Detroit
media coverage of the story of Richard Wershe, Jr., better known to the public
as White Boy Rick thanks to relentless media use of that nickname, has been deplorable,
shoddy and often wrong for close to 30 years. The inexcusable erroneous
reporting calling him a “drug lord” and “kingpin” is one of the reasons Wershe
has been in prison since age 18. Detroit's news media owes it to this man to finally tell his story correctly.
Mark Twain said never pick a fight with someone who buys
ink by the barrel.
My intent in this blog post isn’t to pick a fight with
old reporter friends, newbie journalists or former competitors in the Detroit
media. Everyone makes mistakes, including reporters, including editors,
including me. I’ve made my share so this isn’t about casting stones in a glass
house. The purpose of this blog post isn’t to hold any individual reporter up
for ridicule.
The purpose of this post is to show how a steady drumbeat
of sensationalized, distorted and in many cases just plain wrong reporting has
contributed to the deprivation of liberty for Richard J. Wershe, Jr. for almost three decades .
Any reporter or editor currently covering the Rick Wershe
story and working for a Detroit media outlet that was peddling news and
information in 1987 has an ethical obligation to try to make up for some
deplorable journalistic sins of the past. It will take some hard reporting and
a lot of skepticism about the prosecution claims over the years about Wershe.
This past Friday I spoke with Rick Wershe by phone from
Oaks Correctional Facility, where he is serving a life sentence for a
non-violent drug crime. I asked him how the inaccurate media reporting over the
years has affected him.
“It’s ruined my life,” Wershe said. “It (the media
coverage) is one lie after another. It has taken my whole life from me.”
Richard J. Wershe, Jr. in court earlier this month (David Coates, Detroit News) |
It’s
time for reporters covering the Rick Wershe story to take an open-minded look
at the other side of the story and report it.
Many people who are following the saga of Rick Wershe
express frustration about the news coverage in comments on the Free Richard Wershe Jr. Facebook page.
At the end of this blog I’ll tell you who to complain to about the coverage.
Letters and phone calls may finally prod Detroit news organizations to get this
story right, or at least not report falsehoods as facts.
One of the reasons the media coverage of Rick Wershe, Jr.
is important is because judges and parole board members are influenced to varying
degrees by what they see on TV and read in the papers. Anyone who argues
otherwise is a naive fool. Media coverage becomes the prevailing wisdom about
many things. If the media describe something in a certain way over and over for
years, it becomes accepted wisdom and accepted truth.
This post is about the need for various news
organizations to do a story correction as a group and offer an apology as a
group for helping ruin a man’s life. There is a need—now—for accurate and
balanced reporting on Richard Wershe, Jr. as opposed to meekly assuming the
prosecution is the only side telling the truth. Anyone who reviews the media
coverage for the past 28 years for the man they like to call White Boy Rick
will see a bias toward a corrosive and reputation-destroying description of
this man as a major figure in the Detroit drug underworld. It is a ceaseless
media portrayal that is not supported by facts.
Before we examine some specific examples of the media
coverage of Rick Wershe let’s review a few important facts.
Wershe did not become a dope dealer and then turn
informant as has been reported far too often. He was recruited—at age 14—by the FBI to help them investigate and
prosecute the Johnny Curry drug gang.
Wershe had no involvement with drugs until law
enforcement asked him to infiltrate that dangerous business so they could make
a case. This has been verified, on the record, by several retired FBI agents.
Any media story calling him a
dope-dealer-turned-informant is wrong and exactly backwards. Wershe turned to
drug dealing when the Detroit federal drug task force abandoned him after they
introduced him to the drug underworld in order to make a big case. After they
no longer needed his help, they kicked this teen to the curb to fend for
himself after teaching him how to live the life of a dope dealer.
Despite the endless media coverage calling him a “drug
lord” and drug “kingpin” Richard J. Wershe, Jr. was tried and convicted as an
individual. Specifically he was found guilty of “Possession with intent to deliver over 650 grams of cocaine.” Nothing
else.
Wershe sentencing document showing he was convicted of Possession with Intent to Deliver Cocaine and not conspiracy or racketeering. |
There is nothing in the court records at the state and
federal level—NOTHING—charging Wershe with conspiracy or racketeering, the
crimes essential to being a “drug lord” or “kingpin.” The prosecution did not
take down Rick Wershe and his “co-conspirators” because he had no co-conspirators.
