Apology to David Ridgen

David Ridgen is a documentary film maker for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. I've mentioned him before in passing because he has been making a documentary film about the Henry Dee and Charles Moore murders case, called Mississippi Cold Case.

David Ridgen also sometimes contributes to written CBC news articles. David Ridgen wrote to me recently to let me know that he co-wrote the CBC article that confirmed that Franklin County Advocate publisher Mary Lou Webb is the widow of David Webb, former publicity director of Americans for the Preservation of the White Race. I was critical of the CBC article, and of a Clarion Ledger article which repeated the information about David Webb four days after the CBC, because I had published this information about six weeks earlier and neither the CBC nor the Ledger cited me as a source.

David Ridgen wanted me also to know that he had found the same information about David Webb at least as early as May 2006. That is the download date he has on his copy of the document from the Sovereignty Commission files that I cited. David also forwarded a June 9, 2006 email to his editor Michael Hannan, which contained portions of the Mississippi Cold Case script dealing with David and Mary Lou Webb (but did not make the final cut).

Clearly I was wrong, and I apologize for insinuating that David and his co-author were dishonest about their sources.

I still think the phrase "document obtained by CBC News" is misleading, since the document is publicly available in the online Sovereignty Comission files. But David wanted to distinguish between the research he provided from the style of the article which was largely his co-author's. I accept this distinciton, given the care that David took to document his earlier knowledge of the David Webb's APWR affiliation.