RESPONSIBLE v. RECKLESS JOURNALISM
Only Responsible Journalism Can Seek Justice
People believe what they want to believe. Conversely, they don’t believe what they don’t want to believe. That’s just human nature. Most people seem to have found the source of political news that they prefer, and they agree with the views they hear or read, and there would be no harm in that if the news media was always reliable, but it isn’t. There is reckless journalism from the far left all the way through to the far right. We’re not asking anyone to change their political views. We’re just asking folks to be responsible enough to accept that journalism can be reckless or even self-serving and can cause great harm. We have categorized the reckless journalism that relates to the topic of our website and we give specific examples. We hope that folks will realize the damage that has been caused to people’s lives and the barriers that have been built in finding justice for Kevin and Don, because of the likes of Unsolved Mysteries, 60 Minutes, The Washington Post, The Arkansas Democrat (now Democrat-Gazette), the Benton Courier, and Max Brantley, editor of The Arkansas Times, all explained within the pages of “Reckless Journalism.”
Some aspects of main stream media has done as much to thwart justice for Kevin and Don as any corrupt public official or dirty cop.
Jean Duffey
As stated above, some aspects of main stream media has done as much to thwart justice for Kevin and Don as any corrupt public official or dirty cop, as the journalists featured on the “Disinformation” page.
However, there are a few ethical journalists who abandon their marching orders and refuse to report untruths. Two such journalists are Phillip Weiss who wrote for “The New York Times Magazine” in the 1990’s and Evalyn Lee, a producer of “60 Minutes” at CBS, also in the 1990’s. See below: “Ethical Journalists Do Exist.”
Ethical Journalists Do Exist
How Linda Was Labeled A Clinton Basher:
By Jean Duffey
By the mid-1990’s Linda had been labeled a Clinton-basher, because she appeared in “The Clinton Chronicles,” a widely distributed video produced by Pat Matriciana, a conservative activist. It was not Matriciana’s intention to side-line Linda’s message, and in fact, the next year he produced another video “Obstruction of Justice: The Mena Connection,” and gave Linda and Jean editorial control. Linda would always talk to anyone, anytime to keep the story of Kevin’s murder in the news. Pat was drawn to Linda for his video because of Clinton’s inexplicable yet staunch support of medical examiner, Famy Malak, who’s ruling of “accidental deaths” of the boys and 20 other highly controversial rulings, had become a national story and an embarrassment for Clinton.
Linda’s motive was to tell of the story of how difficult is was to get Malak’s ruling overturned, in spite of his ridiculous explanation that the boys were in a marijuana induced psychedelic stupor when they laid across the tracks in identical soldier-style position and didn’t hear the train. Although the ruling was overturned to homicide by a renowned team of forensic pathologists, Malak’s ruling continued to plague investigations all the way to investigation #6 by the FBI in 1995. After 18 months and 17,000 documents, the Arkansas Bureau Chief, I.C. Smith shutdown the FBI because they couldn’t determine whether there had even been a crime committed.
The Journalists Who Recognized The Truth:
In spite of the relentless hunt for Clinton scandals, Linda Ives and I stubbornly refused to be labeled Clinton-bashers. We stood especially firm when the White House included Linda on the President’s “enemies list” they called “the conspiracy commerce report.” White House Counsel Mark Fabiani even singled Linda out to New York Times Magazine reporter Philip Weiss who was preparing his cover story “The Clinton Haters” printed February 23, 1997.
The White House must have been pleased with Weiss’s take on the questionable motives of several Clinton-haters and his commentary on “conspiracies” like the “Body Count.” But then Weiss goes against White House wishes and writes of the “train deaths” as an example of “how a legitimate question gets spun into a conspiracy.” Weiss recognized the validity of Linda’s story and questions Clinton’s support of Malak, whose cause of death ruling was an attempt to cover up murder. Weiss writes, “Clinton’s own connection to the murders in Saline County is plainly indirect. But he did stand by Malak, even as The Arkansas Democrat and a group of enraged citizens called for Malak’s dismissal.”
The summer before the White House sicced Weiss on Linda, Evalyn Lee, a 60 Minutes producer, was sent on a similar mission. Again, after spending two days with Linda and me, Lee confessed that she was supposed “to befriend and interview” us and was to “fold our interviews into a story about Clinton-bashers. According to Lee, the story was to air that fall before the ’96 election and was supposed to boost support for Clinton. Lee said she had changed her mind about using us in the story and planned to ask her superior to run a legitimate story about the “train deaths.” Of course that never happened, but as it turned out, neither did the Clinton-basher story, probably because pre-election polls never indicated Clinton needed a boost.