It was just him, trying to make it in an illegal trade he was taught by law
enforcement personnel. They picked him for the job because he happened to know
some guys they wanted to bust.
As veteran criminal defense attorney Steve Fishman has
noted in interviews, Wershe’s name never came up in any way in the major drug
gang trials of that era. Fishman knows because he was defense counsel in many
of those trials. Current reporters struggling with what to make of Wershe
should interview Fishman.
When I filed a formal Freedom of Information Act request asking
the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office for any records or documentation
supporting the allegation that Wershe had a drug gang, the official response
was, “after a diligent search we certify the records do not exist.” They didn’t
say the records were purged or misplaced. They said the records do not exist.
Yet Detroit’s newspapers and TV stations have routinely
described Rick Wershe as a “drug lord” or “kingpin” for close to 30 years.
How could this happen? How could so many “journalists”
get it so wrong for so long?
Reporters in Detroit and elsewhere need to recognize and
come to terms with an unpleasant truth: they have been duped for nearly 30
years with a law enforcement Big Lie about the adolescent-now-man they persist
in calling White Boy Rick. His real name is Richard John Wershe, Jr. and the
media perpetuation of the White Boy Rick legend—a Big Lie—has cost him his
life.
The news media bear a lot of the responsibility for the
violation of Rick Wershe’s Eighth Amendment rights regarding cruel and unusual punishment. Reporters, editors
and TV news directors have consistently failed to fact-check, to find the hard-fact
basis for routinely describing this man in news coverage as a “drug lord” and
“kingpin.” It is journalistic irresponsibility at its worst.
For those who do not know, the Big Lie is a concept
developed by the German dictator Adolph Hitler. “If you tell a big enough lie
and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed,” Hitler said. As part of
his propaganda philosophy Hitler believed if you tell a lie of colossal
proportions and repeat it often, people will assume no one would have the
audacity to distort the truth to such a degree so it must be true.
The urban myth that White Boy Rick Wershe was a drug
dealer operating at the “kingpin” level in Detroit is a Big Lie repeated often,
without question, by several generations of reporters and editors based
on—nothing.
The decades-long failure of numerous reporters to verify
the truth or falsity of claims that Richard J. Wershe, Jr., who is white, was a
teenage “drug lord” on the mean streets of mostly-black Detroit when he was
between the ages of 16 and 18 is journalistic dereliction of duty of historic
proportions. The overblown claims about Rick Wershe’s importance in the Detroit
drug underworld don’t pass the smell test.
J schools (journalism schools at universities) could
offer courses on how shoddy fact-checking and the herd journalism habit of
re-writing each other’s stories in the coverage of Rick Wershe aided and
abetted what appears to be an audacious vendetta to keep this man in prison
until he dies because he helped the FBI investigate and prosecute drug-tainted
political corruption in Detroit.
The notion that certain police officers, prosecutors and
perhaps some members of the Michigan Parole Board conspired to destroy one man
as retribution for exposing high-level, politically-connected drug corruption
defies belief. So reporters have refused to investigate it, preferring instead
to destroy the man they relish calling White Boy Rick.
The usual sources said it’s true, so it must be true. There
has been a decades-long assumption
by reporters that the police and prosecutors are telling the truth about
Richard Wershe. Assuming the “good guys” are telling the truth is a dangerous state
of mind for ethical, professional reporters.
Any reporter worthy of the title need only look at the
Richard Jewell case to see the shameful coverage of Rick Wershe isn’t the first
instance of large-scale malfeasance by a journalistic herd in America that
swallowed whole a questionable story line put out by law enforcement.
Richard Jewell (Reuters) |
Richard Jewell was a security guard working at the 1996
Atlanta Summer Olympics. He came upon a backpack filled with three pipe bombs.
He alerted the police and helped evacuate the area. At first he was hailed as a
hero, but then reporters began reporting leaks from anonymous police sources
that Jewell was suspected of planting the pipe bombs himself. What followed was
a journalistic stampede to crucify Richard Jewell in the papers and on TV.
