
    The Skeptic Tank Chairman comments:  I have received this material
    from "Larry-Jennie", (lar-jen@interaccess.com) on Sat, 11 Jan 1997
    at 08:37:59 -0600, under the subject heading "CIA drugs: Urban
    legend?"  It came in with various other files which I've enumerated
    below.  There is further materials of the same nature to be found
    at ftp://pencil.cs.missouri.edu/pub/mena/ though I have not examined
    them.

    I have left the text alone however I have reformatted it to make it
    easier to read.

    - Fredric L. Rice, (frice@stbbs.com) (818) 335-9601 24 hours

         C:\WWFILES\NORTH6IC.TXT, C:\WWFILES\BLUMCIA.TXT,
         C:\WWFILES\UPI11106.TXT, C:\WWFILES\CAQ59.TXT,
         C:\WWFILES\SJMREBUT.TXT, C:\WWFILES\SJMCIA26.TXT

-=- Begin text -=-

                        [Welcome to Mercury Center]

                               [Postscript]
                              [Dark Alliance]
                       Frames: [ Enable | Disable ]

 'Dark Alliance' series takes on a life of its own

 Analyzing criticism of drug series

 Published: Oct. 13, 1996

 BY PETE CAREY
 Mercury News Staff Writer

 It's unusual when a newspaper becomes the news, but         [Other stories]
 that's what happened Sunday, Aug. 18, when the Mercury
 News began publishing a three-day series that offered a     CIA's chief
 shocking theory for the origins of the ''crack'' cocaine    wants longer
 epidemic that eventually spread among young, inner-city     drug probe
 blacks across America.                                      Published:
                                                             Oct. 11,
 The epidemic, reporter Gary Webb wrote, was sparked in      1996
 part by two Nicaraguan emigres -- Norwin Meneses and
 Danilo Blandon -- who were raising money for a Central
 Intelligence Agency-controlled army of Nicaraguan rebels    Previously
 in Central America, the Contras.                            published
                                                             postscript
 To raise millions of dollars, they sold large quantities    stories
 of cocaine to a South-Central Los Angeles street hustler    Last
 named Ricky Donnell Ross, who converted it into crack.      updated:
 Ross and his customers then helped spread the drug across   Oct. 12,
 the country, beginning the craze for crack cocaine that     1996
 has devastated inner cities across America. The series
 offered evidence of Contra involvement at the early
 stages of this epidemic and raised the possibility of CIA   The original
 awareness of it.                                            series
                                                             Published:
 The articles provoked a firestorm of reaction.              Aug. 18-20,
                                                             1996
 In particular, blacks, many of whom had harbored similar
 suspicions for years, called for immediate
 investigations.                                             Radio/television
                                                             appearances
 ''As someone who has seen how the crack cocaine trade has   by Gary Webb
 devastated the South-Central Los Angeles community, and     Last
 as a public official, I cannot exaggerate my feelings of    updated:
 dismay that my own government may have played a part in     Oct. 12,
 the origins and history of this problem,'' Rep. Maxine      1996
 Waters, D-Los Angeles, wrote to U.S. Attorney General
 Janet Reno. The Department of Justice will investigate
 the allegations, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.,           [document link]
 announced last month.                                        Biographical
                                                              information
 Others variously said the findings overreached, were           on Oscar
 absurd, old news or inconclusive. The CIA denied them,          Danilo
 and some experts questioned the assertion that                 Blandon,
 Nicaraguans helped spark the spread of smoked cocaine --        Norwin
 called rock at first and later crack.                        Meneses and
                                                               Ricky Ross
 ''Although I believe there is no substance to the
 allegations in the Mercury News, I do wish to dispel any
 lingering public doubt on the subject,'' said John
 Deutch, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, in a
 letter to Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. Deutch said he has
 asked the CIA's inspector general to investigate the
 charges.

