Murray S. Waas (born 20 December 1961)^[1] is an American freelance investigative journalist known most recently for his coverage of the White House planning for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and ensuing controversies and American political scandals such as the Plame affair (also known as the "CIA leak grand jury investigation", the "CIA leak scandal", and "Plamegate"). His articles about such matters have appeared in National Journal, where he has worked as a staff correspondent and contributing editor, The Atlantic, and, earlier the American Prospect.^[2] Waas also comments on contemporary American political controversies in his personal blogs Whatever Already! and at The Huffington Post. An "instant book", the United States v. I. Lewis Libby which he edited, with research assistance by Jeff Lomonaco, was published by Union Square Press (an imprint of Sterling Publishing) in June 2007.^[3][4]

Personal history[link]

Waas was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and originally hoped to have a career in law and city politics ("To be the district attorney and mayor of the City of Philadelphia"), but he dropped out of George Washington University before graduating.^[5]

In 1987, when Waas was only twenty-six years old, he learned that he had a life-threatening "advanced form" of cancer. On June 26, 2006, Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz disclosed that Waas had been told that he had an "incurable Stage C" cancer and faced a "terminal diagnosis."^[6][7][8]

Subsequently, Waas successfully sued the George Washington University Medical Center, which had negligently "failed to diagnose his cancer, winning a $650,000 judgment ... in a 1992 verdict ... upheld by the D.C. Court of Appeals."^[6] Although, according to a pathologist hired by Waas to testify in the case, "90% of [such] patients die within two years," Waas survived and was later declared "cancer-free."^[6][7] His recovery and survival were later described as a "miracle" by the medical team treating him."^[6][7]

Although he initially shied away from writing about health care because of his history as a cancer survivor, in 2009 and 2010, Waas weighed in with a series of articles for Reuters, detailing how many of the nation's largest heatlh insurance companies, improperly, and even illegally, canceled the policies of tens of thousands of customers shortly after they were diagnosed with HIV, cancer, and other life threatening but costly diseases."^[9] One story disclosed that the health insurer, WellPoint, using a computer algorithm, identified women recently diagnosed with breast cancer and then singled them out for cancelation of their policies."^[10] The story not only caused considerable public outrage, but led Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, and President Barack Obama, to call on WellPoint to end the practice.^[11][12][13]

Pressured by the Obama administration, WellPoint and the nation's other largest health insurers agreed to immediately end the practice.^[14] Waas was credited with saving the lives of countless other cancer patients like himself, and making sure that thousands of other people did not have their insurance unfairly canceled.^[14][15][16] He won the Barlett & Steele Award for Business Investigative Reporting from the Walter Cronkite School of Arizona State University as well as other honors for the stories.^[16][17]

Professional career[link]

While still attending college, Waas began working for American newspaper columnist Jack Anderson.^[5] His journalistic work has since been published in such publications as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, Harper's, The Nation, and The Village Voice.^[18][19]

In his twenties he was a staff writer and investigative correspondent for the Village Voice.

According to his appreciation of Anderson that Waas published in the Village Voice, after the columnist's death at the age of 83:

The series of columns we [Anderson and Waas] produced regarding the role of U.S. companies doing business with Idi Amin were instrumental in leading to the imposition of U.S. economic sanctions against the Amin regime, according to the congressman who originally sponsored legislation seeking the sanctions, and other key congressional staffers who worked on the issue. Some historians in turn say the sanctions may have played an instrumental role in Amin’s subsequent overthrow.^[20]

Ralph Nurnberger, a former staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and professor at Georgetown University, later concluded in a study for the African Studies Review that the economic sanctions imposed against Amin by the U.S. led to Amin's downfall.Nurnberger wrote that the congressional initiative to impose the sanctions had garnered little attention or support until "Jack Anderson assigned one of his reporters, Murray Waas to follow the issue" and write regularly about it. At the time, Anderson's columns were published in more than 1,000 newspapers, which in turn had 40 million readers. Waas was eighteen and nineteen years old at the time he wrote the columns.^[20][21]

Prior to his overthrow from power, Amin had been alleged to have engaged in genocide and killed between 150,000 and 300,000 of his own citizens. The late Sen. Frank Church (D-Id.), a chairman of the Senate Foreign Committee, later said the congressionally imposed boycott "contributed to the fall of Idi Amin." Sen. Mark Hatfield (R-Or.), said that the sanctions caused the conditions that "would come to break Amin's seemingly invincible survivability."^[22]

During the Reagan administration, Waas was among a small group of reporters involved in breaking the story of the Iran-Contra affair.^[2] Later, he also reported on Whitewater and the Clinton impeachment for Salon.com.^[2]

Waas won an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship^[23] in 1992 to research and write about the rights of the institutionalized and incarcerated in the U.S. For his fellowship, he investigated substandard conditions and questionable deaths at institutions for the mentally retarded, mental hospitals, nursing homes, juvenile detention centers, and jails and prisons.^[8]

As part of his work for the Alicia Patterson Foundation, Waas published a 7,912 word article in the Los Angeles Times on April 3, 1994 detailing how mentally retarded children institutionalized by the District of Columbia government had died because of abuse and neglect.^[24] The story led to renewed scrutiny by the U.S. Department of Justice of the city's treatment of its mentally retarded wards and spurred on the settlement of a civil suit brought against the city government by the parents of children who had died due to abuse or neglect.^[24][25]

Following the presidency of George Herbert Walker Bush, in 1993, while a reporter for the The Los Angeles Times, Waas, along with his Los Angeles Times colleague Douglas Frantz, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in the category of national reporting for his stories detailing that administration's prewar foreign policy towards the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein.^[26] That same year, Waas was also a recipient of the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, awarded by the Joan Shorenstein Barone Center on The Press, of the John F. Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University, for "a series that detailed United States policy toward Iraq before the Persian Gulf war.^[27][28]

More recently, he has worked as a national correspondent and contributing editor of National Journal.^[2]

Summarizing the stories that Waas wrote for National Journal during 2005 and 2006 about the second Bush administration's policies that led up to war with Iraq, Washington Post online White House columnist Dan Froomkin, wrote on March 31, 2006:

Slowly but surely, investigative reporter Murray Waas has been putting together a compelling narrative about how President Bush and his top aides contrived their bogus case for war in Iraq; how they succeeded in keeping charges of deception from becoming a major issue in the 2004 election; and how they continue to keep most of the press off the trail to this day.

