Nicholas F. Benton

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Nicholas (Nick) F. Benton is the founder, owner and editor of the Falls Church News-Press, a weekly newspaper that is circulated in Falls Church, Virginia and selected parts of Fairfax County, Arlington County, and Washington D.C. Benton founded the News-Press in 1991 which has developed a reputation as "the most progressive newspaper in Virginia," with a weekly circulation of 30,500 issues.

Benton received B.A. from Westmont College and a Master of Divinity degree from the Pacific School of Religion in 1969.^[1]

Benton was employed in 1974 as a political organizer by the U.S. Labor Party, an element of the LaRouche movement. In 1978 he was the Labor Party candidate for Governor of California running against Jerry Brown, whom he derided for his anti-nuclear policies, for his "'small is beautiful' viciousness", and for being an "agent of influence" of London.^[2] By the mid 1980s he was aide to Lyndon LaRouche^[3] and a spokesman for him^[4]and for the movement's National Democratic Policy Committee.^[5] Benton was also the spokesman, the Washington D.C. bureau chief, and the White House Correspondent for the Executive Intelligence Review.^[6]

In his capacity as a White House Correspondent, Benton covered the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, often questioning them directly, and often traveling with the press corps to such places as Santa Barbara, California and Kennebunkport, Maine. Benton has had uninterrupted membership in the White House Correspondents Association since 1986. (An episode of the TV series "Murphy Brown" included a glimpse of Benton at a White House press briefing.)

In October 1986, Benton covered the Reykjavik Summit meeting between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev, held in the famous house of Höfði in Reykjavík, the capital city of Iceland. In 1989, Benton covered the summit meeting of U.S. President George H. W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that took place in Malta, and the meeting between President Bush and Alliance leaders in Brussels.

During the 1988 Democratic National Convention the Larouche movement had distributed flyers asserting that Michael Dukakis had undergone treatment for mental illness.^[7] A month later Benton asked the famous question of Ronald Reagan, as to whether Dukakis ought to make his health records public, to which Reagan replied, "I'm not going to pick on an invalid."^[8]

Benton later published an editorial entitled "How I Explain LaRouche," where he says that he completed a "measured, phased exit" from the LaRouche organization in the late 1980s.^[9] According to an interview published in 2007, Benton founded his own news service, "Century News Service," in 1987.^[10]

Since 1991, Benton has served two terms as president of the Greater Falls Church Chamber of Commerce, and has twice been the recipient of the "Pillar of the Community" award by the Chamber. Benton created and funded the Diversity Affirmation Program for high school students through the Falls Church Education Foundation (www.fcedf.org). His paper has twice been named "Business of the Year" by the Falls Church City Council (www.fallschurchva.gov) and he was the marshal of Falls Church's annual Memorial Day Parade, the city's single biggest event of the year, in 2001.

In an editorial and an article printed in 2007, he "noted the coincidence" of the suicide of Kenneth Kronberg, a long time LaRouche follower, which occurred the same day as Kronberg's work was alleged criticized in an internal memo circulated within the LaRouche organization.^[11]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Archive of the Falls Church News-Press, including Benton's articles, columns and interviews