This week on CounterSpin: Award-winning investigative reporter Gary Webb died at the age of 49 on Friday, December 10, from an apparent suicide. In 1996 Webb's courageous work linked cocaine traffickers to the CIA's Contra army in Nicaragua and to the West Coast crack scourge. We'll be joined by FAIR founder Jeff Cohen to discuss Gary Webb's work and the backlash he suffered at the hands of an establishment media bent on protecting the powerful.

Also on the show: Workers at the Youngstown Ohio daily the Vindicator are on strike. So what does that have to do with the New Orleans Times-Picayune? That’s what our guest wondered. Eileen Loh Harrist writes for New Orleans’ Gambit Weekly. We’ll hear from her about why management at New Orleans' major paper is encouraging its reporters to go to Ohio to break a strike.

LINKS:

R.I.P. Gary Webb -- Unembedded Reporter, by Jeff Cohen (CommonDreams, 12/13/04)

The Paper's Trail, by Eileen Loh Harrist (Gambit Weekly, 12/14/04)