What emerges in Waas's stories is a consistent White House modus operandi: That time and time again, Bush and his aides have selectively leaked or declassified secret intelligence findings that served their political agenda -- while aggressively asserting the need to keep secret the information that would tend to discredit them.^[29]

While writing about the second Bush administration's policies that led up to war with Iraq, Waas simultaneously reported about the investigation of CIA leak prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald's investigation as to who leaked covert CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity to the press—illustrating in his reporting how the two stories were inexorably linked in that the effort to damage Plame was part of a broader Bush White House effort to discredit those who were alleging that it had misrepresented intelligence information to make the case to go to war.^{[5][30] [31][32]}

Plame's identity as a covert CIA agent was leaked to the media by senior Bush White House officials to discredit and retaliate against her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who had alleged the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence information to make the case to go to war with Saddam Hussein. I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was later convicted on federal charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in an attempt to conceal his own role and that of others in the Bush White House in outing Plame, although President Bush would later commute Libby's thirty-month prison sentence. Waas not only wrote the first story disclosing that Libby had leaked Plame's identity to New York Times reporter Judith Miller, but the same story also paved the way for Miller, then in jail for more than a hundred days, to be released and testify against Libby.^[33][34]

On Aug. 6, 2005, Waas disclosed for the first time that it was Libby who had leaked Plame's name to Miller, writing: "I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, has told federal investigators that he met with New York Times reporter Judith Miller on July 8, 2003, and discussed CIA operative Valerie Plame, according to legal sources familiar with Libby's account.^[33][34][35]

That same story also disclosed that Libby was encouraging Miller to stay in jail and not reveal that Libby was her source. A short time later, citing the Waas story, prosecutor Fitzgerald wrote Libby's attorney, alleging that "Libby had simply decided that encouraging Ms. Miller to testify was not in his best interest" and that Libby discouraging Miller to testify might be an illegal effort to obstruct his investigation.^[35] Libby then wrote and called Miller saying that it was alright for her to testify. After spending more than a hundred days in jail, Miller was released, and provided testimony and evidence to prosecutors against Libby, that led to Libby's indictment, and subsequent conviction, on charges of obstruction of justice and perjury. Washington Post media columnist Howard Kurtz wrote on April 17, 2006 that Waas' account "set in motion the waiver springing Miller from jail on contempt charges."^[34]

Several of Waas's later published accounts of that aspect of the Plame affair inform his Union Square Press book on the Libby trial published in June 2007, which he discusses in some detail in his interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!.^[3][36]

In a May 15, 2006 interview with Elizabeth Halloran, of U.S. News and World Report, when she asked whether he was "working on stories other than those involving the Fitzgerald investigation," Waas indicated that he has "been working on a long, explanatory piece about healthcare issues, the cervical cancer vaccine." Among the questions that he raised with Halloran are: "Why isn't that vaccine going to get to the people it should get to? Is it going to be locked away?"^[5]

Asked during the same interview by Halloran why Waas had chosen not only not to appear on cable television shows, but had also been known to decline to go on such shows as Nightline and Meet the Press, he responded: "There's not much of it that really enlightens us. There are journalists who don't do journalism anymore. They go on television; they're blogging; they're giving speeches; they're going to parties. And then at the end of the week they've had four or five hours devoted to journalism."^[5]

Waas also told Halloran:

An acquaintance of mine, [Doonesbury cartoonist] Garry Trudeau, went a long time without going on TV, and we talked about having a 12-step program for people who appear on television too much. It would be a boom business in Washington. But Garry has lapses – he's been on Nightline, Charlie Rose. I also believe he did a morning show one time. But I've been steadfast. I have not been broken. I thought it was me and Garry against the world, the two amigos. He's left me hanging out there.^[5]

Waas similarly told Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz, who had nicknamed Waas, "The Lone Ranger": "If my journalism has had impact, it has been because I have spent more time in county courthouses than greenrooms,"^[34] Claude Lewis, a member of the Editorial Board of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote in a profile of the journalist that his low key approach had proved to be effective: "His quiet and sometimes unorthodox manner is disarming. He often lulls his subjects into thinking he isn't very sharp. But he is an intelligent and intense digger, who checks and double-checks his facts." ^[37]

Book publication[link]

The United States v. I. Lewis Libby, edited and with reporting by Waas, was published by Sterling Publishing's Union Square Press imprint on June 5, 2007.^[38][39][40]

The bulk of the book was an edited version of the trial transcript of the federal criminal trial of I. Lewis Libby, carefully culled from its original size of nearly a million words. The book also included an original essay written by Waas, entitled "The Last Compartment", which contained new information and reporting.^[38][40]

The book's editor and publisher told USA Today that the book was an attempt to be "like the published reports from the 9/11 Commission and the Iraq Study Group" in both thoroughness and accuracy, providing additional context to the original documentary record, and adding new reporting and information.^[38]

Reviewing the book in the Columbia Journalism Review, James Boylan, a contributing editor of the magazine, wrote for its November/December 2007 issue:

Murray Waas, a disciple of Jack Anderson, the ultimate outsider, has assembled a plump volume of the trial and grand-jury records in the case of I. Lewis Libby... convicted in March of obstruction of justice and lying in the case involving disclosure of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. The transcripts make clear that Waas may have had less interest in Libby’s missteps than in the foibles of a cohort of Washington’s current insider journalists, among whom Tim Russert, Bob Woodward, Judith Miller (jailed for a time for refusing to testify), and Robert Novak... were the most celebrated. Their accounts of dealing with Libby and other members of the administration constitute an encyclopedia of insiderdom—the anonymous-source-concealment dance, the sometimes transparent charade of selective source protection, the willingness to be spun in exchange for access to power.^[40]

Notable assessments of Waas's journalism[link]

On October 27, 1992, the late David Shaw, then a staff writer for The Los Angeles Times who won a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism the previous year, assessed the reporting by his colleagues Murray Waas and Douglas Frantz on the first Bush administration's prewar policy towards Iraq leading up to the first Gulf War, which included "more than 100 stories, totaling more than 90,000 words": "The Times's stories—many based on previously secret papers prepared by the Bush administration—alleged that the Bush administration tried to cover up what it had done by altering documents it supplied to Congress and by attempting to obstruct official investigations of aid to Iraq," quoting the observation of Leonard Downie, executive editor of The Washington Post, that his own newspaper was "slow in getting up to speed on that story, in part because it's the kind of story involving careful work with documents... Once you're behind, it takes a while to catch up." Downie credits the Los Angeles Times with "pav[ing] the way," saying that that is "why we began pursuing it after really not noticing it from the outset."^[41]

In June 1998, J.D. Lasica published "The Web: A New Channel for Investigative Journalism", a "sidebar" to his article entitled "Salon: The Best Pure-Play Web Publication?", published in American Journalism Review, assessing reporting on the Impeachment of Bill Clinton in Salon.com by Waas and his colleagues, observing that "Salon's coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky matter—its first sustained foray into classic investigative journalism—has served as a counterweight to the mainstream media's wolfpack mindset" and citing the view of Andrew Ross (then-managing editor of Salon); according to Lasica, "Salon's investigative journalism ... has raised old media's hackles because, Ross says, it was done the old-fashioned way: shoe leather, cultivating sources, working the phones—no new-media tricks here." Indeed, Lasica continues the 1998 account, by pointing out that Waas, who has written a dozen stories for Salon, is [at that time] a bit of a technophobe; he never signs onto the Web and has never seen his stories online. He writes for Salon, he says, because 'I like the daily rhythm and the immediacy.'"^[42] Waas was the winner in 1998 of the Society of Professional Journalists Award for Depth Reporting for his coverage of Whitewater and the impeachment crisis.^[43]

