| Topic Name: |
KOIN - Salamone is gone! |
| Message Name: |
Lippoff's Legacy in Atlanta |
| Date Posted: |
05/22/2005 |
| In Reply To: |
are people still trying to leave - and who? Are the shooters forming a union still? |
| Message: |
David Lippoff was news director of WSB-TV in 1987. A reporter on Lippoff's staff had done a series of investigative pieces on new, exculpatory evidence in favor of Wayne Williams, convicted of killing two men who were among 29 victims on the so-called "Atlanta Child Murders List."
WSB-TV joined other Atlanta media outlets, including it's Cox owned newspaper, The Atlanta Journal, in filing a Freedom of Information lawsuit to gain access to the police files on the murder of 12 year old Clifford Jones. Although this boy's rape and strangulation was among 22 additional cases blamed on Williams, three eyewitnesses gave police and the FBI detailed statements about seeing another suspect, James Brooks, rape and kill Clifford. But Brooks was never arrested for those crimes.
The reporter's stories so incensed the parents of the vicitms, including Clifford Jones' mother, that they, en masse, marched on the Public Safety Commissioner's office demanding that he re-open all of Atlanta's "Missing and Murdered" cases. He refused.
Political pressure was then put on WSB-TV to stop it's stories on this. Lippoff, acting under orders of G-M Andrew S. Fisher, ordered his reporter to cease reporting on the Clifford Jones case. Lippoff told the reporter; "Your stories are too disruptive to our community." Two weeks ago, six of the cases were re-opened. The parents of the victims still refuse to believe that Wayne Williams killed their childfren. They still seek the truth and closure. Lippoff sold out the parents, his reporter and himself!
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