The Digest

A recent column from Nicholas Kristof illustrates, almost inadvertently, why the rise of new, less cautious media organizations (like-well, WhoWhatWhy.com) is so crucial. Headlined “New Alarm Bells About Chemicals and Cancer,” the essay describes a new report on cancer from a presidential board
…warning that our lackadaisical approach to regulation may have far-reaching consequences for our health….it’s an extraordinary document. It… [Read the rest]

What if many, even most, of the detainees at places like Guantanamo turned out to be innocent? What if the physical and psychological trauma to which they have been subjected, and the resulting generation of rage at the United States, was all unnecessary? Would that be a big story?
Well — duh.
Yet check this out: Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of… [Read the rest]

Timeless morsels are, well, timeless. Hence, I bring to your attention this phase from an early-March article in the New York Times. The reporter, writing about the Iraqi elections, noted
[T]he elections may be a cautionary lesson, as politicians struggle to cobble together a coalition to rule. Iraq’s politics are more vibrant than the institutions meant to gird them, threatening the… [Read the rest]

As the New York Times reports,
Large batches of e-mail records from the Justice Department lawyers who worked on the 2002 legal opinions justifying the Bush administration’s brutal interrogation techniques are missing, and the Justice Department told lawmakers Friday that it would try to trace the disappearance. At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who… [Read the rest]

My experience is that the biggest potential stories are simply too big for the major organs of daily journalism. That’s the lesson I learned writing my book, Family of Secrets. That’s also why I started www.WhoWhatWhy.com.  Where we do find the really explosive material, it often pops up in the seemingly least-likely places. So it is that we must turn… [Read the rest]