Waas's reporting on the administration of George W. Bush, especially with regard to the Plame affair, has been called "groundbreaking" by New York University journalism Professor Jay Rosen, who considers Waas the "new Bob Woodward": "By Woodward Now," Rosen writes of Waas, "I mean the reporter who is actually doing what Woodward has a reputation for doing: finding, tracking, breaking into reportable parts—and then publishing—the biggest story in town. The Biggest Story in Town (almost a term of art in political Washington) is the one that would cause the biggest earthquake if the facts sealed inside it started coming out now. Today the biggest story in town is what really went down as the Bush team drove deceptively to war, and later tried to conceal how bad the deception—and decision-making—had been."^[44][45]

In the Summer of 2006, writing in Nieman Reports, Jim Boyd, former deputy editorial page editor of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune for twenty-four years, prepared an "exclusive list" of newspaper reporters whom he considered "courageous," including among them Murray Waas: "People I consider courageous are Murray Waas at the National Journal; Dan Froomkin at washingtonpost.com and niemanwatchdog.org; Warren Strobel and several of his colleagues at the Knight Ridder Washington bureau (soon to be the McClatchy Washington bureau); Walter Pincus and Dana Priest of the [Washington] Post. And, of course, Helen Thomas."^[46]

In July 2007, GQ Magazine named Waas as one of four of "The Best Reporters You Don't Know About," writing about him: "Years of groundbreaking watchdog journalism have resulted in this nickname: the new Bob Woodward. His pieces on the Plame leaks and U.S. attorney firings inadvertently provided candidates with more ammunition against the current administration than any campaign strategist could hope for."^[46]

Investigation of the Health Insurance Industry[link]

On the eve of the historic health reform vote in Congress, on March, 17, 2010, Reuters published a story by Waas, detailing how one of the nation's largest insurance companies, Assurant, had a "company policy of targeting policyholders with HIV" for cancelation of their policies once they were diagnosed. The story asserted: "A computer program and algorithm targeted every policyholder recently diagnosed with HIV for an automatic fraud investigation, as the company searched for any pretext to revoke their policy... [T]heir insurance policies often were canceled on erroneous information, the flimsiest of evidence, or for no good reason at all."^[9]

The Obama administration and members of Congress cited the report as a reason health care reform was needed. In a column appearing only a few nights before the vote, following up on his own blog post on the same subject from two days, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote thst the actions of Assurant were representative of the "vileness of our current system" and illustrated why reform was necessary."^[47][48]

After passage of the health reform bill, Reuters followed up, with another story by Waas on April 23, 2010 disclosing that WellPoint, the nation's largest health insurance company, had similarly targeted policyholders with breast cancer, shortly after their diagnoses."^[10] The Reuters story asserted that WellPoint utilized "a computer algorithm that automatically targeted... every other policyholder recently diagnosed with breast cancer. The software triggered an immediate fraud investigation, as the company searched for some pretext to drop their policies."^[10]

An earlier investigation by the House Energy and Commerce Committee had determined that WellPoint, Assurant, and a third company, UnitedHealth Group Inc., had made at least $300 million by improperly rescinding more than 19,000 policyholders over one five-year period.."^[10]

The Waas story garnered immediate attention. Published not only on Reuters' website, one of the nation's most highly trafficked news sites, it also appeared on seven of the ten most highly read news sites-- those of the New York Times, the Washington Post, Yahoo News, ABC News, MSNBC, and the Huffington Post.^[14][15][49]

On April 23, 2010, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius wrote Wellpoint's CEO, Angela Braly, to say that Wellpoint's actions were "deplorable" and "unconscionable," and called on the company to "immediately cease these practices."^[12]

President Obama, whose late mother had problems with her own insurance carrier before she passed away from breast cancer, followed up on May 8, 2010, by severely criticizing WellPoint for the practice in his weekly radio address.^[13][15][50]

As a result of the intense pressure from the Obama administration, WellPoint agreed to voluntarily end such practices.^[14] The nation's other largest health insurance companies only days later followed suit.^[14]

Praising the reform, the New York Times editorial page said in a May 2, 2010 editorial:

Americans are already starting to see the benefits of health care reform... In recent days insurers and their trade association have rushed to announce that they will end rescissions immediately...

The insurers decided to act quickly after they were whacked by some very bad publicity. An investigative report by Reuters said that one of the nation’s biggest insurers, WellPoint, was targeting women with breast cancer for fraud investigations that could lead to rescissions.^[51]

Waas later won the Bartlett & Steele Award for Business Investigative Reporting from the Walter Cronkite School at Arizona State University for his stories on WellPoint and other health insurance companies. He also won a second award by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW) in the category of investigative reporting for reporting the same stories.^[16][17]

See also[link]

• Iran-Contra affair
• Kenneth Starr
• Watchdog journalism

Notes[link]

Bibliography[link]

Pertinent selected articles and books by Murray Waas

• "Administration: The CIA Leak Investigation". Articles by Murray Waas in National Journal (2005–2007). Accessed June 21, 2007.
• "Articles by Murray Waas" in The American Prospect (2001–2005). Accessed June 21, 2007.
• "Murray S. Waas" Archived articles in Salon. Accessed June 21, 2007.
• Waas, Murray, ed., with Jeff Lomonaco. The United States v. I. Lewis Libby. New York: Union Square Press (imprint of Sterling Publishing), 2007. ISBN 1-4027-5259-8 (10). ISBN 978-1-4027-5259-9 (13). ("Edited & with reporting by Murray Waas" and with research assistance by Jeff Lomonaco.)

Pertinent selected articles about and interviews of Waas

• Baker, Russ W. "Iraqgate: The Big One That (Almost) Got Away: Who Chased It and Who Didn't". Columbia Journalism Review, March/April 1993. Accessed August 19, 2007.
• Gootman, Elissa L. "Goldsmith Prizes Awarded: Top Investigative Reporting Teams Rewarded by $25,000". The Harvard Crimson, March 26, 1993. Accessed August 21, 2007.
• Halloran, Liz. "A Muckraker's Day in the Sun". U.S. News and World Report, May 15, 2006. Accessed April 29, 2007.
• Kurtz, Howard. "The Lone Ranger: After a Quarter Century in the Journalistic Shadows, Murray Waas Is Getting His Day in the Sun." The Washington Post, April 17, 2006. Accessed June 20, 2007.
• Lasica, J. D. "The Web: A New Channel for Investigative Journalism: Salon's Groundbreaking Stories on the Ken Starr Investigation Challenge the Conventional Wisdom Laid Down by the Mainstream Media's Wolfpack Mindset". American Journalism Review, June 1998. Accessed August 19, 2007.
• Lewis, Anthony. "Abroad at Home; Trust". New York Times, October 26, 1992. Accessed March 26, 2008.
• –––. "Abroad at Home; Who Fed This Caesar?" New York Times, March 15, 1992. Accessed March 26, 2008.
• Rosen, Jay. "Murray Waas Is Our Woodward Now". PressThink (blog), April 9, 2006. Accessed June 20, 2007.
• Sargent, Greg. "The Plame Game: What Murray Waas' Big Scoop May Really Tell us About Bush's Pre-war Deceptions". The American Prospect, April 4, 2006. Accessed August 20, 2007.
• Schanberg, Sydney H. "Press Clips: If Old Journalism Dies... Where Will New Media Get the News?" The Village Voice, November 29, 2005. Accessed August 20, 2007.
• Welch, Matt. "Salon's Coverage Commands Respect for Net Journalists". Online Journalism Review (Annenberg School for Communication at USC), March 30, 1998. Accessed August 26, 2007.

