Jackson Free Press

OK, Ledger, at least be honest in your assessment of "cold case" efforts in this country. You may have done some good work in the past when you used to care a little about being a newspaper, and you deserve credit for that. However, today's editorial is extremely disingenuous and revisionist. You write today:

There is very little credible discussion about the need for such a unit. The Justice Department is investigating more than 100 "forgotten" civil rights-era slayings - old cases that have never been solved, but still should be considered potentially solvable.

For example, in June, here in Mississippi, a federal jury convicted James Seale of conspiracy and two counts of kidnapping in the May 2, 1964, slayings of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, considered "forgotten" killings. The FBI reopened the case in 2000 after The Clarion-Ledger reported that federal charges were possible since the two were beaten in a national forest.

There are 39 of those "forgotten" killings in Mississippi - including the 1964 killing of Louis Allen, ambushed after he dared tell a federal grand jury a Mississippi lawmaker did not kill voting rights activist Herbert Lee in self-defense in Liberty in 1961.

The problem here, as Free Press readers know, is that your paper led on the Dee-Moore case being "forgotten," with Jerry Mitchell reporting that the main suspect, James Ford Seale, was dead, leading other media around the country to believe that must be true. (Which would have remained gospel had the JFP, Thomas Moore and David Ridgen not gone down there seeking the truth and finding it with very little reporting effort.) Your paper, and your editors and reporters, said repeatedly that Killen was the "last case" and Mitchell himself said in interviews that Thomas Moore would never see justice in the murder of his brother. Never say never.

Even when the Dee-Moore case first came back up, your paper seemed amazed that people other than yourselves would dare to pursue cold cases; after all, your paper has been sitting on many FBI files for years that you haven't done anything with. We now see you moving away from the false meme of "no more cases" in Mississippi and digging back into your Neshoba files to ask why Billy Wayne Posey has not been prosecuted. But to make the statements above is irresponsible considering your own role in "forgetting" these cases.

You have the resources to re-investigate these cases, and have had them throughout the time when you were saying that they were "over." Stop trying to take credit for cases that you had ruled "over" and that were prosecuted despite your prognostications. Instead, reveal every old case in your files. This would be a good role for you in the state, considering how poorly you report on current events.

Don't rest on your laurels; ride on them to do something other than turn your newspaper into an "information center" where you can't tell the difference between what's written by a reporter and a press release.

Previous Comments

ID

115978

Comment

There's a great piece in the New York Times today by former Washington City Paper editor David Carr (who now writes for the NYTimes) discussing the layoffs of "muckraking" reporters at alt-weeklies in Chicago and D.C. I bring it up on this thread because it points to why we make such a fuss about the Clarion-Ledger's meager resources devoted to actual reporting...as opposed to the resources they devote to schemes like Litter Ledgers and The Distribution Network. If we can shame them into actual reporting, then so much the better for Jackson. I try to remind myself on a regular basis (usually when I'm waiting on Donna to leave the office because right now we share a car between us) that the reason I'm in this business is because I believe in the press' vital role in a democracy, and I'm a big fan of our democracy. But as newspapers get swallowed by larger corporate interests (and by fear of the unknown on the Web), they become less and less paragons of the Fourth Estate and more like cog factories looking to return shareholder value in the interest of their stock prices. From Carr's piece: Serious reporting used to be baked into the business, but under pressure from the public markets or their private equity owners, newsrooms have been cutting foreign bureaus, Washington reporters and investigative capacity. Under this model, the newsroom is no longer the core purpose of media, it’s just overhead.

Author

Todd Stauffer

Date

2007-12-11T11:00:53-06:00

ID

115979

Comment

... and I believe strongly that the Ledger was shamed into getting back to reporting on cold cases rather than erroneously reporting that suspects were dead and stating repeatedly that the case they decided was going to be the last would actually be the last. It was sad to watch them go from being a paper that actually seemed to care about these issues to a paper that thought it could control the news cycle, and if they didn't have the energy or desire to report on these cases any longer, then they were "over." In other words, the paper known as the leader on many of these cases was the vehicle that pushed the meme that they were over and that's how cases became "forgotten." They've had the power the whole time to make sure they weren't forgotten, so they have no one to blame but themselves. Besides, it wasn't like they put investigative resources into much of anything else, especially anything to do with sitting or campaigning officials, so the least they can do is continue to do these stories that have little political fallout for them any longer. What they should do is the team approach to them as we did with our Killen coverage and then Dee-Moore. Mr. Mitchell doesn't "own" these stories, and if he doesn't want to spend as much time, open all those dusty FBI files up to a group of young reporters and photographers and let them learn how to do this kind of work. Fan out around the state and look at every case. I'm sure they could make a convincing story to the home office in Virginia to give them a few extra bucks to do work that actually brings that company good publicity. With Gannett's dropping revenues and floundering efforts at the Web and of trying to control local distribution of other publications, they could use some good publicity about now. Here's their chance. But they have to stop being so damn precious about it.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2007-12-11T11:10:54-06:00