This is a what a really great reporter looks like – Gary Webb, author of “Dark Alliance,” the book that blew open the CIA-crack cocaine connection. (Webb eventually committed “suicide” after the media trashed his career, although he had once been the recipient of a Pulitzer).

Here is Webb explaining media inertia and resentment in a 1997 interview:

“Webb: It’s been incredible, and it’s been amazing, and it’s been disgusting at times.

You’re referring to the media?

Well, first of all, I think the public’s response was fairly amazing, just the public outcry. I mean, it’s not like something you write about and [expect] people start marching in the street. That was a fairly amazing reaction. And I think some of the media follow-up’s been fairly disgusting.

Why do you think the media reacted the way they did?

Well, I think there’s a couple of reasons. One is that the big papers in this country have sort of an institutional history of sitting on this story. You go back and you look at what was written back in the ’80s by the three big papers in this country about this Contra-cocaine topic, and most of it was just a pack of lies. And they have continued that sort of “There’s nothing here” attitude up until now. So I think that one of the reasons is that they had an institutional history of covering this story up, and this [series] sort of exposed that for what it was. I think the other part of the problem is that you have most of the people that wrote these stories for most of the papers are establishment organs, they are mouthpieces a lot of the time for the government. And I think that’s what they’re being used for in this case, is the government’s side of the story.”