There was just one problem. It wasn’t true. None of the “reporting” about
Richard Jewell was supported by facts. Jewell’s reputation was thoroughly
trashed and his life was ruined by the media coverage. Jewell was dragged through
the journalistic mud from coast to coast.
In the end, Richard Jewell was completely exonerated. A
man named Eric Robert Rudolph was eventually charged and convicted of planting
the bombs at Atlanta’s Olympic Park. Rudolph was sentenced to four consecutive
life sentences as a domestic terrorist.
The ordeal of Richard J. Wershe, Jr. is as bad, perhaps
worse, than what happened to Richard Jewell. The trashing of Richard Jewell
lasted several months. The trashing of Richard Wershe Jr. has lasted nearly 30
years.
Wershe has been in prison 27 years on the presumption he
is a menace to society. When he was up for his one and only parole hearing in
2003, the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office argued strenuously against his
release. Their evidence he was a menace to society? A stack of press clippings
about him.
Wershe’s story is tainted by the fact he is not innocent.
He did try to become a major illegal
drug wholesaler. But he failed. He never came close to being a cocaine kingpin even
though he’s been described that way by some in the law enforcement community
in what appears to be retribution for telling on dirty cops.
With a few exceptions most of the Detroit news media have
ignored the evidence I have presented on Informant
America every week for over six months. I have used the Freedom of
Information Act, the archive documents of various lawyers and courts and on-the-record
interviews to prove the White Boy Rick legend doesn’t hold up to hard reporting
scrutiny. None of these blog posts are based on anonymous or confidential
sources.
Even if a reporter or editor chooses to dismiss me as an
over-the-hill malcontent, a curmudgeon, a crank, that doesn’t change the
facts—or lack of them—in the false claim that Rick Wershe was a teen drug
dealer operating on such a massive scale that he must be kept behind bars for
the rest of his life.
Richard Wershe has told anyone who will listen that his White
Boy Rick reputation is built on lies, or as he puts it, “bullshit.” “A lot of
them believed what they were told by law enforcement,” Wershe told me this past
Friday. “A lot of them were fed a lot of bullshit.”
Four retired FBI agents who worked with Wershe as an
informant—count ‘em; four—have said on the record that Richard Wershe Jr. has
been instrumental in helping fight drug trafficking and public corruption—even from
prison. And they challenge the notion that Rick Wershe was a kingpin.
All four of these agents, Gregg Schwarz, Herman Groman,
Martin Torgler and Michael Castro have said they are willing to testify in
court or before the Michigan Parole Board in Wershe’s behalf if asked to do so.
Schwarz, Groman and Torgler did just that at Wershe’s 2003 parole hearing.
Castro, who worked undercover in a major police drug corruption sting
operation, says he owes his life to Rick Wershe who vouched for him when he was
undercover playing the role of a Miami drug figure.
Readers of this blog must realize it’s a difficult thing
for reporters to admit they are wrong; that they have reported lies as facts.
Imagine how hard it is for the Detroit
Free Press, the Detroit News, the
Oakland Press and Channels 2, 4 and 7
to admit they have been reporting—for nearly 30 years—unverified information
that may be false.
Add the fact that the Rick Wershe story is very
complicated, with a cast of hundreds and a time frame measured in the decades
and most reporters would be inclined to shrug it off and just keep repeating
the same libel, figuring no one will notice or care.
One of the fundamentals of good reporting is fact
checking. If it had truly been done in the coverage of Richard Wershe, Jr. the
story would be considerably different. It is disheartening to look at some of the
Detroit media coverage of Rick Wershe over the years but we will do it, anyway.
Many stories have been published and countless stories have been aired in
Detroit about this one defendant/inmate. To follow are just a few examples out
of many.
Before we look at the coverage, here’s the first piece
of fiction about Wershe.
Rick Wershe, Jr. |
He was never known on the streets as White Boy Rick. The
drug underworld knew him simply as Ricky, a white kid who was running with a black
drug dealer named Johnny Curry who was convicted and sentenced to federal
prison. He’s now out.
Arthur “Art” Derrick, now deceased, was a self-admitted major
Detroit drug wholesaler with a small fleet of planes used to transport cocaine.
Before he died from drug abuse Derrick claimed under oath in a deposition that
he is the one who gave Rick Wershe the nickname White Boy Rick to avoid
confusion with another customer also named Rick, who was black. Derrick claims
he nicknamed the late Rick Carter “Maserati Rick” for the type of car he drove.