 Earlier this month, the Washington Post published a           [web link]
 5,000-word package attacking the series, saying that it
 was weak on evidence and that a Post investigation            Washington
 ''found that the available information does not support      Post article
 the conclusion that the CIA-backed Contras -- or             criticizing
 Nicaraguans in general -- played a major role in the            series
 emergence of crack as a narcotic in widespread use in the
 United States.''

 The Boston Globe, however, reported that the series
 documented ''in persuasive detail'' that supporters of
 the Nicaraguan Contras sold drugs in inner-city Los
 Angeles and that ''at least some of the proceeds went to
 the rebels' efforts to overthrow their country's
 Sandinista government.''

 Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who headed a Senate inquiry        [web link]
 into Contra drug connections in the 1980s, said he has
 been ''impressed by the reporting of the San Jose Mercury     Selections
 News. ... We never found specific evidence of a drug         from Senate
 pipeline to targeted cities. We did, however, determine      inquiry into
 that certain rogue agents may have looked the other way,     Contra drug
 and that people affiliated with the CIA and carrying its     connections
 credentials were involved in drug trafficking in their
 support for the Contras. I remain very concerned about
 the new findings reported by the Mercury News, and I
 support continuing efforts to search for the truth.''

 The firestorm has left the newspaper in the awkward
 position of continuing to report developments of the
 story while needing to evaluate -- and to take note of in
 print -- the criticism it has received.

 As a result, Executive Editor Jerry Ceppos asked this
 reporter and editors not associated with the series to
 lay out and attempt to evaluate for Mercury News readers
 the top findings of the series and the major issues
 raised by its critics.

 Reporter Webb and top Mercury News editors continue to
 stand by the story, saying they believe it represents a
 significant advance on the long-running story of Contra
 drug dealing; is the most detailed account of Contra
 agents selling drugs in U.S. cities; and is the first
 linking the Contra operation with cocaine use in urban,
 black America.

 ''People have been sniffing around this issue since
 Iran-Contra,'' said Paul Van Slambrouck, an assistant
 managing editor and one of those who edited the stories.
 ''We've added a couple of bricks to this edifice. I think
 we've made a significant contribution to what is one of
 the best stories of the decade.''

 The strongest media challenge was the major
 deconstruction by the Washington Post on Oct. 4.

 Among the prominent points raised by the Post and others:

 * The two drug dealers may not have sent money to the
 Contras from California during the time they were trading
 with Ross.

 * They were less than the Contra leaders the series
 claimed they are.

 * The crack cocaine epidemic was already under way when
 the drug dealing described in the series took place;
 there was no ''Johnny Appleseed of crack,'' as the
 Mercury News called Blandon, and the epidemic would have
 happened with or without the trio of Meneses, Blandon and
 Ross.

 * The series clearly left the impression that the CIA was
 directly linked to the drug dealing in South-Central Los
 Angeles.

 Here is an examination of each point:

 The time line
 Series cited evidence that Blandon had dates wrong

 The Mercury News reported that for the better part of the
 1980s, money from the sale of cocaine to street gangs in
 Los Angeles was funneled to the Contras.

 The Post reported that, according to Blandon's own          [Image]Although
 testimony, he did little or no business with Ross during
 the time Blandon was supposedly sending money to the        I believe
 Contras. Blandon twice testified that he stopped sending    there is no
 money to the Contras around 1982-1983, and that he met      substance to
 Ross in 1982. This deals a blow to the idea that cocaine    the
 profits extracted from blacks went to the CIA-backed        allegations
 Contras for five years or more.                             in the
                                                             Mercury
 Blandon's dates are plausible because President Ronald      News, I do
 Reagan ordered a covert operation in support of the         wish to
 Contras on Dec. 1, 1981, and $19.95 million was             dispel any
 eventually allocated to them, reducing the need for drug    lingering
 money. Blandon said in Ross' trial this year that he        public doubt
 stopped sending money sometime after the United States      on the
 approved $19 million for the Contras.                       subject.
                                                                  [Image]
 Webb said Blandon's dates ''didn't make sense'' because
 in 1984, the Contras needed money more than ever after      -- CIA
 Congress forced a halt to all covert military aid. That     Director
 ban was lifted in 1986, when $100 million was authorized    John Deutch
 by Congress.                                                [Image]

 Blandon ''is bad with dates,'' Webb said, and the series
 did not quote the part of his testimony with the 1983
 date. Webb also said Blandon could have been referring to
 a second $19 million secretly authorized by Congress in
 September 1983.

