Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas yesterday ordered city employees not to talk to reporters, the Galveston County Daily News reports. Only she and City Manager Steve LeBlanc are now allowed to address the media.

Thomas also said reporters would be allowed on the island only if they had proper identification, but she didn't explain what that meant. She also said the media was forbidden from visiting areas on Galveston's far West End but would not explain why.

City Spokesperson Mary Jo Naschke denied the city was trying to stifle coverage, instead saying personnel were simply too busy to handle press inquiries. But at a press conference held yesterday, Thomas and LeBlanc talked for less than 30 minutes and answered only five questions.

In an editorial published yesterday, Galveston Daily News President and Publisher Dolph Tillotson called the move the city's "first serious misstep" in handling the disaster:

First, it castrates rather than empowers department heads who should be treated with more respect. Chief Charles Wiley of the city police department, for example, certainly is smart enough and wise enough to handle media questions. To silence him and other trusted department heads is stupid and degrading to trusted city leaders.

Second, the move will force reporters to go to other sources, and some of those may be less reliable and less knowledgeable than official city sources. Why the city would wish this to happen is beyond us. It will make the news media’s job more difficult, and it will make the information somewhat less reliable.

Last and most important, one of the major issues facing the city and facing the media trying to tell this story is the many thousands of evacuees spread across North America. They desperately seek information about their homes, their businesses and their loved ones.

A news blackout will cause those people, helpless evacuees, to suffer longer. Not knowing the full story is the worst pain they face, and the city has helped prolong and make that pain greater by blocking access to news.

He called on Thomas and LeBlanc to reconsider the policy.

(Photo of Mayor Thomas from City of Galveston website)

Labels: censorship, galveston, hurricane ike, media

Three years after Hurricane Katrina, the world’s media has lost sight of the ongoing problems in New Orleans, reports the UK’s Independent, underscoring that “one of the world’s most cataclysmic natural disasters, one made worse by official incompetence and corruption, is almost forgotten.”

Indeed, one can do a search of news reports on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast and find that in many ways the region’s story is vanishing both from public discourse and the mass media landscape.

As The Independent reports:

The visitor to the rackety bars of the French Quarter and restaurants such as Brennan’s, Mother’s and Bayona would have no idea that, even now, there is mile after mile of blighted housing a few minutes from the commotion of Bourbon Street. One third of the city’s population has yet to return, their homes wrecked or demolished, thousands still live in trailers, thousands more are waiting to be paid their rehousing allowance or insurance money. A recent survey published by The Times-Picayune showed that increasing numbers were thinking of leaving the city for good, citing increasing stress, poor health facilities, crime and corruption.

Instead, coverage by the international and national news media in the run-up to the anniversary is negligible, with only a report by the news agency Reuters contrasting the elegant streets of the French Quarter with areas like New Orleans East, where “many houses slowly rot, still bearing on their walls the painted marks left by the US military to show whether corpses were inside.”

“I don’t think [New Orleans is] on people’s minds,” Times-Picayune’s editor Jim Amoss told The Independent. “We have to contend with those voices, particularly on pop radio, which say ‘New Orleanians with their eternal whining – why don’t they pull themselves up by their boot straps?’”

Yet, even as the larger media outlets have lessened reportage on the region, many local bloggers continue to keep a critical eye on recovery. As The Times-Picayune reported, bloggers and online activists can and do play an important role in telling the stories of Gulf Coast residents and in covering the recovery.

As the three-year anniversary approaches and beyond, we at Facing South will continue to report on the troubled recovery and the continued barriers to rebuilding in the region. The stories of residents of the Gulf Coast remain important not only to the South, but to the nation.

Labels: Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, katrina three-year anniversary, media, media coverage, new orleans

Last Sunday, the New York Times Magazine ran a gushing profile of Jim Rogers, the CEO of Duke Energy in Charlotte, N.C. Penned by staff writer Clive Thompson, who found his subject "charming and natty," the article repeated the oft-heard praise that because he acknowledges the threat of greenhouse gas pollution and the need for his company -- the nation's third-largest carbon emitter -- to do something about it, Rogers is an "environmentalist." Why, he even talks to scientists:

For years, he has opened his doors to the kinds of green activists who would give palpitations to most energy C.E.O.’s. In March, he had breakfast with James Lovelock, the originator of the Gaia theory, which regards the earth as a single, living organism, to discuss whether species can adapt to a warmer earth. In April, James Hansen, a climatologist at NASA and one of the first scientists to publicly warn about global warming, wrote an open letter urging Rogers to stop burning coal -- so Rogers took him out for a three-hour dinner in Manhattan. "I would dare say that no one in the industry would talk to Lovelock and Hansen," Rogers told me.