Maserati Rick, a black drug dealer, was murdered in his hospital bed while recovering from a previous
murder attempt. He was buried in a casket made to resemble a Mercedes Benz.
Arthur "Art" Derrick |
Narcs heard the White Boy Rick nickname from Derrick and
loved it. They shared it with WXYZ-TV crime beat reporter Chris Hansen who
introduced it to the public in the final installment of a high-profile, highly
viewed series of reports in July of 1987 about a police investigation of the
Chambers Brothers who arguably ran the biggest volume cocaine operation in
Detroit history. The final segment of the five-part series introduced viewers
to a young man Hansen called White Boy Rick.
To develop the series Hansen and a Channel 7 cameraman
were embedded with a team of Detroit Police and DEA narcs who liked to call
themselves the No Crack Crew. Some say Hansen was more than embedded with the
narc crew; they argue he was figuratively in bed with the narcs with no
daylight between the views of the No Crack Crew and what Hansen reported on TV.
In exchange for hot drug raid footage some say Hansen became an unquestioning
PR mouthpiece for a team of glory-hungry cops.
In Land of
Opportunity, a detailed book about the rise and fall of the Chambers
Brothers drug empire, author William Adler described Chris Hansen’s work in
scathing terms and accused Hansen of “…virtually trading his press card for a
deputy’s badge.”
Hansen’s competitors didn’t care. When they saw Hansen’s
report about a white teenager who was a drug lord among ruthless adult black
dope dealers, they went bonkers. Newspaper headline writers had a field day.
Detroit newspapers seldom missed an opportunity to attach the terms "kingpin" and "drug lord" to Rick Wershe's name. |
When Hansen jumped from Channel 7 to Channel 4 in Detroit
he continued to exploit the White Boy Rick legend he helped launch. Hansen
suggested to Rick Wershe that he do an interview with him about police drug
corruption. Detroit FBI agent John Anthony, now retired, urged Wershe not to do
it. Wershe didn’t listen. He did the interview and it spooked a lot of corrupt
cops and Detroit politicians into thinking Wershe knew more than had been
reported. All these years later Wershe realizes that interview may have
contributed to the start of a vendetta against him. Today Wershe says he never
knew as much about the spider’s web of drug dealing, police corruption and city
politics as many people think he knows.
Theoretically in the American system of justice a person
is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Reporters give a slight bow to this
concept by using the words “alleged” and “reputed” when accusing someone of a
crime in their coverage. Not so with Richard J. Wershe, Jr. Those qualifiers
often fell by the wayside. In other cases, the reporters only got it
half-right. In the examples to follow the bold text has been added to make
various points.
Consider a story from the Detroit Free Press on May 11,
1988.
Detroit Free Press headline |
The headline reads, ‘Wershe
asks deal in cop-drug probe’ The front page story begins this way: “Convicted drug kingpin Richard Wershe Jr.
offered Detroit police investigators a deal Tuesday: information on corrupt
cops in return for dismissal of a cocaine charge pending against him.” The
story was written by Brian Flanigan, Joe Swickard and Jack Kresnak. All three were
top-notch reporters, some of the best in Free
Press history. Yet their lead sentence calls Wershe a convicted drug kingpin.
No, he was not. He was not convicted of conspiracy or racketeering. He was convicted of
personal possession of illegal drugs in excess of 650 grams. To be a kingpin the
prosecution would have shown the jury Wershe had a gang, an illicit drug
organization with co-conspirators. He
was neither charged nor convicted of anything of the sort, yet here in a Page
One story in the Detroit Free Press three
veteran reporters matter-of-factly describe him as a drug “kingpin.” There was
no evidence then and there’s no evidence now that Wershe was a “kingpin.”
Consider this Page One piece from the Detroit News a day later; May 12, 1988.
The headline reads: ‘Police
records on Wershe found in raid, sources say.’ The lead of the story begins, "The
Detroit Police Department is investigating how police documents and home
telephone numbers of ranking officers ended up in a house raided last June in
which convicted east side drug lord
Richard "White Boy Rick" Wershe Jr. was present, federal sources
said."
