[Sosfbay-discuss] SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS -- JUDAS SAYS PRINT MUHAMMAD CARTOONS

[AlexCathy at aol.com]

Click here: SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS -- JUDAS SAYS PRINT MUHAMMAD CARTOONS : SF 
Bay Area Indymedia 


Dear Green Friends,

There I go again.

The hypocrisy of the big creeps who run this country never cease to amaze me. 
 

I have just posted this article to the IndyBay Web Site. 


SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS -- 
JUDAS SAYS PRINT MUHAMMAD CARTOONS
by Alex Walker 
 
Jerry Ceppos, former executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News and former 
vice president/news of Knight Ridder, has an op-ed it today's edition of the 
Merc about the uproar in the Islamic world over caricatures of Muhammad titled 
"We Must See cartoons to Understand Furor." 
 
The unlimited self-righteous hypocrisy of the U.S. Ruling Class never ceases 
to amaze me. With the arrogance and self-righteousness so typical of his class 
in the U.S., Mr. Ceppos says of he were an editor today he'd run the cartoons 
because "we," that is, the enlightened, free-thinking, superior people of the 
U.S. have a need to know. Ceppos writes: "I'd run them because they're big 
news and help explain a religion that we desperately need to understand." 
 
Here is the problem. 
 
Jerry Ceppos is the Judas that abandoned Gary Webb in the middle of the "Dark 
Alliance" investigation of the C.I.A. in the mid-1990s. 
 
The Lonely Heroic Saga of Gary Webb
 
Gary Webb (1955 - 2004), was an investigative journalist best known for his 
1966 "Dark Alliance" series written for the San Jose Mercury News. In this 
explosive series Webb uncovered the connection between the U.S.-back Nicaraguan 
contras, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, and crack cocaine distribution in 
African-American communities in Los Angeles and other big cities of the U.S. 
His work was disputed and later disowned by the Mercury News, effectively 
ending his career as a mainstream media journalist.
 
After leaving the Merc, Gary Webb went to work for the California Assembly 
Speaker's Office of Member Services and served as a consultant to the California 
State legislature Task Force on Government Oversight. On December 10, 2004, 
he was found dead from gunshot wounds to the head. The coroner determined that 
it was a suicide and it subsequently became known that Webb had been suffering 
from clinical depression. 
 
Jerry Ceppos is the rat who stabbed Gary Webb in the back under pressure from 
the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and the 
entire U.S. establishment. In his book Gary Webb says as the attacks from the U.S. 
establishment escalated, this very same Jerry Ceppos said "I don't want to get 
into a war with them." 
 
See below excerpts from Ceppos' op-ed
 
 
We Must See Cartoons to Understand Furor
by Jerry Ceppos
            The San Jose Mercury News, Tuesday, February 7, 2006 
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/13810391.htm
Maybe it's because I'm a person now and not a newspaper editor that I'm 
bothered by the blackout in almost all mainstream U.S. media of the cartoons that 
have incited much of the Muslim world.
Images often provoke controversy more than words do.
When I was a newspaper editor, I probably spent the equivalent of six months 
of my life debating whether to publish one or another controversial 
photograph, political cartoon or comic strip. The photograph of a dead American soldier 
being dragged through the streets of Somalia. The photo of Richard Allen 
Davis, Polly Klaas' killer, making an obscene courtroom gesture. A ``Doonesbury'' 
comic strip in which a TV commentator tours Ronald Reagan's brain, pointing out 
deficiencies. (The Mercury News published the first two on my watch. I can't 
remember what we decided on the Doonesbury strip, proving that what seem like 
tough decisions mercifully do not always follow you into eternity.)
. . . 
I get it that many Muslims believe that no image of the Prophet Muhammad 
should appear. I am grateful for the Times' word descriptions of the drawings and 
understand why the drawings would be provocative: ``One cartoon depicts 
Muhammad with a turban in the shape of a bomb. Another shows him at the gates of 
heaven, arms raised, saying to men who seem to be suicide bombers, `Stop, stop, 
we have run out of virgins.' A third has devil's horns emerging from his 
turban. A fourth shows two women who are entirely veiled, with only their eyes 
showing, and the prophet standing between them with a strip of black cloth covering 
his eyes, preventing him from seeing.''
But I can't truly understand the controversy until I see the cartoons.
No, I wouldn't run the cartoons ``to show support'' for the Danish paper, 
which the BBC says was the motivation for many European newspapers. I'd run them 
because they're big news and help explain a religion that we desperately need 
to understand.
. . . 
It is curious that Mr. Ceppos mentions comparatively trivial editorial 
decisions about photographs and cartoons, but never mentions "Dark Alliance," the 
greatest controversy in his career. 
Now, see below excerpts from an account of his Judas role: 
 
