Publisher blasts biased coverage of tribal issues
By Patricia Sullivan
of the Missoulian
[Reprinted without permission from the Missoulian, May 18, 1991]
Montana is "very far behind" South Dakota in relations between whites and
Indians, and one of the reasons is the white media's failure to adequately
cover tribal and Indian issues, said the publisher of the largest
independently owned Native American weekly.
Tim Giago, owner of the Lakota Times of Rapid City, S.D., and the best-known
Native American journalist in the country, said Friday [May 17] that the
American media has done a "very poor job of covering Indian country."
Its stories are one-sided, inaccurate, and focus almost exclusively on the
negative, he told students and professionals at the University of Montana
School of Journalism's 32nd aannual Dean Stone Lecture. Reporters don't
understand that tribes are sovereign nations, that reservations are
governed by a "mish-mash" web of treaties, federal, state and county laws,
and that spirituality is an integral part of everyday life for Indians,
Giago said.
The Montana news media has "very white announcers, very white columnists
and very white newspaper reporters," he said at a panel discussion earlier
in the day. "I think for Montana to really achieve greatness, there's going
to have to be more diversity in newsrooms."
Journalism dean Charles Hood said his school has graduated only about a
half-dozen Indian students in its 77-year existence. Although industry figures
were not available, the number of full-time newspaper employees in the
state who are Indian is similarly low. The Missoulian newsroom employs no
full-time journalists who are Indian, publisher Phil Blake said.
Giago also said that "If reservations were entities in which any of the
media could draw a larger profit from, we'd see all kinds of coverage."
"A lot of major newspapers believe they can write anything about American
Indians and get away with it because we're such a small minority," said
Giago, who is spending this year as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.
"I spend a lot of time covering the coverage and correcting the errors" of
the mainstream media.
The press and broadcast media are "winning prestigious awards over the
bodies of American Indians," he charged, citing award-winning series on
Indian alcoholism than ran in newspapers in New Mexico and Alaska and on
NBC-TV.
"I wish newspapers doing these epic series would sit down and do a story
on the root causes for alcoholism on reservations....and the successes on
reservations" in battling the disease, he said.
Giago said the personnel director for Gannett Inc., the nation's largest
newspaper chain, told him she had 15 Indians in management positions across
the country. When he called all 15, he found only one was an enrolled tribal
member. Newsmen and newswomen who claim to be Indian should be asked to
prove it, he said.
"People are cashing in on the fact that news organizations are hiring
Indians," Giago said after the speech. "My (Oglala Sioux) tribe has $250
million sitting in the bank from a federal settlement. Since that was
announced, we've had 20,000 people who have applied for membership in our
tribe, fram as far away as Norway."
Indian topics are becoming popular and more frequent in the press since
the movie "Dances With Wolves" met with such popular success, Giago noted.
"We haven't had this much attention since 1973, since Wounded Knee," Giago
said. "that doesn't meant he information is good. It's a shame to see
(white journalists') ignorance compunded by all the half-baked news
stories....It extends the ignorance of the public."
Deb Gagnon