The article was written by Rob Zeiger and Mike
Martindale. I’ve known Mike Martindale for years. We met often at crime scenes.
He’s a good reporter. Yet, here is Martindale’s byline on a story calling
Wershe a “convicted east side drug lord.”
This line in the story about Wershe being a convicted east side drug lord is totally inaccurate. We don’t know who the Detroit News editor was on that story but he or she is guilty of dereliction of journalistic duty. Editors are supposed to ensure the reporting is accurate. This editor did not; nor did many other editors at the Free Press and other papers with countless stories over the years routinely describing Wershe as a “drug lord” and/or “kingpin.”
This line in the story about Wershe being a convicted east side drug lord is totally inaccurate. We don’t know who the Detroit News editor was on that story but he or she is guilty of dereliction of journalistic duty. Editors are supposed to ensure the reporting is accurate. This editor did not; nor did many other editors at the Free Press and other papers with countless stories over the years routinely describing Wershe as a “drug lord” and/or “kingpin.”
Let’s go back and look at these stories from a different
perspective. Each is about what Rick Wershe may or may not know about police
drug corruption. That’s a potential story lead about public corruption if ever
there was one. I can’t show you the enterprise reporting that sprang from these
two stories because as far as I can determine, it does not exist.
Richard Wershe Senior AND Junior tried to tell reporters
they both had been paid informants of the FBI. The Free Press and Detroit News
reported what the Wershes said but apparently didn’t believe it after the
Detroit FBI made the usual “no comment.” The FBI by policy does not talk about
its informants but that didn’t mean they were denying what the Wershes said.
They merely refused to comment. It’s not the same thing. Subsequently, retired
FBI agents have verified on the record that it was true.
Let’s connect some dots in the
coverage from 1988 to now.
- The Detroit Police knew Rick Wershe was a paid FBI informant because two Detroit police officers worked closely with Wershe. They were assigned to a federal drug task force that was using the teen as an informant.
- When Rick Wershe, Jr. started making headlines there are indications based on items found in a police raid that he knew some things about police drug corruption in Detroit.
- It was the Detroit Police who arrested and charged Wershe with the help of the Wayne County Prosecutor.
- The Detroit Police and Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office were the ones who leaked the “news” that White Boy Rick was a cocaine kingpin even though he was never charged with operating a cocaine conspiracy. No one was ever prosecuted at the state or federal level as a member of a White Boy Rick drug ring.
- From 1987 to this day, Detroit news media outlets have persisted in describing Rick Wershe as a “drug lord” and “kingpin” without any court records or verifiable evidence showing it is true.
Rick Wershe’s one and only parole board hearing was
under-reported by the media. It was all on the record and transcribed by a
stenographer. The record is teeming with issues begging to be explored, with
provocative questions as yet unanswered.
Three FBI agents testified for Wershe’s parole. Two DEA
agents testified against it. One DEA agent’s “evidence” against Wershe was
weak, to put it mildly. None of the Detroit Police narcs who arrested Rick Wershe
testified. Detroit Police executives who admitted no personal knowledge of the
man up for parole testified in generalities that crime is bad. The Wayne County
Prosecutor’s documentation in support of keeping Wershe in prison consisted of
newspaper clippings and numerous suburban police reports of domestic disputes
between Richard Wershe, Sr. and Rick Wershe’s sister, Dawn. The prosecutor’s
office did not offer any evidence or documentation to support the notion that
Rick Wershe is a danger to the community.
The late William E. Bufalino II testified under oath at
Wershe’s parole hearing that Detroit Mayor Coleman Young, now deceased, warned
him not to get involved in the Rick Wershe case because “this is bigger than
you think it is.”
This provocative comment apparently did not stir any
interest, any curiosity in Detroit’s reporters. Since both men are deceased we
will never know.
According to the hearing sign-in sheet, one of those in
attendance was WDIV-TV, Channel 4 reporter Kevin Dietz who filled Chris Hansen’s
role at the station when Hansen moved on to NBC Dateline.
Channel 4 is Detroit’s NBC affiliate. Last winter,
beginning with the night of the Super Bowl on NBC, Dietz renewed his coverage
of the Rick Wershe Jr. story. His reporting on Wershe came on the heels of
reports in the Hollywood trade press of interest in doing a movie about White
Boy Rick. It’s not clear why it took Dietz 12 years to resume his coverage of
the plight of Michigan prison inmate 192034—Richard J. Wershe, Jr.