Judas Retires: Jerry Ceppos and the Burning Memory of Gary Webb
By Luis Gomez,
Posted on Wed Aug 24th, 2005
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2005/8/24/145235/991
. . . 
In the book Dark Alliance, Gary Webb says (open your books to page 444, 
please): "The Mercury News' executive editor, Jerry Ceppos, called and 
congratulated me. The TV networks were calling the paper. We were getting phone calls from 
all over the world. 'Let's stay on the top of this,' he said. 'Anything you 
need, you let us know. We want to run with this thing.' A few days later, I got 
a $500 bonus check in the mail and a note from Ceppos: 'Remarkable series! 
Thanks for doing this for us.'" 
. . . 
Later, in early October, 1996, the offensive against Gary Webb's brilliant 
work began. The Washington Post circulated a story, signed by a pair of 
mercenaries, that put Webb's entire investigation in doubt. In those days, Webb was in 
New York, on the long tour that brought him to hundreds of radio and 
television programs to tell the story. "About 2:00 a.m., Jerry Ceppos called," recalls 
Webb on page 448 of his book. "He asked me to take a look [at the Post piece] 
and give him my reaction." During the conversation, Ceppos mentioned that the 
Post's "journalists" had uses, as evidence, 'a lot of unnamed sources, 
mainly. It's really a strange piece. I'll send you a fax of it, and we can talk in 
the morning.'"
Gary followed up by refuting the Washington Post story's content, and was 
also able to identify one of the authors (Walter Pincus) as having worked as an 
informant for the CIA, which could not have been a coincidence. And, well, 
Jerry did what an editor should do in these cases: he backed his reporter and sent 
a letter to the Post (which of course was never published). In that missive, 
Jerry Ceppos stated, "We strongly support the conclusions the series drew and 
will until someone proves them wrong."
But the attacks on the investigation continued and grew, nearly all of them 
launched by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post. 
And that scared Gary Webb's bosses. One morning, Ceppos invited Gary to a 
meeting with the Mercury News' other editors... who asked Webb to quit the 
investigation and see if they could respond to the attacks from these three horsemen 
of the apocalypse. What you said that morning, Jerry Ceppos, is a phrase for 
the history books: "I don't want to get into a war with them." Because it was 
then that you began to pull back your troops, and ordered all copies of the 
CD-ROM that had been made with all Gary's documents and notes destroyed before 
it was released. 
But Gary Webb was an authentic and stubborn journalist. Together with his 
colleague Georg Hodel he began investigating and proving everything he had said 
in the "Dark Alliance" series. Those months of work were not in vain for the 
pair... until, on March 25, 1997, Jerry Ceppos called Webb to communicate to him 
"a very difficult decision" (p. 459). According to Ceppos, there were various 
errors in the series of reports, because of which the Mercury News planned to 
publish a letter to the readers acknowledging the supposed faults.
Still on the phone, Gary asked if "I get a chance to say something." "The 
decision has been made," Ceppos responded... and in the weeks after that call the 
executive editor's support transformed into rejection. Ceppos published his 
column on May 11, 1997, and, as Gary wrote, "if there was ever a chance of 
getting to the bottom of the CIA's involvement with drug traffickers, it died on 
that day." The big U.S. dailies' pressure on Ceppos had its desired effect: his 
column was correctly interpreted as a retraction, as acknowledgement that 
Webb's investigation was "wrong." It never mattered that the CIA's own internal 
investigation, some time later, confirmed most of what Gary had written and 
discovered; as far as I know, Ceppos never wrote a column about that.
"We need a real-time ethics class that deals with the down and dirty issues 
of fairness, because whatever we're doing in our classrooms and newsrooms isn't 
working," said a conference attendee in the spring of 1998, before an 
auditorium of students and professors of the University of Oregon. It was Jerry 
Ceppos, who not only was not sorry for having betrayed Gary Webb, his own reporter, 
but even publicly acknowledged the latter's "flaws."
Did you understand the lesson, kind readers? When you work for one of the 
commercial media, if you're going to stick that dagger in, push it up to the 
hilt, and, once it's there, your hand full of blood, move it around as much as 
possible. Only then will your personal prestige (and salary) be safe... 
Solidarity and truth are just two little words that can be scorned and forgotten in 
commercial journalism. All right, any questions? Ask Jerry Ceppos...
. . . 
             I have always known that a coward, a traitor, with power and 
authority, is more dangerous than anyone else. That little                 mouse 
with the surname of Ceppos is one of those... a good example, the best Judas I 
have found lately. Because his                 betrayal didn't end with that 
story; he had still more dirty tricks to play on Gary Webb, our colleague, our 
teacher and                     friend...
 
Let's turn to page 464 in Dark Alliance:
 
            Ceppos, who'd not spoken to me since his column ran, call me at 
home in early June (1997). He was killing the follow-ups,             he 
shouted. I was off the story for good. He couldn't trust me anymore because I'd 
"aligned myself with one side of the                 issue."
 
"Which side is that, Jerry? The side that wants the truth to come out?"
 
...I was to report to his office in two days "to discuss your future at the 
Mercury News."
 
            Gary Webb's future, according to Judas, I mean, Jerry Ceppos, was 
to work in the San Jose Mercury News' central office.             The editors 
had lost confidence in Webb, said Ceppos, and he needed more supervision. If 
he refused, he would be sent to             the Western Office in Cupertino, 
California, "the newspaper's version of Siberia," according to Gary. 
 
 
Most commentators in the U.S. have predictably and simple-mindedly compared 
the caricatures of Muhammad in the Islamic world to caricatures of Jesus in 
this so-called Christian nation. 
That is not the correct analogy. Edgy depictions of the founder of 
Christianity are commonplace in the West. See, for example, films like "The Last 
Temptation of Christ" or "The Passion of the Christ" or the upcoming blockbuster, 
"The Da Vinci Code." 
What really takes guts In the U.S. is challenging the "divinity" of the 
President, the C.I.A. and the New York Times. And in this regard, Knight-Ridder's 
little Judas has no moral standing. 
Please send e-mail letters to the editor of the "Suck-Up-To-Power" Mercury 
News at letters at mercurynews.com. If 100 people write letters about Gary, maybe 
the hypocrites will print one or two. 
 
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