[Peace-discuss] @ the Art: "Kill the Messenger" docdrama on natl security journalism martyr Gary Webb

[Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss]

By happy chance, I saw the movie "Kill the Messenger" at the Art last
night. I say happy chance because I had never heard of the movie until I
saw it listed on the marquee. I happened to be downtown and thought, what's
at the Art?

Folks who were active in the Central America solidarity movement will
remember that Gary Webb, a journalist at the San Jose Mercury News, "broke
the story" in mainstream media terms about how the CIA supported
drug-runners during the Contra war and "looked the other way" (at least)
while these drug-runners brought cocaine into the United States, fueling
the "crack cocaine epidemic" in urban America.

But for an audience today, the story of the movie that is to me so resonant
and powerful is not that the CIA supported drug runners without a care to
the consequences of that for urban Americans; that's old news. The story of
the movie that is resonant and powerful today is how mainstream American
journalism betrayed Gary Webb. Instead of following up the story,
newspapers like the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the New
York Times set out to destroy Gary Webb.

This was a guy who was established in his career as an investigative
journalist. If you look at his entry on Wikipedia, every year or so he got
another award for investigative journalism for publicly exposing wrongdoing
by powerful bad guys, for things he wrote alone or with others.

He didn't set out to expose wrongdoing by powerful bad guys in the U.S.
government. He stumbled across it. But having done so, he wouldn't accept
the idea that exposing wrongdoing by powerful bad guys in the U.S.
government was off-limits. He thought that was part of his job, too. It
reminded me of the young prosecutor in the Costa-Gavras movie "Z," who
didn't get the memo that the generals in the Greek military junta were
off-limits.

For his service to the public, mainstream American journalism destroyed
Gary Webb's career and destroyed his life.

I highly recommend seeing the movie, particularly for its portrayal of the
Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. These are good images to keep in
mind as we consume mainstream U.S. media. We have no alternative to
consuming mainstream U.S. media, just like someone in prison has no
alternative to eating the prison food. But if we think that the food might
be poisoned, we should eat it very carefully.

===

Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
(202) 448-2898 x1
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20141018/1f8801d1/attachment.html>