E&P: Knight Ridder's Tom Lasseter Offers Voice of Truth in Iraq (exc read)

[UpInArms]

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001432616

NEW YORK "Soldiers are constantly surprising me," says Tom Lasseter, 29, the longtime Baghdad correspondent for Knight Ridder. Lasseter spoke to E&P in early October, shortly after getting off a helicopter and a five-day embed with a 3rd Infantry Division sniper team. Their mission was to hunt for insurgents on the back roads and in the palm groves of Muqdadiyah, a city in Diyala province. On the way out he passed a soldier reading a book by Noam Chomsky.

"That's a little seditious, isn't it, reading Chomsky here?" Lasseter jokingly asked the soldier.

"I'll tell you what's f---ing seditious," the soldier replied. "That I've been deployed here for three years."

<snip>

Lasseter's groundbreaking reporting has gotten wide play in other publications. A story in which he managed to get two generals in Iraq, who had spoken to him on background, to acknowledge on the record that a military victory over the insurgency was not in the offing, generated front page headlines in Knight Ridder newspapers and dozens of others nationwide.

Last November, Lasseter reported from Fallujah on one of the most hellacious battles of the war while embedded with Alpha Company of the 1st Infantry Division's Task Force. He filed every day of the six-day battle that took the unit into the most intense urban combat since the 1968 battle for Hue in Vietnam. At its end he wrote an indelible account of the unit's house-to-house battles, and the loss of both its commanding and executive officers. The series concluded with one soldier saying he'd been thinking about his son: "I don't want my boy to know his daddy's a killer."

...lots more...

[slor]

1. I would like to see him on CSPAN...

He was on some program a while back, and I remember how he clearly painted a darker picture, than we were getting from the pathetic media.

[fishnfla]

2. "No matter what you write about Iraq, the opposite will also be true"

Thats a cool line.

I recognize some of the stories they describe here. This kid should write a book.

[farmbo]

3. Not for long...GOP moneymen are trying to acquire Knight Ritter

Tom Lasseter will be out on the streets and another outlet for truth will be out of business...

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/shoptalk_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001432946

PHILADELPHIA (November 02, 2005) -- As you probably know if you're a newspaper junkie, and may not know if you're a normal human being, a Florida-based investment group -- with zero fanfare -- this summer bought up 19% of the stock of Knight Ridder, Inc., the owners of the Daily News and the Philadelphia Inquirer, not to mention the Miami Herald, the San Jose Mercury News, and a bunch of other big names in the dead-tree world.
<snip>
No. 1: Are you concerned about pro-GOP Big Business taking over America's media business? Then you should be concerned about this deal.

My initial research shows that top executives of Private Capital Management donated $112,000 in late 2003 and early 2004 to help President Bush and Dick Cheney get re-elected. On Nov. 6 and 7, 2003, in what would appear to be a coordinated effort, six PCM executives each gave the maximum of $2,000 to Bush-Cheney '04.
<snip>

Then on the same day, April 8, 2004, the head of PCM, Bruce Sherman, and company executive Gregg Powers gave $50,000 each, or $100,000 total, to the Republican National Committee. Company executives gave no money to Democrats during the 2003-04 cycle, according to the Political Money Line database.

[blm]

4. They're trying to force its breakup to reduce its power as a news source.

Face it - KnightRidder has been doing the job that the NYT and WashPost refused to do for the last 5 years, scrutinize the White House and its policies.

[zalinda]

5. Can't we start buying shares and get control of

the paper? Those who buy stock could save the paper. I'm too poor, but there should be some of you out there. Maybe this is something MoveOn could get behind.

zalinda