"The Spotlight" газеті: АҚШ-тың саяси тарихындағы бір парақ

the weekly DC newspaper
The Spotlight was a weekly newspaper in the United States, published in Washington, D. C. from September 1975 to July 2001 by the now defunct antisemitic Liberty Lobby. The Spotlight ran articles and editorials professing a "populist and nationalist" political orientation. Some observers have described the publication as promoting a right wing, or conservative, politics. The Spotlight gave frequent coverage to complementary and alternative medicine, including advertisements for the purported anti cancer supplement Laetrile. Kevin J. Flynn's book The Silent Brotherhood described The Spotlight as regularly featuring "articles on such topics as Bible analysis, taxes and fighting the IRS, bankers and how they bleed the middle class, and how the nation is manipulated by the dreaded Trilateral Commission and Council on Foreign Relations", adding "the paper attracted a huge diversity of readers". NameBase described the newspaper as "anti elitist, opposed the Gulf War, wanted the JFK assassination reinvestigated, and felt that corruption and conspiracies can be found in high places".

Circulation of The Spotlight peaked in 1981 at 315,000 but fell to about 90,000 by 1992.

The Spotlight was called "the most widely read publication on the fringe right" by the Anti Defamation League, who also stated the newspaper "reflected Carto's conspiracy theory of history" and called the paper anti Semitic. Howard J. Ruff in his 1979 book How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years praised The Spotlight for its investigative reporting, while criticizing it for a "blatantly biased" right wing point of view and concluded "there are many things I detest about it, but I wouldn't be without it." U. S. Congressman and John Birch Society leader Larry McDonald criticized The Spotlight in the Congressional Record in 1981 for purported use of the Lyndon LaRouche movement as a source of news items.

On August 14, 1978, The Spotlight published an article by Victor Marchetti linking former CIA agent and Watergate figure E. Howard Hunt to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Headlined "CIA to Nail Hunt for Kennedy Killing", the article said: "In the public hearings [of a pending Congressional hearing], the CIA will 'admit' that Hunt was involved in the conspiracy to kill Kennedy." Stating that he was libeled by the accusations, Hunt sued the Liberty Lobby for $3.5 million in damages in a federal court in Miami in 1981; Marchetti was not named as a defendant. In the second trial, Hunt was represented by Baltimore attorney William Snyder. which became the basis for Lane's book Plausible Denial.

In 1985, the National Review and its editor, William F. Buckley Jr., were represented by attorney J. Daniel Mahoney during their $16 million libel suit against The Spotlight.

After the Oklahoma City bombing it was reported that Timothy McVeigh had taken out a classified advertisement in The Spotlight in August 1993 under the name "T. Tuttle" and had used a telephone card purchased from the newspaper.

The Spotlight ceased publication in 2001 after Liberty Lobby was forced into bankruptcy as a result of a lawsuit brought by former associates in the Institute for Historical Review. Willis Carto and other people involved in The Spotlight then started a new newspaper, the American Free Press, which is very similar in overall tone. An August 2, 2002 court order in the Superior Court of California transferred the assets of Liberty Lobby, including The Spotlight, to the judgment creditor, the Legion for the Survival of Freedom, Inc. who maintains an online archive of Spotlight articles from 1997 to 2001.

From 1988 to 2001, the paper sponsored the Radio Free America talk show which was heard on WWCR shortwave and on AM talk radio outlets.