 ''We don't put a date on it in the series; it was unclear
 from his testimony,'' Webb said. ''He was all over the
 map on when he allegedly stopped doing this (sending
 money). First he said he stopped in 1982. (It was)
 pointed out, "how could you stop then when you started in
 1982?' Then he said it was 1983, possibly; he couldn't
 remember. That's why we never had him saying definitively.''

 Webb acknowledged that it would be damaging to his series
 ''if you only looked at the testimony. But we didn't. We
 looked at other sources. ... Even he (Blandon) admitted
 he couldn't be accurate, because he was very bad with
 dates.''

 Unable to interview Blandon directly, Webb relied instead
 on other evidence to decide that Blandon continued
 sending money to the Contras until 1986.

 A 1986 Los Angeles County sheriff's affidavit for           [document link]
 searches of the homes and business of Blandon and members    Affidavit to
 of his drug ring shows that the Contra connection lasted     search homes
 into the mid-1980s. In the 1986 affidavit, three             and business
 confidential informants said that Blandon was still            of Oscar
 sending money to the Contras. There is no date for when         Danilo
 the informants provided this information. Two had given        Blandon
 their information to the Drug Enforcement Administration
 and the FBI, which passed it on to the sheriff's
 department. But one informant named a relative of
 Blandon's as his launderer of Contra money, saying it
 went through a business in Florida that the relative
 didn't work for until 1984.

 During Ross' trial, Webb met with Ross' attorney, Alan
 Fenster. Webb said Fenster invited him to lunch and said
 he didn't know what to ask Blandon. Webb said he told
 Fenster he had several questions. The questions, Webb
 said, were about Blandon's relationship with the Contras
 and Meneses.

 That afternoon and the following morning, Fenster also
 asked Blandon questions of his own. Webb said these
 helped verify the information in the affidavit.

 ''Fenster took him through that list of names, one by
 one,'' said Webb. ''Blandon identified every one of them,
 said everyone was in his drug operation.''

 The Post was less impressed with the informants' stories
 contained in the affidavit, said Walter Pincus, co-author
 of the Post's story. Pincus said he found things in it
 that are ''just dead wrong'' and that he does not trust
 it.

 Webb says, ''I haven't found a false statement in it (the
 affidavit) yet.''

 Webb's suggesting questions to Fenster also was
 criticized by some in the media as going beyond
 acceptable journalistic practice.

 Webb has no regrets. ''I got the best interview I've ever
 had -- while the man was under oath in a federal court
 and being vouched for by two federal agencies.''

 Chieftains or crooks?
 Contra evidence mixed; amounts involved unclear

 Another issue is more subtle: Were Blandon and Meneses
 two Contra officials who became drug smugglers and
 dealers to support their guerrilla army, or were they
 drug smugglers and dealers who for a while sent money to
 the Contras?

 This is important because it helps determine the
 closeness of the links between the drug selling and the
 CIA, which supported the Contra operation.

