For the 'Clarion-Ledger,' Tip About Iraq Reservists Ballooned into a Major Story

By: Erin Olson It's not very often that a local news tip becomes an international story -- but it happened Friday at The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss. The newspaper broke the news of a platoon of soldiers in Iraq that had been detained for disobeying orders to carry out what they deemed a "suicide mission," and by Monday the story was on the front page of The New York Times.

"It was just a regular news tip like any other, but it happened to be a little larger than most," said Jeremy Hudson, the Clarion-Ledger reporter who wrote the original article and follow-ups. According to Hudson, a friend of the wife of one of the soldiers who was detained called in the tip. Reporters got in touch with Patricia McCook of Jackson, wife of Sgt. Larry O. McCook, through the tipster.

And it went from there, Hudson told E&P. "Like building any other story, one piece led to another, led to another, until we realized what we had," he explained.

What they had was the story of a platoon of 17 Army Reservists who refused orders to deliver fuel to Taji, Iraq, north of Baghdad, last Wednesday, because they felt their vehicles were too unsafe. The soldiers were detained until Friday afternoon, and five were reassigned.

Teresa Hill of Dothan, Ala., told the Clarion-Ledger that her daughter, Amber McClenny, one of the detainees, had called and left a message on her answering machine pleading for help. Her daughter told Hill that the trucks they would have driven on the mission topped out at 40 mph, and she knew there was a 99 percent chance they would be ambushed.

Hudson of the Clarion-Ledger said he and others at the paper realized that the story would be "of national and international significance" when they began looking into it and found the tips were legitimate. Sure enough, when the story was published Friday, the newspaper office received phone calls from the BBC, news organizations in Australia, and major news outlets in America.

Hudson continues to follow the case. "It's something that's obviously an issue," he said. "Their penalty is still in the air, so we want to be able to follow it until resolution."