The Spotlight
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- For the community newspapers in Upstate New York, see Spotlight Newspapers.
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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. The Spotlight ran articles and editorials professing a populist political orientation, aimed at audiences across the political spectrum.
A 1979 article published in The Spotlight by Victor Marchetti sparked a defamation lawsuit against Liberty Lobby from former CIA agent E. Howard Hunt because the article implicated Hunt as being involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Lawyer and conspiracy author Mark Lane successfully defended Liberty Lobby against the defamation charges.
Circulation of The Spotlight peaked in the early 1980s at around 200,000, when it was the largest-circulation periodical on the far right in the United States. Circulation steadily dropped off from that point on. During the 1990s, the paper sponsored the Radio Free America talk show.
The Spotlight ceased publication in 2001 after Liberty Lobby was forced into bankruptcy as a result of a lawsuit. Willis Carto and other people involved in The Spotlight then started a new newspaper, called the American Free Press, which is very similar in overall tone.
The extremely conservative, conspiracy-minded magazine New Frontiersman in the graphic novel Watchmen may have been loosely based on The Spotlight.