External links[link]

• Murray S. Waas Website – Personal website (incomplete; under construction).
• Murray Waas – Personal website (with articles by Waas).

David Shuster
Born	(1967-07-22) July 22, 1967 (age 44) Bloomington, Indiana
Nationality	American
Religion	Jewish[1]
Spouse	Julianna Goldman (separated)
Awards	Disabled American Veterans, Bugle Award (2006) Emmy (1996)

David Martin Shuster (born July 22, 1967) is an American television journalist who has been an anchor for MSNBC and who has also worked for Fox News and CNN. He anchored MSNBC Live weekdays from 10-11am and 3-4pm ET and filled in for Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz and Rachel Maddow on their respective shows. Shuster was MSNBC's lead "breaking news anchor," and anchored prime time coverage of several stories including the death of Michael Jackson, congressional votes for health care reform, and the earthquake in Haiti. Shuster's high profile career has included some controversies; the most recent, an indefinite suspension on April 6, 2010, came from MSNBC after he auditioned for a new political show on CNN. He did not appear on MSNBC again, as his contract expired while serving his suspension. On June 6, 2011, it was confirmed that Shuster was hired by Keith Olbermann and Current TV to serve as "primary substitute anchor" for the network's re-launch of Countdown with Keith Olbermann.

Personal life[link]

Shuster was born in Bloomington, Indiana. He is the son of Arnold Shuster of Bloomington and Susan Klein of Nashville, Indiana, and stepson of Robert Agranoff, married to his mother, and Rose Mahern-Shuster, married to his father; he has one brother, Jonathan. As a child, he was part of the Zionist Youth Leadership Training movement Young Judaea. He graduated in 1985 from Bloomington High School South, and with honors from the University of Michigan. He is in the process of completing a Master of Arts degree in International Affairs at Georgetown University. He was married on May 27, 2007 (at age 39) to journalist Julianna Lee Goldman, at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, in Washington, D.C..^[2][3] On January 10, 2011, the Washington Post published a report that Goldman and Shuster had separated.^[4] The couple had no children.^[4]

Career[link]

Early career[link]

Shuster started his journalism career at CNN's Washington, D.C. bureau. He was an assignment editor and field producer from 1990 to 1994, covering both the Persian Gulf War and the 1992 presidential election campaign. Shuster left CNN in 1994 to become a political reporter for the ABC affiliate KATV in Little Rock, Arkansas, covering the Whitewater scandal. During this period, Shuster led KATV's coverage of the indictment, trial, conviction, and resignation of Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker. At KATV, Shuster won a regional Emmy Award for investigative journalism for his reporting on a manufactured housing scandal.

Fox News[link]

From 1996 to 2002, Shuster was a Washington, D.C.-based correspondent for the Fox News Channel. He was at the Pentagon at the time of the September 11, 2001 attacks and led Fox's coverage of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan. During the Clinton Administration, Shuster led Fox's coverage of the Clinton investigations including Whitewater, the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the Starr Report and the Senate impeachment trial.

Shuster was also a member of Fox's "You Decide 2000" political team. He spent four months on John McCain's "Straight Talk Express" bus and was Fox's lead correspondent for McCain's presidential campaign.

MSNBC[link]

Shuster left Fox News for MSNBC/NBC in 2002. In early 2003, he traveled to Qatar, where he provided coverage from the United States Central Command during Operation Iraqi Freedom for hourly live reports in prime time. Later, he was in California for two months for MSNBC's television program Hardball with Chris Matthews as lead correspondent on the 2003 California recall election, in which Governor Gray Davis was recalled and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected. In 2004 he led the show's coverage of the presidential campaign, including leading the "ad watch team," which analyzed 150 campaign ads. In all, he has filed more than 700 correspondent reports for the show.

Occasionally, Shuster filled in for Chris Matthews on Hardball. Recently, he interviewed former President Jimmy Carter on the show. During the trial relating to the Plame affair, Shuster blogged for Hardball on Hardblogger about the Lewis "Scooter" Libby trial and about other political matters. In addition to this, Shuster has also filled in for commentator Keith Olbermann on Countdown.

In August 2005, Shuster reported from the eye of Hurricane Katrina as it made landfall in Biloxi, Mississippi; Shuster’s reports aired on MSNBC and NBC Nightly News. Shuster also spent several weeks reporting on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina from New Orleans.

On September 24, 2007, Shuster interviewed Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn while filling in on Tucker Carlson's show. When Shuster asked about her response to the MoveOn.org ad campaign concerning General David Petraeus's Iraq war testimony, he followed up by then asking her the name of the last soldier from her congressional district who had been killed in Iraq; she was not able to name the soldier. Shuster mentioned that it was 18-year-old Jeremy Bohannon, and asked Blackburn why she was not able to recall the name. Blackburn's office soon claimed that Bohannon was not actually from Blackburn's congressional district, but was from the congressional district of Rep. John Tanner. However, while Bohannon did grow up in Tanner's district, his legal residence for the year prior to his enlistment was in Blackburn's district. After the promotion of David Gregory to Meet the Press, Shuster was named interim host of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue before being announced as the permanent host.^[5]

Chelsea Clinton remark and suspension[link]

On February 7, 2008, while he was guest-hosting on Tucker, Shuster discussed Chelsea Clinton's campaigning for her mother Hillary Clinton, her efforts to influence superdelegates and her refusal to answer any questions by the media. When his guest, Bill Press, pointed out that Bush's daughters campaigned for their father, Shuster noted the different access rules in each case and responded, "There's just something a little bit unseemly to me that Chelsea's out there calling up celebrities, saying support my mom... doesn't it seem like Chelsea's sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?"

The Clinton campaign demanded an apology and stated that Clinton might not participate in any further debates on MSNBC.^[6] Shuster was temporarily suspended from all NBC News and MSNBC appearances for his comments.^[7] Before the suspension, Shuster had engaged in a heated e-mail exchange with a Clinton staffer in which he defended his remarks.^[8] Shuster's two-week suspension^[9] from on-air duties ended on February 22, 2008.^[10]

Indefinite suspension from MSNBC[link]

On April 6, 2010, MSNBC announced that it had suspended David Shuster for an "indefinite period" after they learned from press reports that Shuster and Michel Martin of National Public Radio had shot a pilot episode for a new show on CNN, without the knowledge or permission of MSNBC.^[11][12]

Current TV[link]

Starting July 29, 2011, David Shuster became a regular guest-host of Countdown with Keith Olbermann on Current TV.

Internet venture[link]

Shuster announced in February 2011 that he is seeking to launch a website for investigative journalism.^[13]

Awards[link]

Shuster won an Emmy Award as well as a Bugle Award awarded in August 2006 by the Disabled American Veterans for his coverage of the 2005 National Disabled Veterans Sports Clinic and the hour-long special that accompanied it on MSNBC.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: David Shuster

• David Shuster at the Internet Movie Database
• David Shuster on Twitter

This article appears to be written like an advertisement. Please help improve it by rewriting promotional content from a neutral point of view and removing any inappropriate external links. (November 2011)

Jay Rosen
Born	(1956-05-05) May 5, 1956 (age 56) Buffalo, New York, USA
Alma mater	New York University (PhD, 1986)
Occupation	Press critic, writer, and professor of journalism

Jay Rosen (born May 5, 1956 in Buffalo, New York) is a media critic, a writer, and a professor of journalism at New York University.

