Just when I thought I was going to have to write trivia, a media issue hit me like a bullseye. There really are a few good American news organs out there!
How come a small, INDEPENDENTLY OWNED, newspaper called the Toledo Blade out of Toledo, Ohio, can do the kind of investigative journalism we used to expect from all newspapers, while the biggies can only play catch up, thereby almost assuring that this 150,000 circulation paper a Pulitzer Prize for 2003?
Or, am I fooling myself? Is it even possible for a non-conglomerate owned paper to win the thing these days?
Does the phrase INDEPENDENTLY OWNED perhaps answer the question? Without having to satisfy the editorial/political interests of the power that be because no one in the power elites is subsidizing them, this newspaper owned by the wealthy Robinson Block family--they are local to Toledo, of course, and thus they have to care about their community--can pluck up the courage to follow a lead even if it leads to the hidden corridors of power that may not let them through the door. That is the committment stated by its representative, John Robinson Block: to outstanding investigative journalism.
We have come to expect that from the Washington Post (Watergate), the New Yorker (the phony Iraq-Niger uranium issue), Harper's (any of the numerous stories by PJ O'Rourke), or the New York Times. the thing is, all of these are owned by powerful conglomerates which don't necessarily want the public to know what their buddies in the White House are up to, with the rare exceptions listed above.
So what's the story? Probably it's one of the biggest scoops of the year if not the decade: Before My Lai, that horrific slaughter of innocents during Vietnam by Lt. Calley and his cohorts in 1970 was the 1967 massacre in a farming village in the Central Highlands involving an elite US unit trained only to kill known as Tiger Force. Basically, their missions involved killing, no matter what, no matter who, civilian or soldier-guerrilla, young or old. The scoop was supplied by the Washington Bureau person for the Blade, which, despite being stonewalled by the military, managed to get the story over many months from Tiger Force members eager to cleanse their guilt as well as Vietnamese officials, who, amazingly, want to investigate the story but also want to put the experience behind them.
The first of a four-part investigation appeared on October 22, 2003, and, since then, the major dailies, on- and off-line, have been playing catch up. WorldNetDaily, for instance, carried it a couple of days later. I followed a link from England's The Guardian (at "http://observer.guardian.co.uk/internati...") to the Blade (whose site is "http://www.toledoblade.com"), and, from there, to the series, at "http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll...".
Go To Page: 1 2
