On anniversary of Webb's death SCLM has never admitted its coverup of the Contra-Crack Cocaine connection

To this day, no editor or reporter who missed the contra-cocaine story has been punished for his or her negligence. Indeed, some of them are now top executives at their news organizations. On the other hand, Gary Webb’s career never recovered.

The repeated mishandling of the contra-cocaine scandal also was a forewarning of the media’s failure to challenge the case for war with Iraq that George W. Bush sold in late 2002 and early 2003. In the late 1990s, that pattern of journalistic ineptitude deepened as the contra-cocaine case revealed the press corps’ inability to grapple with complex crimes of state.

National journalists came to understand that playing along with the powerful was the best way to protect one’s career, while going against the grain could mean sudden unemployment and a loss of one’s livelihood.

Tags: Webb, SCLM, contras, crack, cocaine, CIA