GARY WEBB, R.I.P.

"Just one more example," a friend writes, "of why I have so little respect for American journalism. Much of the work done does not even deserve the name of journalism. But the real blame rests on the American public. It gets the government and journalism it deserves." Here's what he's talking about:

In 1996, journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of articles that forced a long-overdue investigation of a very dark chapter of recent U.S. foreign policy -- the Reagan-Bush administration's protection of cocaine traffickers who operated under the cover of the Nicaraguan contra war in the 1980s.

For his brave reporting at the San Jose Mercury News, Webb paid a high price. He was attacked by journalistic colleagues at the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the American Journalism Review and even the Nation magazine. Under this media pressure, his editor Jerry Ceppos sold out the story and demoted Webb, causing him to quit the Mercury News. Even Webb's marriage broke up.

On Friday, Dec. 10, Gary Webb, 49, died of an apparent suicide, a gunshot wound to the head.

That's just the beginning of what Robert Parry had to say yesterday. Go read the complete story. Then get hold of "Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth,'" his 1999 book on the Iran-Contra scandal and how the mainstream media "throughly kept [the American public] in the dark about the unsavory secrets of the past half century."