Rosen has been on the journalism faculty at New York University since 1986; from 1999 to 2005 he served as chair of the Department.^[1]

He has been one of the earliest advocates and supporters of citizen journalism, encouraging the press to take a more active interest in citizenship, improving public debate, and enhancing life. His book about the subject, What Are Journalists For? was published in 1999. Rosen is often described in the media as an intellectual leader of the movement of public journalism.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7][8]}

Rosen writes frequently about issues in journalism and developments in the media. Media criticism and other articles by Rosen have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times^[9] Salon.com, Harper's Magazine, and The Nation.

He runs his own weblog called PressThink, which concentrates on what's happening to journalism in the age of the Net. His writing for the weblog won the Reporters Without Borders Freedom Blog award in 2005. He is also a semi-regular contributor to The Huffington Post.

Rosen currently resides in New York City.

In July 2006, he announced NewAssignment.Net, a project linking professional journalists and internet users. The project has received contributions of $10,000 by the Sunlight Foundation, $10,000 by Craig Newmark, $75,000 from Cambrian House and $100,000 by Reuters.

Since 2009 Rosen has collaborated with technologist and writer Dave Winer on "Rebooting the News," a weekly podcast on technology and innovation in journalism.

Notable PressThink columns and posts by Jay Rosen[link]

March 10, 2011, "They Brought a Tote Bag to a Knife Fight: The Resignation of NPR’s CEO, Vivian Schiller".^[10]

January 20, 2008, "The Campaign Press is a Herd of Independent Minds"^[11]

April 14, 2007, "Karl Rove and the Religion of the Washington Press",^[12]

"Savviness--that quality of being shrewd, practical, well-informed, perceptive, ironic, 'with it,' and unsentimental in all things political--is, in a sense, their professional religion. They make a cult of it. And it was this cult that Karl Rove understood and exploited for political gain."

Conservatives think the ideology of the Washington press corps is liberal. Liberals think the press is conservative in the sense of protecting its place in the political establishment. Karl Rove once said that the press is “less liberal than it is oppositional.” (A fascinating remark coming from Rove, since it appears to put him at odds with the conservative base.)

Whereas I believe that the real—and undeclared—ideology of American journalism is savviness, and this is what made the press so vulnerable to the likes of Karl Rove.

Savviness! Deep down, that’s what reporters want to believe in and actually do believe in— their own savviness and the savviness of certain others (including operators like Karl Rove.) In politics, they believe, it’s better to be savvy than it is to be honest or correct on the facts. It’s better to be savvy than it is to be just, good, fair, decent, strictly lawful, civilized, sincere or humane.

Savviness is what journalists admire in others. Savvy is what they themselves dearly wish to be. (And to be unsavvy is far worse than being wrong.) Savviness—that quality of being shrewd, practical, well-informed, perceptive, ironic, “with it,” and unsentimental in all things political—is, in a sense, their professional religion. They make a cult of it. And it was this cult that Karl Rove understood and exploited for political gain.'^[12]

June 27, 2006, "The People Formerly Known as the Audience,"^[13]

The people formerly known as the audience are those who were on the receiving end of a media system that ran one way, in a broadcasting pattern, with high entry fees and a few firms competing to speak very loudly while the rest of the population listened in isolation from one another— and who today are not in a situation like that at all.

• Once they were your printing presses; now that humble device, the blog, has given the press to us. That’s why blogs have been called little First Amendment machines. They extend freedom of the press to more actors.

• Once it was your radio station, broadcasting on your frequency. Now that brilliant invention, podcasting, gives radio to us. And we have found more uses for it than you did.

• Shooting, editing and distributing video once belonged to you, Big Media. Only you could afford to reach a TV audience built in your own image. Now video is coming into the user’s hands, and audience-building by former members of the audience is alive and well on the Web.

• You were once (exclusively) the editors of the news, choosing what ran on the front page. Now we can edit the news, and our choices send items to our own front pages.

• A highly centralized media system had connected people “up” to big social agencies and centers of power but not “across” to each other. Now the horizontal flow, citizen-to-citizen, is as real and consequential as the vertical.

^[13]

April 9, 2006, "Murray Waas is Our Woodward Now"^[14]

March 1, 2005, "The Abyss of Observation Alone"^[15]

September 22, 2004,"Philip Gourevitch: Campaign Reporting as Foreign Beat"^[16]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Rosen's Twitter account
• Interview with Rosen, by Richard Poynder – on poynder.blogspot.com (personal blog)
• Jay Rosen – New York University Department of Journalism faculty directory entry
• "Lessons in scale from mediavolunteer.org", by Jay Rosen, posted at NewAssignment.Net ("An experiment in open-source reporting") – personal blog post of October 10, 2006. Accessed March 6, 2007.
• Jay Rosen,a "Murray Waas Is Our Woodward Now". PressThink (blog), April 9, 2006. Accessed June 20, 2007.
• PressThink: Ghost of Democracy in the Media Machine – Jay Rosen's personal blog
• Video (and audio) of debate/discussion with Jay Rosen on Bloggingheads.tv
• Fact and Friction, interview with Jay Rosen on storytelling in journalism

Dan Froomkin is the Senior Washington Correspondent for the Huffington Post. His work is now collected here. He previously wrote a column for the online version of The Washington Post called White House Watch.^[1] On June 18, 2009 it was reported that his blog would cease to exist and his employment at The Washington Post was terminated. In July, 2009, he was hired by the Huffington Post.^[2]

Personal history and career[link]

Froomkin was raised in Washington, D.C. In 1997 he joined washingtonpost.com as a senior producer for politics. From 2001 to 2003, he was editor of washingtonpost.com. His column launched on January 12, 2004. In a career in journalism spanning over 20 years, he has also worked at The Winston-Salem Journal, The Miami Herald, and The Orange County Register. He was a Michigan Journalism Fellow and editor of new media for Education Week.^[3]

Froomkin's brother is University of Miami Law Professor Michael Froomkin, a prominent blogger who writes on Florida politics and the law.

Publications[link]

[edit] White House Watch

Froomkin's column White House Watch was a critical daily anthology of White House-related items from news Web sites, blogs and other sources, in which he "scrutinizes" what people in the White House are doing "with an attitude".^[4] Before the end of January 2007, it was entitled White House Briefing.^[5]

[edit] From White House Briefing to White House Watch

In her editorial "The Two Washington Posts", published on December 11, 2005, Washington Post Ombudsman Deborah Howell observes that the print newspaper The Washington Post and the website washingtonpost.com are two different entities; although "The Post Web site is owned by the Washington Post Co....it is not run by the newspaper. It is a separate company called Washington Post-Newsweek Interactive, or WPNI, with offices in Arlington."^[4] Whereas "The Post provides the vast majority of the Web site's content...the Web site has its own staff of 65 editorial employees and its own features.... [Moreover,] [t]here are cultural differences between the two newsrooms, which could be expected between a traditional newspaper and the more free-wheeling Web site....The two Posts interact every day. Post reporters and editors often participate in online chats (about 50 hours a week) and there is a Continuous News Desk at The Post in charge of feeding the Web site."^[4]

Howell states that

John Harris, national political editor at the print Post, said, "The title invites confusion. It dilutes our only asset—our credibility" as objective news reporters. Froomkin writes the kind of column "that we would never allow a White House reporter to write. I wish it could be done with a different title and display."

