb’s reputation and the correction of this dark chapter of American history now rest on how the public responds to the presentation of Webb’s story in the film, “Kill the Messenger.”

Spread the word. At the least, perhaps Gary’s life and death will help wean Americans from the mainstream propaganda system and usher in a new period of truthtelling in journalism.

Wishful thinking?

Here's the original YWA post from December 13, 2004, quoting the Sacramento Bee on Gary Webb's death December 9:  http://ywatblog.blogspot.com/2004/12/whistleblower-dead.html