AFFLICTING THE COMFORTABLE: JOURNALISM AND POLITICS IN WEST VIRGINIA

Preface

Preface "Government corruption was not invented in the State of West Virginia. But there are people who contend that West Virginia officials have done more than their share over the years to develop state-of-the-art techniques in vote theft, contract kickbacks, influence peddling and good old-fashioned bribery, extortion, fraud, tax evasion and outright stealing." The New York Times, 1990 "Can anybody govern West Virginia?" Business Week, 1990 OVER THE YEARS MORE THAN ONE PERSON has urged me to write a book on West Virginia politics, particularly on my experiences with the Invest Right scandal , one of the most politically unsettling news stories ever to appear in this state and one with far-reaching ramifications. In the mid-1980s Dr. George Parkinson, then curator of the West Virginia and Regional History Collection at West Virginia University, contacted me about putting together my personal papers and recollections into a kind of memoir, a behind-the-scenes look at my efforts to track down a story of government corruption that spread further and deeper than I had originally imagined and that eventually brought down a governor and other highly placed officials. Trying to tell this story has not been a pleasant experience. I have had to relate the actions of people I knew and liked, several of them close friends, who chose the wrong path in their quest for personal and professional success. The investigative reporter, contrary to popular belief, is rarely a cold-blooded bastard. In fact, at the beginning of my career I had no burning commitment to newspapering. When I graduated from journalism school in the middle of XVI AFFLICTING THE COMFORTABLE the Depression, all I wanted was to find a job and earn a living. But publishers bought their help as cheaply as possible, and few of them wanted to bring a college graduate into their newsrooms. Only Charles Hodel, a crippled orphan who rose through the ranks to ownership of a five-newspaper operation in the two Virginias, was willing to gamble on me. And it wasn't until editor Raiford Watkins, a former Associated Press bureau chief, assigned me to the courthouse beat that I began to understand the meaning of the First Amendment. A reporter doesn't easily develop the kind of toughness the job demands. Each of us, regardless of his or her position, has a basic human desire to be liked. But this desire unfortunately collides head-on with journalistic commitment and integrity for the reporter who follows the mandate of The New York Times, to write "all the news that's fit to print." Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black said it best when he wrote that the First Amendment gives the press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The duty of the press is to serve the governed, not the governors, he advised, and only a free and unrestrained press can expose duplicity and deception in government. My first lesson in adversarial journalism came when I was directed by editor Watkins to remain in the room during a county board of education meeting until I was dismissed by voice vote at the beginning of the customary executive session. When the time came for my first real test of authority, I timidly asked for a formal vote on my dismissal by the full board. The members acceded to my request, two of them angrily, but I was not only permitted to remain that particular evening but was never again banished from one of their meetings. It was a heady experience. I felt that I had earned my spurs, or whatever badge a reporter earns when he moves into that small fraternity of journalists who make it their practice to challenge the power structure when the occasion warrants. It was only a small step, but I was on my way. I was sued for libel three times, was a central figure in more grand jury investigations than I care to remember, and suffered the slings and arrows of countless politicians and powerbrokers for a quarter century, but I never altered my course, PREFACE XVII although the toll it exacted eventually forced me to give up journalism, albeit reluctantly and only after deep soul-searching. No course in adversarial journalism was taught while I was in school, and those who chose it as a career discipline were few in number. In fact, I found...