The Spotlight
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The Spotlight was a weekly newspaper in the United States, published from 1975 to 2001 by a now-defunct organization called Liberty Lobby. While The Spotlight ran articles and editorials professing a populist political orientation, aimed at audiences across the political spectrum, critics have called the newspaper a subtle recruiting tool for the extreme right-wing and noted the subtle inclusion of anti-Semitism and white supremacy undertones in the articles, and advertisements for openly neo-Nazi books and organizations in the classified ad section.
A 1979 article published in The Spotlight by Victor Marchetti was a highly controversial and important cog in the JFK assassination saga. Former CIA agent E. Howard Hunt brought a defamation lawsuit against Liberty Lobby for this article that implicated Hunt as being involved in the assassination of JFK. Mark Lane defended Liberty Lobby in the case and won a landmark victory for conspiracy theorists everywhere. The jury ruled in favor of Liberty Lobby and ruled so on the basis that E. Howard Hunt and the CIA were involved in the assassination of JFK.
Circulation of The Spotlight peaked in the early 1980s at around 200,000, when it was the largest-circulation periodical on the right in the United States. Circulation steadily dropped off from that point on. The Spotlight ceased publication in 2001 after Liberty Lobby was forced into bankruptcy as a result of a lawsuit. Willis Carto and many of the other people involved in publishing The Spotlight have since started a new newspaper, called the American Free Press, which is very similar in overall tone.
External links
- Implausible Assertions: Did Mark Lane Convince a Jury that E. Howard Hunt was a Kennedy Assassination Conspirator? (http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/denial.htm)