Perhaps
Hollywood’s interest reminded him Wershe was still in prison. But at least
Dietz started stirring the pot about the inmate languishing behind bars,
serving a life sentence. That’s more than his competitors have done until the current
re-sentencing issue bubbled to the surface.
WJBK-TV Channel 2, the Fox affiliate in Detroit, jumped
on the story with inaccurate reporting, as so many others have done. Their Web
site story about Wershe’s possible re-sentencing featured this headline: "Drug
dealer turned informer 'White Boy Rick' up for resentencing"
WJBK-TV Web site news headline |
This is wrong. It is exactly backwards. Wershe was an
informer first and became a drug
dealer later. There is a significant
difference. The inversion of facts changes the story entirely.
Charlie Langton, a so-called legal analyst on Fox 2,
seems to delight in calling Wershe a drug lord and kingpin. He uses the terms
as often as possible when questioning guests who may know something about the
case. His knowledge of the case is clearly negligible.
I tried to contact Kevin Roseborough, the Fox 2 news
director and a former colleague about all of this. He didn’t return my phone
call. I reached out to anchor Huel Perkins through a business social media
site. He didn’t respond. Unlike the newspapers most of the TV stations make it difficult to reach any of
the staff by email.
WXYZ-TV Channel 7, the ABC affiliate in Detroit, has
escaped criticism by essentially not reporting or barely mentioning the latest
developments in a story they broke in 1987. The station has purged most of the
staff that was around when White Boy Rick was front page news.
The current court-beat reporters for the Detroit Free
Press and Detroit News seem to be trying to do a better job with the story, but
they are struggling to get it right.
Free Press reporter Elisha Anderson began one recent
story about Rick Wershe as follows:
"Richard
Wershe Jr., a convicted drug dealer and former police informant known as White
Boy Rick, is scheduled to appear in a Detroit courtroom Friday
morning."
Calling him a drug dealer first and informant second
makes it
sound like Wershe became an informant to save his own skin. Not true.
As noted on Informant America many times, Wershe was recruited by law
enforcement to get involved in the drug trade at age 14 because of neighbors he
knew who were targets of investigation. That is a huge contrast to suggesting
that a kid became a dope dealer and then became an informant.
Down the street at the Detroit News, Oralander
Brand-Williams has treaded with more caution about calling Wershe a drug lord
and kingpin but as recently as this past week she got it wrong when she
reported, “Authorities allege he joined
the drug trade at age 14.”
There’s no “allege” about it. FBI agents who worked with
Rick Wershe as an informant have stated on the record to me and reporters for
several national news outlets that the Bureau did, in fact, recruit and
introduce 14-year old Rick Wershe to the drug underworld in order to help them
catch the Curry Brothers, some big-time dealers who were Rick’s neighbors at
the time. There’s little doubt they will confirm it for the Detroit News if they are contacted. It’s
also bitterly ironic for the Detroit News to use the term “allege” after years
of routinely describing Richard Wershe, Jr., without qualification, as a “kingpin”
and “drug lord.”
One Detroit journalist, a former reporter for the Detroit
News and Washington Post, has been getting it right on a news Web site called
Deadline Detroit.
Allan Lengel has been writing stories for several years
about the plight of White Boy Rick Wershe. Lengel, alone among the rest of
Detroit’s reporters, has a solid grasp of what’s happening in this case.
"White
Boy Rick: Time to Set Him Free?" was the headline on a story
Lengel wrote in 2012.
"The
Michigan Parole Board's Crime Against 'White Boy Rick'" was
the headline on another story Lengel wrote in September of 2013, two years
before the current court battle over re-sentencing Wershe. To keep Wershe
locked up is “gravely
unjust for someone convicted as a teen,”
Lengel wrote. This is essentially what Wayne County Circuit Court judge Dana M.
Hathaway is now arguing two years later in her effort to re-sentence Wershe to
time served.