Harris is right; some readers do think Froomkin is a White House reporter. But Froomkin works only for the Web site and is very popular—and [Executive Editor of the website Jim] Brady is not going to fool with that, though he is considering changing the column title and supplementing it with a conservative blogger.

Froomkin said he is "happy to consider other ways to telegraph to people that I'm not a Post White House reporter. I do think that what I'm doing, namely scrutinizing the White House's every move—with an attitude—is in the best traditions of American and Washington Post journalism."

On the other hand, Chris Cillizza, a washingtonpost.com political reporter, appears in The Post frequently. When he writes for the paper, he works for Harris, who is happy to have him.^[4]

There was some support from reader for Froomkin in editorial correspondence about the matter.^[6]

On January 30, 2007, White House Briefing was renamed White House Watch.

[edit] Nieman Watchdog: Questions the press should ask

Froomkin is also deputy editor of Nieman Watchdog: Questions the press should ask, a blog hosted by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University that, according to his account of it, "seeks to encourage more informed reporting by soliciting probing questions from experts."^[7]

Firing from the Washington Post[link]

On June 18, 2009, it was reported that Froomkin was being fired by the Washington Post.^[8][9] Froomkin confirmed this in a June 19 entry on White House Watch: "As Washington Post ombudsman Andy Alexander and others reported yesterday, The Washington Post has terminated my contract. So sometime in late June or early July, I'll be writing my last blog post here."^[10]

In his last column, posted on June 26, 2009, Froomkin wrote:

When I look back on the Bush years, I think of the lies. There were so many. Lies about the war and lies to cover up the lies about the war.^[11] Lies about torture and surveillance. Lies about Valerie Plame. Vice President Dick Cheney's lies, criminally prosecutable but for his chief of staff Scooter Libby's lies. I also think about the extraordinary and fundamentally cancerous expansion of executive power that led to violations of our laws and our principles.

And while this wasn't as readily apparent until President Obama took office, it's now very clear that the Bush years were all about kicking the can down the road – either ignoring problems or, even worse, creating them and not solving them. This was true of a huge range of issues including the economy, energy, health care, global warming – and of course Iraq and Afghanistan.

How did the media cover it all? Not well. Reading pretty much everything that was written about Bush on a daily basis, as I did, one could certainly see the major themes emerging. But by and large, mainstream-media journalism missed the real Bush story for way too long. The handful of people who did exceptional investigative reporting during this era really deserve our gratitude: People such as Ron Suskind,^[12] Seymour Hersh,^[13] Jane Mayer, Murray Waas,^[11][14] Michael Massing,^[15] Mark Danner,^[16] Barton Gellman and Jo Becker, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau (better late than never^[17]), Dana Priest, Walter Pincus, Charlie Savage^[18] and Philippe Sands.^[19]

Notes[link]

External links[link]

• Nieman Watchdog:Questions the press should ask Blog hosted by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University edited by Dan Froomkin.
• The Washington Post official website.
• White House Watch Dan Froomkin's column and blog hosted by Washingtonpost/Newsweek Interactive.
• About White House Watch.
• Dan Froomkin's personal website.
• Archive of posts at Huffington Post

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Born	Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (1859-05-22)22 May 1859 Edinburgh, Scotland
Died	7 July 1930(1930-07-07) (aged 71) Crowborough, East Sussex, England
Occupation	Novelist, short story writer, poet, physician
Nationality	Scottish, Irish
Citizenship	British
Genres	Detective fiction, science fiction, historical novels, non-fiction
Notable work(s)	Stories of Sherlock Holmes The Lost World
Influences Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson
Influenced Agatha Christie and other detective fiction authors, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Gosho Aoyama, Gaston Leroux, Umberto Eco
Signature

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930^[1]) was a Scottish^[2] physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger. He was a prolific writer whose other works include science fiction stories, plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction and historical novels.

Life[link]

Early life[link]

Arthur Conan Doyle was born on 22 May 1859 at 11 Picardy Place, Edinburgh, Scotland.^[3][2] His father, Charles Altamont Doyle, was English of Irish descent, and his mother, born Mary Foley, was Irish. They married in 1855.^[4] In 1864 the family dispersed due to Charles's growing alcoholism and the children were temporarily housed across Edinburgh. In 1867, the family came together again and lived in the squalid tenement flats at 3 Sciennes Place.^[5]

Although he is now referred to as "Conan Doyle", the origin of this compound surname is uncertain. The entry in which his baptism is recorded in the register of St Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh gives "Arthur Ignatius Conan" as his Christian name, and simply "Doyle" as his surname. It also names Michael Conan as his godfather.^[6]

Supported by wealthy uncles, Conan Doyle was sent to the Roman Catholic Jesuit preparatory school Hodder Place, Stonyhurst, at the age of nine (1868-1870). He then went on to Stonyhurst College until 1875. From 1875 to 1876 he was educated at the Jesuit school Stella Matutina in Feldkirch, Austria.^[5]

From 1876 to 1881 he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, including a period working in the town of Aston (now a district of Birmingham) and in Sheffield, as well as in Shropshire at Ruyton-XI-Towns.^[7] While studying, Conan Doyle began writing short stories. His earliest extant fiction, "The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe", was unsuccessfully submitted to Blackwood's Magazine.^[5] His first published piece "The Mystery of Sasassa Valley", a story set in South Africa, was printed in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal on 6 September 1879.^[8][5] Later that month, on 20 September, he published his first non-fictional article, "Gelsemium as a Poison" in the British Medical Journal.^[5]

Following his term at university, he was employed as a doctor on the Greenland whaler the Hope of Peterhead in 1880 and after his graduation, as a ship's surgeon on the SS Mayumba during a voyage to the West African coast in 1881. ^[5] He completed his doctorate on the subject of tabes dorsalis in 1885.^[9] Doyle's father died in 1893, in the Crichton Royal, Dumfries, after many years of psychiatric illness.^[10][11]

Writing career[link]

Portrait of Sherlock Holmes by Sidney Paget, 1904

Portrait of Doyle by Herbert Rose Barraud, 1893

In 1882 he joined former classmate George Turnavine Budd as his partner at a medical practice in Plymouth, but their relationship proved difficult, and Conan Doyle soon left to set up an independent practice.^[12][5] Arriving in Portsmouth in June of that year with less than £10 (£700 today^[13]) to his name, he set up a medical practice at 1 Bush Villas in Elm Grove, Southsea.^[14] The practice was initially not very successful. While waiting for patients, Conan Doyle again began writing stories and composed his first novels, The Mystery of Cloomber, not published until 1888, and the unfinished Narrative of John Smith, which would go unpublished until 2011.^[15] He amassed a portfolio of short stories including "The Captain of the Pole-Star" and "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement", both inspired by Doyle's time at sea.^[5]

