The death of investigative reporter Gary Webb, author of "Dark Alliance," leaves many unanswered questions. Was it suicide? Or murder?

From the major media we learn subliminally that the drug industry - aside from selling illegal drugs - is the most honest business in the country. After all, according to the press, it never tries to buy elections, bribe politicians, lobby or influence policy, or infiltrate high positions of influence. Were that Enron and Haliburton so clean.

GARY WEBB: THE BACK STORY

CHRISTOPHER REED, GUARDIAN, 1996 - In 1992, when reports were appearing in the alternative press about alleged drugs and arms smuggling flights into Arkansas, I asked a senior news executive at the Los Angeles Times if his paper had investigated. "Yes," he replied, "but nobody in authority would confirm it." Well, they wouldn't, would they?

The reputation of the US press for fearless muckraking has declined severely in the quarter-century since Watergate. After the servitude of the Reagan years, it can now be accused of compliance, and never more so than in its response to an explosive series in August by Gary Webb in the San Jose Mercury News of California.