U.S. Journalism's Shameful Anniversary

By Robert Parry
December 9, 2005

One year ago, reporter Gary Webb – his life in ruins – killed himself with a handgun. The tragedy made him the final victim of a long-running cover-up protecting the Reagan-Bush administration’s tolerance of drug trafficking by its client army, the Nicaraguan contras.

But Webb’s death also could be blamed on the fecklessness of modern American journalism. The nation’s leading newspapers had driven the 49-year-old father of three to his desperate act rather than admit that they had bungled one of the biggest stories of the Reagan-Bush era – the contra-cocaine scandal.