Doyle struggled to find a publisher for his work. His first significant piece, A Study in Scarlet, was taken by Ward Lock & Co on 20 November 1886, giving Doyle £25 for all rights to the story. The piece appeared later that year in the Beeton's Christmas Annual and received good reviews in The Scotsman and the Glasgow Herald.^[5] The story featured the first appearance of Watson and Sherlock Holmes, partially modelled after his former university teacher Joseph Bell. Conan Doyle wrote to him, "It is most certainly to you that I owe Sherlock Holmes... [R]ound the centre of deduction and inference and observation which I have heard you inculcate I have tried to build up a man."^[16] Robert Louis Stevenson was able, even in faraway Samoa, to recognise the strong similarity between Joseph Bell and Sherlock Holmes: "[M]y compliments on your very ingenious and very interesting adventures of Sherlock Holmes. ... [C]an this be my old friend Joe Bell?"^[17] Other authors sometimes suggest additional influences—for instance, the famous Edgar Allan Poe character C. Auguste Dupin.^[18]

A sequel to A Study in Scarlet was commissioned and The Sign of the Four appeared in Lippincott's Magazine in February 1890, under agreement with the Ward Lock company. Doyle felt grievously exploited by Ward Lock as an author new to the publishing world and he left them. ^[5]Short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes were published in the Strand Magazine.

While living in Southsea, Doyle played football as a goalkeeper for Portsmouth Association Football Club, an amateur side, under the pseudonym A. C. Smith.^[19] (This club, disbanded in 1896, had no connection with the present-day Portsmouth F.C., which was founded in 1898.) Conan Doyle was also a keen cricketer, and between 1899 and 1907 he played 10 first-class matches for the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC). His highest score, in 1902 against London County, was 43. He was an occasional bowler who took just one first-class wicket (although one of high pedigree—it was W. G. Grace).^[20] Also a keen golfer, Conan Doyle was elected captain of the Crowborough Beacon Golf Club, East Sussex for 1910. He moved to Little Windlesham house in Crowborough with his second wife Jean Leckie and their family from 1907 until his death in July 1930.

Marriages and family[link]

In 1885 Conan Doyle married Louisa (or Louise) Hawkins, known as 'Touie', the sister of one of his patients. She suffered from tuberculosis and died on 4 July 1906.^[21] The next year he married Jean Elizabeth Leckie, whom he had first met and fallen in love with in 1897. He had maintained a platonic relationship with Jean while his first wife was still alive, out of loyalty to her.^{[citation needed]} Jean died in London on 27 June 1940.

Conan Doyle fathered five children. He had two with his first wife: Mary Louise (28 January 1889 – 12 June 1976) and Arthur Alleyne Kingsley, known as Kingsley (15 November 1892 – 28 October 1918). He also had three with his second wife: Denis Percy Stewart (17 March 1909 – 9 March 1955) second husband of Georgian Princess Nina Mdivani, Adrian Malcolm (19 November 1910 – 3 June 1970) and Jean Lena Annette (21 December 1912 – 18 November 1997).^{[citation needed]}

"Death" of Sherlock Holmes[link]

In 1890 Conan Doyle studied ophthalmology in Vienna, and moved to London, first living in Montague Place and then in South Norwood. He set up a practice as an ophthalmologist. He wrote in his autobiography that not a single patient crossed his door. This gave him more time for writing, and in November 1891 he wrote to his mother: "I think of slaying Holmes... and winding him up for good and all. He takes my mind from better things." His mother responded, "You won't! You can't! You mustn't!"^[22]

In December 1893, in order to dedicate more of his time to what he considered his more important works (his historical novels), Conan Doyle had Holmes and Professor Moriarty apparently plunge to their deaths together down the Reichenbach Falls in the story "The Final Problem". Public outcry, however, led him to bring the character back in 1901, in The Hound of the Baskervilles, though this was set at a time before the Reichenbach incident. In 1903, Conan Doyle published his first Holmes short story in ten years, "The Adventure of the Empty House", in which it was explained that only Moriarty had fallen; but since Holmes had other dangerous enemies—especially Colonel Sebastian Moran—he had arranged to also be perceived as dead. Holmes ultimately was featured in a total of 56 short stories and four Conan Doyle novels, and has since appeared in many novels and stories by other authors.

Jane Stanford compares some of Moriarty's characteristics to those of the Fenian John O'Connor Power. 'The Final Problem' was published the year the Second Home Rule Bill passed through the House of Commons. 'The Valley of Fear' was serialised in 1914, the year, Home Rule, The Government of Ireland Act (Sept.18) was placed on the Statute Book.^[23]

Political campaigning[link]

Following the Boer War in South Africa at the turn of the 20th century and the condemnation from around the world over the United Kingdom's conduct, Conan Doyle wrote a short pamphlet titled The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct, which justified the UK's role in the Boer War and was widely translated. Doyle had served as a volunteer doctor in the Langman Field Hospital at Bloemfontein between March and June 1900.^[24]

Arthur Conan Doyle's house in South Norwood, London

Conan Doyle believed it was this pamphlet that resulted in his being knighted in 1902 and appointed Deputy-Lieutenant of Surrey. Also in 1900 he wrote the longer book, The Great Boer War. During the early years of the 20th century, Sir Arthur twice ran for Parliament as a Liberal Unionist—once in Edinburgh and once in the Hawick Burghs—but although he received a respectable vote, he was not elected.

Conan Doyle was involved in the campaign for the reform of the Congo Free State, led by journalist E. D. Morel and diplomat Roger Casement. During 1909 he wrote The Crime of the Congo, a long pamphlet in which he denounced the horrors in that country. He became acquainted with Morel and Casement, and it is possible that, together with Bertram Fletcher Robinson,^[25] they inspired several characters in the 1912 novel The Lost World.

He broke with both when Morel became one of the leaders of the pacifist movement during the First World War, and when Casement was convicted of treason against the UK during the Easter Rising. Conan Doyle tried unsuccessfully to save Casement from the death penalty, arguing that he had been driven mad and was not responsible for his actions.

Correcting injustice[link]

Arthur Conan Doyle statue in Crowborough

Conan Doyle was also a fervent advocate of justice and personally investigated two closed cases, which led to two men being exonerated of the crimes of which they were accused. The first case, in 1906, involved a shy half-British, half-Indian lawyer named George Edalji who had allegedly penned threatening letters and mutilated animals. Police were set on Edalji's conviction, even though the mutilations continued after their suspect was jailed.

It was partially as a result of this case that the Court of Criminal Appeal was established in 1907, so not only did Conan Doyle help George Edalji, his work helped establish a way to correct other miscarriages of justice. The story of Conan Doyle and Edalji was fictionalised in Julian Barnes's 2005 novel Arthur & George and dramatized in an episode of the 1972 BBC television series, "The Edwardians". In Nicholas Meyer's pastiche The West End Horror (1976), Holmes manages to help clear the name of a shy Parsee Indian character wronged by the English justice system. Edalji himself was a Parsee.