 The Post reported that Adolfo Calero, the Contras' chief    [document link]
 political leader, denied that Blandon and Meneses were       Biographical
 ever among the guerrilla army's leaders.                     information
                                                               on Adolfo
 ''Neither Meneses nor Blandon were 'leaders of the FDN        Calero and
 (the Contras), any time or any place,''' the Post quoted       Enrique
 Calero as saying.                                              Bermudez

 The Mercury News series called them ''financiers'' and       [Photo link]
 said that others considered them to be important Contra        Calero,
 officials. They had visited Contra military commander        Meneses and
 Enrique Bermudez at a secret camp of the Fuerza              others at a
 Democratica Nicaraguense (the official name of the            meeting in
 Contras) in Honduras in 1981, and hosted dinners for             San
 Contra officials in California.                               Francisco

 Webb interviewed Eden Pastora, an original Contra
 commander, who said that both Blandon and Meneses were
 original Contras. Meneses also told a Nicaraguan magazine
 he had raised money for the Contras in California for
 several years. He also was a professional drug smuggler
 with a large ring operating in California.

 John Mattes, a Miami attorney and investigator who
 assisted a Senate inquiry into Contra drug dealing in the
 mid-1980s, said the Honduran visit is a sign Meneses and
 Blandon were more than just members of a Contra fan club.

 ''They were visiting the Contra camp,'' noted Mattes.
 ''What is it, Club Med down there? Who would have been
 traveling to the Central American jungle to visit with
 the Contras but a Contra-related individual?''

 The question of how much money they sent from California
 is unclear, however.

 Though the first paragraph of the series says
 ''millions,'' that is a conclusion based on the amount of
 cocaine the two Nicaraguans were selling and Blandon's
 testimony that ''everything'' was going to the Contras.
 There are no hard figures.

 Mattes said the Contra drug dealings he uncovered were
 not solely or even primarily for the revolutionary cause.

 ''Was it for war effort exclusively? No, they funded
 their condominiums, they funded their Mercedeses and
 could afford to throw a few pennies to the Contra
 campesinos,'' he said. ''Those associated with narcotics
 trafficking in the Contras were good enough businessmen
 not to give away their money.''

 Trio's role in crack trade
 Accelerated but didn't originate, some say

 Another element of the Mercury News series that has
 prompted controversy is the role in the crack explosion
 it gives to Meneses, Blandon and Ross.

 The story declares that cocaine was ''a drug that was       [Image]This
 virtually unobtainable in black neighborhoods before
 members of the CIA's army brought it into South-Central     is a
 (Los Angeles) in the 1980s at bargain basement prices.''    disgraceful
 And it says that ''the L.A. gangs ... used their enormous   newspaper
 cocaine profits to arm themselves and spread crack across   series in
 the country.''                                              that it
                                                             offers no
 Several experts who have studied the use and spread of      proof.
 drugs said the Meneses-Blandon-Ross connection is not            [Image]
 responsible for the crack epidemic, although several
 grant that the trio played a role as a mass market          -- Tucker
 developed in Los Angeles.                                   Carlson of
                                                             the Weekly
 ''You don't need a Ricky Ross to sell cocaine,'' said       Standard,
 Ronald Siegel, a drug expert at of the University of        from CNN's
 California, Los Angeles. ''It sells itself.''               "Both
                                                             Sides."
 Siegel said he wasn't impressed with the claims about       [Image]
 Ross' pre-eminence in the crack market. ''It spread well
 before Ricky Ross was even heard of, probably,'' he said.
 ''I don't think he did (start the epidemic). It was well
 on its way,'' Siegel said.

 ''The crack epidemic started in a lot of places at
 similar times,'' said Robert Byck, Yale University
 professor of psychiatry and pharmacology. ''Once you have
 a product which can be made by anybody and sold in unit
 dosages ... then you have something which is a fabulous
 product.''

 Byck added, ''Maybe Ricky Ross was the entrepreneur that
 was required, I do not know. It is not unreasonable to
 think that was one of the points of infection.''

 The Los Angeles Times, in a 1994 series on cocaine, said
 that ''if there was one outlaw capitalist most
 responsible for flooding Los Angeles' streets with
 mass-marketed cocaine, it was 'Freeway Rick' (Ross).''

