the howard kurtz story story is liable to be pretty standard. it runs on the assumption that web's work had been proven false in its entirety. the kurtz piece is titled "web of lies," and this is obviously meant to refer to webb's work:
Webb acknowledged to me that he had no proof the CIA knew about this and that others were going beyond what he had written. But what he had written had serious problems, as subsequent investigations by The Washington Post, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times found. Webb, meanwhile, began making the talk-show rounds with wilder charges. "The evidence is growing stronger day by day that there was some CIA involvement," he told Montel Williams. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) declared that "people in high places were winking and blinking, and our children were dying." Boston Globe columnist Derrick Jackson wrote: "The only conclusion is that Ronald Reagan said yes to crack and the destruction of black lives at home to fund the killing of commies abroad."
The Mercury News, after defending the series, wound up backing off, with then-editor Jerry Ceppos saying Webb's articles were "oversimplified," left out contradictory evidence and "fell short of my standards." When I called Webb, he called his boss's reaction "bizarre," "misleading" and "nauseating." He was transferred to a suburban bureau, left the paper and turned his charges into a book before joining the staff of the California legislature.
The lesson, which has been proven many times since then, is that just because a news outlet makes sensational charges doesn't make them true, and just because the rest of the media challenge the charges doesn't make them part of some cover-up.
what's amazing is how mild the retraction was: not at all based on the substance of webb's reporting. and the supposed refutations by the wash post, nytimes, and latimes (um, they really, really wanted this to turn out to be false) also left the thing mostly intact, if you get me. i will try to document alll this with links as the day goes on.