Recent headline on Deadline Detroit |
Earlier this
month a Lengel story on Deadline Detroit on Wershe was headlined: "Prosecutor Kym Worthy Needs To Stop
Grandstanding in 'White Boy Rick' Case"
Another
reporter/blogger in a category by himself is Scott Burnstein who writes for the
Oakland Press and has a blog called Gangster Report. Burnstein has been
writing about Wershe for a long time and he regards himself as in Wershe’s
corner. His reporting in the Oakland Press has been more balanced than most, but
on his blog he can’t resist linking Wershe to the gangster underworld since
that is what his blog is about.
Here’s a
paragraph he wrote earlier this year on his blog:
“The name White Boy Rick dominated
the news media cycle in Detroit for much of 1986, 1987 and into 1988, as the
fearless and magnetic teenage drug lord transfixed the area with his ascent in
the murderous Motor City underworld and the high-profile romance he was
carrying on with the Mayor’s niece, a woman almost 10 years older than him and
the wife of his gangland mentor, kingpin Johnny Curry.”
The part about
Mayor Coleman Young’s niece is true but notice he couldn’t resist calling
Wershe a “teenage drug lord” and described his “ascent in the murderous Motor
City underworld.” This unfairly implies Wershe was somehow involved in
drug-related murders. He was not. William Rice, the former head of Detroit
Homicide who is himself now serving a prison term (more police corruption)
signed a sworn affidavit stating he never heard of Rick Wershe in his 20 years
investigating Detroit murders. Moreover, Wershe was never charged with any
drug-related violence.
There may be
too much pride and ego on the line to expect the Detroit news media to admit
they’ve been wrong about Richard Wershe, Jr. for nearly 30 years. But from this
point forward there’s no excuse for the sloppy journalism to continue. There’s
no reason to keep unjustly libeling a man as a "drug lord" and "kingpin" villain.
If you see any
coverage where Rick Wershe is called a “drug lord” or “kingpin” or “drug dealer
turned informant” you are encouraged to reach out and raise hell about it.
Here’s who is
in charge at the major news outlets:
Robert
Huschka
Executive
Editor
Detroit
Free Press
160
W. Fort St. Detroit, MI 48226
313-222-6400
Jonathan
Wolman
Editor
and Publisher
Detroit
News
160
W. Fort Street
Detroit,
MI 48226
(313)
222-2110
Don
Wyatt
Vice
President of News
Oakland
Press
48
W Huron St, Pontiac, MI 48342
248-285-9652
Kevin
Roseborough
News
Director
WJBK-TV
Channel 2 Detroit
16550
W Nine Mile Rd, Southfield, MI 48075
(248)
557-2000
Kim
Voet
News
Director
WDIV-TV
Channel 4 Detroit
550
W Lafayette Blvd, Detroit, MI 48226
(313)
222-0500
Dave
Manney
News
Director
WXYZ-TV
Channel 7 Detroit
20777
W 10 Mile Rd, Southfield, MI 48075
(248)
827-7777
William Newell as Jimmy in High Noon (Universal Pictures) |
The sorry state
of reporting on Richard J. Wershe, Jr. spanning decades calls to mind a scene
from the classic Western High Noon.
The plot of the movie is that town marshal Will Kane, played by Gary Cooper, finds he must face a gang of killers alone because the townspeople are too cowardly to help him. The marshal tries desperately to organize a posse. As he strides the streets looking for citizen help he is confronted by Jimmy, a washed-up town drunk played by William Newell. Jimmy tells Kane he wants to help him face the outlaws who have vowed to kill Kane. It's Jimmy's shot at redemption. The exchange in the movie went like this:
The plot of the movie is that town marshal Will Kane, played by Gary Cooper, finds he must face a gang of killers alone because the townspeople are too cowardly to help him. The marshal tries desperately to organize a posse. As he strides the streets looking for citizen help he is confronted by Jimmy, a washed-up town drunk played by William Newell. Jimmy tells Kane he wants to help him face the outlaws who have vowed to kill Kane. It's Jimmy's shot at redemption. The exchange in the movie went like this:
"Jimmy:
Kane.
Kane:
What’s the matter Jimmy?
Jimmy:
Nothin’. I been lookin’ for ya. I want a gun. I wanna be with you when the
train comes in.
Kane: Can
you handle a gun?
Jimmy:
Sure I can. I used to be good. Honest."
The Detroit
news media used to be good. Honest.
.
.
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