When I used to be a foreign correspondent at a weekly newsmagazine overseas, one of the bravest reporters I ever met was USA Today’s Jack Kelley.
Jack literally risked his life exposing the crimes of the Russian mafia in the early 1990’s and uncovering ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. He reported on the genocide in Rwanda and most recently on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But now USA Today has turned on him savagely, whispering to other news organizations that he invented stories or, even worse, he copied them. There’s a sort of lynch-mob belief that Jack is the new Jason Blair, the New York Times reporter who invented stories out of whole cloth.
But Jack is not only an outstanding reporter, he’s also a strong and outspoken Christian.
Now, I don’t know why USA Today has turned on him, but it sure does look mighty curious.
I’m David Aikman.