 Malcolm Klein, a University of Southern California social
 scientist who has studied gang migration and the rise of
 the crack cocaine epidemic, disagreed with the Mercury
 News finding that gangs played a significant role in the
 spread of crack.

 ''You're looking at the same thing that happened in Los
 Angeles happening elsewhere,'' said Klein, who directs
 USC's Social Science Research Institute. He said his
 research in Los Angeles found that only 25 to 30 percent
 of the crack arrests involved one or more gang members,
 which suggests 75 percent was in the hands of non-gang
 dealers.

 ''You don't need the CIA to explain it,'' Klein said.
 ''You really don't need the gang involvement either,
 although the gangs got involved. There's a market.
 There's the technology. It is very simple. It's going to
 happen sooner or later. Was it accelerated by Blandon? It
 certainly was. Was it accelerated by Ricky Ross? It
 certainly was.''

 Webb replies, ''His (Klein's) argument is that we pin
 this only on the gangs. Rick Ross was selling to
 everybody. Even Ricky Ross doesn't know where this was
 going. He was the biggest crack wholesaler in
 South-Central Los Angeles.''

 What story did, didn't say
 About the extent of CIA link to drug traffic

 Perhaps the most difficult issue is how far the newspaper
 went in linking the CIA to the illegal activities of two
 Contra supporters in California. Webb said his research
 ended at the CIA's door, but did not draw direct ties to
 the agency.

 But would a reasonable person reading the series think
 that the agency either sanctioned or directed the
 drug-selling efforts? Did the story make it appear the
 CIA had been caught acquiescing to illegal acts, or was
 some of the outrage the series generated by a misreading
 -- deliberate or otherwise -- of the series' conclusions?

 The notion that crack cocaine was a government-sponsored    [Image]How
 plot was quickly accepted by many people who read about
 or heard about the series. The series did not speculate     the U.S.
 about why cocaine was sold by Contra associates to a        government
 dealer in heavily black South-Central Los Angeles. The      spread crack
 closest the story comes to an explanation is in numerous    cocaine in
 references to the fact that there was a lot of money to     the black
 be made.                                                    ghetto
                                                                  [Image]
 ''I'm not sure everyone who talked about the series read
 it,'' said Mercury News Executive Editor Ceppos. ''But      -- Headline
 talk show hosts put together a set of conclusions (of       in Minister
 their own) with the conclusions of the series.              Louis
                                                             Farrakhan's
 ''Can I say people drew conclusions we didn't?              weekly
 Absolutely. Do I wish we hadn't run the series?             paper, the
 Absolutely not. It seems to me the way the press works is   Final Call
 you run the information and let the readers draw their      [Image]
 own conclusions.''

     [See Fredric Rice note 1 below]

 The editors who handled the series say that the original
 articles never proved direct CIA involvement in the
 Nicaraguan drug ring, although they say the evidence
 pointed in that direction.

 But just as there was no explicit language in the series
 tying the CIA to the drug sales, there was no paragraph
 that expressly stated that the newspaper had found no
 evidence that the CIA ordered or sanctioned the
 distribution of the cocaine. Nor did the original series
 contain comment from the CIA denying the allegations, an
 omission that has been sharply criticized.

 The misreading on the first point was so widespread that
 news media continue to repeat the error. The Los Angeles
 Daily News described ''reports that the Central
 Intelligence Agency provided crack cocaine to street
 gangs to finance the Contra forces in Nicaragua in the
 1980s.''

 The Mercury News' editorial page staff, which works
 separately from the news staff, put the following
 headline on its editorial about the issue: ''Another CIA
 disgrace: Helping the crack flow.''

 Of the lack of CIA comment, Webb said that he did not
 call the CIA for a final, official comment on his series
 just before it was published, nor was he asked to by
 editors. He did exchange calls and letters on Freedom of
 Information Act requests for documents in December,
 January and March. The CIA denied his requests.

 Did the presentation of the series contribute to the
 misunderstanding?