The second case, that of Oscar Slater, a German Jew and gambling-den operator convicted of bludgeoning an 82-year-old woman in Glasgow in 1908, excited Conan Doyle's curiosity because of inconsistencies in the prosecution case and a general sense that Slater was not guilty. He ended up paying most of the costs for Slater's successful appeal in 1928.^[26]

Spiritualism[link]

Following the death of his wife Louisa in 1906, the death of his son Kingsley just before the end of World War I, and the deaths of his brother Innes, his two brothers-in-law (one of whom was E. W. Hornung, creator of the literary character Raffles) and his two nephews shortly after the war, Conan Doyle sank into depression. He found solace supporting spiritualism and its attempts to find proof of existence beyond the grave. In particular, according to some,^[27] he favoured Christian Spiritualism and encouraged the Spiritualists' National Union to accept an eighth precept – that of following the teachings and example of Jesus of Nazareth. He also was a member of the renowned paranormal organisation The Ghost Club.^{[citation needed]} Its focus, then and now, is on the scientific study of alleged paranormal activities in order to prove (or refute) the existence of paranormal phenomena.

On 28 October 1918 Kingsley Doyle died from pneumonia, which he contracted during his convalescence after being seriously wounded during the 1916 Battle of the Somme. Brigadier-General Innes Doyle died, also from pneumonia, in February 1919. Sir Arthur became involved with Spiritualism to the extent that he wrote a Professor Challenger novel on the subject, The Land of Mist.

His book The Coming of the Fairies (1921) shows he was apparently convinced of the veracity of the five Cottingley Fairies photographs (which decades later were exposed as a hoax). He reproduced them in the book, together with theories about the nature and existence of fairies and spirits. In The History of Spiritualism (1926), Conan Doyle praised the psychic phenomena and spirit materialisations produced by Eusapia Palladino and Mina "Margery" Crandon.^[28]

Conan Doyle's family in New York 1922

Conan Doyle was friends for a time with Harry Houdini, the American magician who himself became a prominent opponent of the Spiritualist movement in the 1920s following the death of his beloved mother. Although Houdini insisted that Spiritualist mediums employed trickery (and consistently exposed them as frauds), Conan Doyle became convinced that Houdini himself possessed supernatural powers—a view expressed in Conan Doyle's The Edge of the Unknown. Houdini was apparently unable to convince Conan Doyle that his feats were simply illusions, leading to a bitter public falling out between the two.^[28]

Richard Milner, an American historian of science, has presented a case that Conan Doyle may have been the perpetrator of the Piltdown Man hoax of 1912, creating the counterfeit hominid fossil that fooled the scientific world for over 40 years. Milner says that Conan Doyle had a motive—namely, revenge on the scientific establishment for debunking one of his favourite psychics—and that The Lost World contains several encrypted clues regarding his involvement in the hoax.^[29]

Samuel Rosenberg's 1974 book Naked is the Best Disguise purports to explain how, throughout his writings, Conan Doyle left open clues that related to hidden and suppressed aspects of his mentality.

Death[link]

Grave of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle at Minstead, England

Conan Doyle was found clutching his chest in the hall of Windlesham, his house in Crowborough, East Sussex, on 7 July 1930. He died of a heart attack at the age of 71. His last words were directed toward his wife: "You are wonderful."^[30] At the time of his death, there was some controversy concerning his burial place, as he was avowedly not a Christian, considering himself a Spiritualist. He was first buried on 11 July 1930 in Windlesham rose garden. He was later reinterred together with his wife in Minstead churchyard in the New Forest, Hampshire.^[5] They were buried outside the churchyard fence, in unconsecrated ground.^{[citation needed]} Until the late twentieth century, the cross-topped gravestone bore no inscription. The graveyard has since been extended and Conan Doyle's remains lie among other newer graves.^{[citation needed]} Carved wooden tablets to his memory and to the memory of his wife are held privately and are inaccessible to the public. That inscription reads, "Blade straight / Steel true / Arthur Conan Doyle / Born May 22nd 1859 / Passed On 7th July 1930." The epitaph on his gravestone in the churchyard reads, in part: "Steel true/Blade straight/Arthur Conan Doyle/Knight/Patriot, Physician, and man of letters".

Undershaw, the home near Hindhead, south of London that Arthur Conan Doyle had built and lived in for at least a decade, was a hotel and restaurant from 1924 until 2004. It was then bought by a developer, and has since been empty while conservationists and Conan Doyle fans fight to preserve it.^[21]

A statue honours Conan Doyle at Crowborough Cross in Crowborough, where he lived for 23 years.^[31]There is also a statue of Sherlock Holmes in Picardy Place, Edinburgh, close to the house where Conan Doyle was born.

Selected awards and honours[link]

• Knight Bachelor (1902)
• Archie Goodwin Award (2005)

Bibliography[link]

See also[link]

	Biography portal
	Poetry portal
	Children's literature portal

• Physician writer
• William Gillette, a personal friend who performed the most famous stage-version of Sherlock Holmes

References[link]

External links[link]

Find more about Arthur Conan Doyle on Wikipedia's sister projects:
	Images and media from Commons
	Quotations from Wikiquote
	Source texts from Wikisource

• Arthur Conan Doyle Online Exhibition
• Conan Doyle in Birmingham
• The Arthur Conan Doyle Society
• The Sherlock Holmes Museum
• Archival material relating to Arthur Conan Doyle listed at the UK National Register of Archives
• Works by Arthur Conan Doyle at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Arthur Conan Doyle in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Works at Project Gutenberg Australia
• Online works available from The University of Adelaide Library
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, full text with embedded audio (PDF).
• Works of Arthur Conan Doyle available as freely downloadable eBooks at University of Virginia EText Center
• Arthur Conan Doyle at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• "A Case of Considerable Interest" an exhibition celebrating the 35th anniversary of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection of the Toronto Public Library
• A film clip of a 1927 Fox newsreel interview is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]
• C. Frederick Kittle's Collection of Doyleana at the Newberry Library

v t e Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes A Study in Scarlet (1887) The Sign of the Four (1890) The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894) The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1904) The Valley of Fear (1914) His Last Bow (1917) The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927) Professor Challenger The Lost World (1912) The Poison Belt (1913) The Land of Mist (1926) When the World Screamed (1928) The Disintegration Machine (1929) Other novels The Mystery of Cloomber (1888) Micah Clarke (1889) The Firm of Girdlestone (1890) The White Company (1891) The Doings of Raffles Haw (1892) The Refugees (1893) The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard (1896) Rodney Stone (1896) The Tragedy of the Korosko (1898) Adventures of Gerard (1903) Sir Nigel (1906) The Maracot Deep (1929) Short stories "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" (1884) "Lot No. 249" (1892) "The Parasite" (1894) "The Club-Footed Grocer" (1898) "The Brown Hand" (1899) "The Terror of Blue John Gap" (1910) "The Horror of the Heights" (1913) Other Charles Altamont Doyle James Doyle Richard Doyle John Doyle The Great Wyrley Outrages Spiritualism

v t e Sherlock Holmes books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Novels A Study in Scarlet (1887) The Sign of the Four (1890) The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) The Valley of Fear (1915) Story collections The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894) The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905) His Last Bow (1917) The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927) Characters Sherlock Holmes Doctor Watson Professor Moriarty Sebastian Moran Irene Adler Inspector Lestrade Mycroft Holmes Baker Street Irregulars Minor characters Related topics Canon of Sherlock Holmes Cases 221B Baker Street List of investigators Adaptations of Sherlock Holmes Sherlockiana