The worst thing that can happen to a journalist’s career is telling the truth

So a question was asked, “what’s the worst thing that can happen to a journalist’s career?” Well, that’s simple. The worst thing I’ve ever seen happen to a journalist’s carreer is telling a truth that is not liked by the CIA.

Back in the 1980’s, the CIA was illegally running guns to the Contras in Nicaragua using money received from the Iranians in exchange for anti-tank missiles sent to Iran. The CIA was using private contractors with private aircraft to do this from airstrips in the desert Southwest, and those private contractors figured out an easy way to make some extra cash both for themselves and for the Contras — bring crack cocaine from Nicaragua, offload that at the desert airstrips to accomplices, and then load up the guns to take back to Nicaragua. Since this was all 100% illegal the CIA prevented other law enforcement agencies from intervening, the result being huge amounts of cheap crack cocaine flooding the Southwest and thousands dead.

So anyhow, a while later by the name of Gary Webb who worked for the San Jose Mercury News managed to meander across this story. He started with a street dealer in Los Angeles and followed it up to a supplier who then connected it to a known CIA operation that had been revealed during the Iran-Contra trials, and they published it in his newspaper, a mid-market newspaper that until then had courageously published nothing of note.

Then the CIA came in. They pulled out their big guns — one of their assets at the Washington Post, a man by the name of Walter Pincus, being the biggest — and ran a huge smear campaign, including threatening the editor of the Mercury News, who then retracted the story. Gary Webb was fired and blackballed from the news industry, and eight years later when it appeared that everybody had forgotten his sin and he might be able to get a job at the Los Angeles Times, his motorcycle was stolen so that he couldn’t make it to the interview. Gary realized that the CIA was never going to leave him alone, and ate the revolver that he had inherited from his father.

Being harassed to the point of suicide is pretty much the worst thing that can happen to a journalist’s career.

And in the decades since, the San Jose Mercury News once again has courageously published nothing of note, having learned their lesson that printing the truth about powerful organizations like the CIA is not allowed in the U S of A.

– Badtux the News Penguin