 * The story called the Contras ''the CIA's army'' and
 identified the two drug dealers as leaders of the army.
 While the CIA organized the army, supplied it and paid
 its leaders, the army was not made up of CIA
 professionals.

 The phrase was a shorter way of saying ''a Latin-American
 guerilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence
 Agency,'' and was used to make the story flow, said City
 Editor Dawn Garcia, one of those who edited the series.

 ''It's a phrase that has been more misunderstood than I
 thought it would be,'' said Garcia. ''We do use it a few
 times. We explain on Day 1 (the first day of the series)
 what that means.''

 * Bermudez, the Contra army's military leader, is
 identified as a CIA agent, the correct terminology for a
 contractor, but some readers might believe that a CIA
 agent is a professional CIA employee or policy-maker,
 similar to an FBI agent's relationship to the FBI.

 Reporter Webb argues that the distinction is simply a       [Image]We've
 nicety.
                                                             always
 ''These guys (the Contras) were directly controlled by      speculated
 CIA case agents, which makes them much closer to the        about this,
 agency and its officials than most contractors,'' he        but now
 said.                                                       we've got
                                                             proof.
 * A logo that appeared in Mercury Center and reprints of         [Image]
 the series depicts a crack smoker superimposed on a filmy
 CIA seal. (The logo also appeared on the front page of      -- Joe
 the first and third installments, in a promotion for the    Madison, a
 Web page.)                                                  Washington,
                                                             D.C.
 Below the image were the words: ''The story behind the      talk-radio
 crack explosion.'' Some critics say this amounted to        host [Image]
 implicating the CIA. The logo was removed from the Web
 site, and the reprints were discarded Wednesday and will
 be redone.

 ''For more than five weeks after publication of the
 series, no one to my knowledge in the world raised a
 question about the logo,'' said Executive Editor Ceppos
 on Thursday. ''It was raised in a Washington Post column.
 I believe that the logo said to the reader, 'This is a
 story about the CIA and cocaine.' But because I don't
 want a discussion about logos to cloud the significant
 issues, we changed the Web site last night and are
 remaking the reprint.''

 * The closest direct CIA link established was to
 Bermudez, the Contra military commander. Bermudez, the
 former military attache in Washington for the deposed
 Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza, was paid by the
 CIA to organize the army. In a time-line graphic of the
 events that ran with the series, Blandon was erroneously
 described as meeting ''the CIA's military chief'' in
 1981, although the stories clearly describe the man he
 met with as Bermudez, the Contra military commander.

 A former investigator for the Senate committee that
 documented in extensive detail the dealings of various
 Contra officials and their henchmen, and CIA awareness of
 the drug dealings, said that in his view, the lack of
 direct evidence implicating the CIA made the series
 controversial.

 ''You have to show they (the CIA) knew about the
 smuggling and either did nothing about it or actively
 abetted it,'' said the investigator, who asked not to be
 named. ''This is what the series has not done. Instead,
 it has drawn a strong circumstantial case that Contra
 officials who were paid by the CIA knew about it and
 looked the other way.''

 In fact, said this former Senate investigator, ''to call
 it the CIA is a little simplistic, because it was the USG
 (U.S. government), not the CIA; (it) was a group of
 people operating alongside and largely outside of the
 system. They were Ronald Reagan's freedom fighters.''

 Responds Ceppos: ''Our job is not to prosecute the case
 by courtroom standards. ... Our job is to make a fair and
 accurate report, and then let the reader and government
 agencies take it from there. Part of our job is digging
 out and shining a light on injustice. That is what we
 did.''

