I still don't believe Ithaca Journal writer Kandea Mosley. And that's got less to do with my knowledge of journalists than my knowledge of Google. For Ms. Mosley... the first journalist to quote an actual U.S. soldier saying war crimes were committed... is simply not credible.
To save you the googlification: Kandea Mosley graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1993, making her, I'd guess, about 27 now. She then went to UCLA, where she became the chairwoman of the African Student Union in 1996-7, and then ran for student president as the Students First! candidate, which opposed Nike on campus and the ending of affirmative action in California (Proposition 209), and won. The protests in her year as president took various forms: she was quoted as saying:
Our opposition to Prop. 209 ... is not a result of a skewed perception of affirmative action as a cure-all for all of our communities and the racist, classist violence perpetuated on our people daily. Rather, the reasons behind raising a political struggle in this university is created out of our understanding that organized struggle ... is necessary on every level.
At the inauguration of the new UCLA chancellor that spring, a web report notes:
Inside USA president Kandea Mosley delivered a speech decrying the end of affirmative action and then sat down on the stage for several minutes, her fist raised in protest.
Graduating in 1998, Mosley then returned to New York, covering the Green Party for the Village Voice (!!) during the 2000 elections. And now for the last few months, she's been upstate, working as a beat reporter at the Ithaca Journal. I'm sorry, but I just can't believe someone with those credentials is going to come to the question of U.S. actions in Afghanistan capable of clear-headed judgment. So I don't believe her story.
...if you work at the Gannett chain, which owns USA Today, you'll be evaluated according to how many minority sources are used in your stories and how many pictures of minorities appear on the news pages. If you don't use enough, you may not get promoted.