 Ceppos said it falls within the newspaper's                 [Image]The
 responsibilities to expose serious questions about
 possible governmental wrongdoing without supplying final    key finding
 proof.                                                      of the
                                                             series that
 Many of the series' critics praise the depth of its         people
 reporting, and many of its findings remain unchallenged.    associated
                                                             with the CIA
 The series showed the inner workings of a                   also sold
 California-Nicaragua cocaine ring as it imported tons of    many tons of
 the drug into the West Coast. At the same time, it          cocaine has
 connected their activities directly to a black inner-city   not been
 drug ring in Los Angeles and showed in detail how the       challenged.
 costly cocaine powder smuggled by Nicaraguans linked to     The beauty
 the Contras was converted by the ring into cheap cocaine    of the
 rocks, or crack, which could be bought one dose at a time   series is
 by poor, inner-city blacks. And the story continues to      that it
 develop.                                                    clearly went
                                                             that far and
 Martin Schram, a columnist who writes on the media,         didn't go
 policy and politics for Scripps-Howard News Service in      any further
 Washington, D.C., called the series ''a work in             than that..
 progress.''                                                      [Image]

 Although harshly critical of the way the series was         -- Jerry
 executed, he said, ''It may indeed be true. ... The CIA     Ceppos,
 over the years and government in general have done so       Mercury News
 many things that reach so far beyond the pale and are so    Executive
 far out of bounds, that these things all do somehow have    Editor
 a ring of plausibility, even if they are not proven at      [Image]
 the time ...

 ''There are a lot of good things in the series, but I
 thought it was undercut by trying to reach beyond what it
 had already grasped,'' he said.

 Web multiplies reaction
 Mercury Center gets 100,000 extra 'hits' a day

 Behind at least part of the swift reaction to the series
 was a burgeoning technology. The Internet contributed to
 the rapid spread of the explosive information contained
 in the newspaper's three installments.

 As the series began running, Mercury Center, the paper's
 electronic publishing arm that carried the entire series,
 recorded a rough average of 100,000 more ''hits'' each
 day than the 700,000 to 750,000 it normally sees.

 It also solicited reader comment.

 ''What do you think?'' the site asked. More than 300
 responses have been posted in the site's forum and
 hundreds of e-mail letters have been received. Judging
 from the e-mail, many respondents seemed to think the
 Mercury News had proved that the CIA was covertly
 involved in the sales of crack cocaine to young, black
 Americans.

 ''There's a significant number of people ... extremely
 receptive to the suggestion that the government is
 engaged in a well-organized effort to oppress certain
 constituent groups in American society, and they are
 well-represented in the online world,'' said Bob Ryan,
 director of Mercury Center.

 The electronic version of the series represents an
 unprecedented use of the Internet to promote and
 circulate an investigative story by a major newspaper.

 The Web site contains much more information than the
 newspaper does.

 Text, photographs, charts, diagrams and even the
 documentary evidence -- transcripts, recordings of trial
 testimony and other findings -- are hyperlinked to the
 stories and can be listened to and viewed. The
 interactive display was a groundbreaking use of the
 Internet by a major news organization.

 Mercury Center staffers also did more than ask for
 comment on the Web site. They sent messages to several
 Internet news groups -- online discussion forums on
 different subjects -- alerting them to the series, which
 helped spread the word about the effort.

 As a result, the story spun out into the world in a way
 that editors hadn't foreseen. The series almost instantly
 took on a life of its own.

 ''It's an open information system that's not dependent on
 the size of the gas tanks on our trucks,'' Ryan said.

 The newspaper also has produced a CD-ROM of the series,
 which has not yet been circulated.

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-=-

[Fredric Rice note 1]

There is a comment made above:

          ''... Absolutely not. It seems to me the way the
          press works is you run the information and let
          the readers draw their own conclusions.''

This is a fairly new phenomena in "news reporting".  Previously there
was some measure of integrety wherein the news reporter verified his
or her sources and materials and specifically spelled-out what aspects
of a news story are verified and accurate and which aspects of a story
are either yet to be ascertained or are merely unevidenced opinion.

The newer thinking in journalism is to throw up anything which will
sell newspapers, television air time, magazines and radio air time,
and allowing the consuming audience pick out what they will believe
and what they will not (usually predicated upon preconcieved notions.)