It's true that Rogers, a former reporter, has cultivated a green media image. Of course, he's had some help with that from Duke Energy's formidable in-house public relations department, and private P.R. firms including California-based Marston+Marston and Grossman Strategies of New York. Then there's Duke's army of lobbyists in state capitals, and its Washington-based political action committee, which so far in the 2008 federal election cycle has spent about $900,000 on various politicians, according to OpenSecrets.org.

But is Rogers really the green dreamboat the Times makes him out to be? Let's examine some of the claims in the magazine's mash note:

* QUESTIONABLE CLAIM #1: Duke's coal-fired plants "produce clean air."

Thompson visited the company's massive Cliffside coal-fired power plant in Rutherford County, N.C. to check out its pollution control equipment. Speaking to him afterwards, Rogers said, "Sometimes I tell people that Duke is really just a company that processes chemicals to produce clean air, and we get electricity as a byproduct." Thompson didn't examine this claim further.

So how clean is the air produced by Duke's facilities?

According to Cliffside's toxics release inventory, the plant emitted more than 4.2 million pounds of toxic air pollution in 2006 alone -- including some 3.7 million pounds of hydrochloric acid, 265 pounds of lead, and 174 pounds of mercury. And that's the pollution from just one of the company's coal-fired power plants. In 2006, Duke's 14 coal plants across the Carolinas, Indiana and Kentucky emitted more than 61 million pounds of pollution -- including more than 48 million pounds of hydrochloric acid, 8,000 pounds of lead, and 2,700 pounds of mercury. This year, researchers at the University of Massachusetts identified Duke as the nation's 13th-largest corporate polluter, having more than doubled its total emissions of toxic chemicals since 2002 to 80 million pounds per year.

Meanwhile, Duke has fought requirements to clean up its emissions. Last year, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a lower court decision and ruled that Duke violated the Clean Air Act when it modernized its coal plants without buying required pollution control equipment.

* QUESTIONABLE CLAIM #2: The pollution-scrubbing process at coal-fired power plants produces harmless byproducts.

During his visit to the Cliffside plant, Thompson viewed the massive pollution scrubbers that capture sulfur dioxide pollution. "The process produces gypsum," he wrote, "a safe and inert mineral, which Duke sells for use in drywall."

It's true that the air pollution scrubbing process produces what's known as flue gas desulfurization sludge, which is used to make a synthetic form of gypsum processed into wallboard and other building products. But that's just one kind of waste created from burning coal; there's also fly ash, bottom ash and boiler slag. These coal combustion wastes contain toxic pollutants such as arsenic, lead and mercury. They're also a fast-growing pollution source: The volume of CCW produced nationally increased by more than 30 percent in 2004 alone due to laws aimed at controlling acid rain, according to an Environmental Protection Agency report [pdf].

Because the federal government doesn't regulate CCW as hazardous waste, most of it ends up being dumped in unlined and poorly monitored landfills, surface impoundments or abandoned mines. A 2000 report by the nonprofit Clean Air Task Force found there are 60 places around the country where CCW has degraded public ground and surface waters to the point they're unusable.

Duke has its own problems with CCW pollution. Earlier this year, the Charlotte Observer reported that state records indicate potentially unsafe levels of toxic arsenic, boron and selenium in groundwater beneath Duke's coal waste dumps, and an Indiana community has discovered boron contamination of groundwater coming from waste dumps at Duke's Gibson Generating Station.

As far back as the 1970s, CCW pollution from Duke's Belews Creek Steam Station in North Carolina caused the widespread selenium poisoning of the adjacent Belews Lake ecosystem, where fish suffered deformities and 19 out of 20 fish species were eventually wiped out.

* QUESTIONABLE CLAIM #3: Coal is cheaper and more accessible than other energy sources.

Thompson paraphrased Rogers making this claim while explaining Duke's plan for reducing the company's reliance on coal, but he didn't scrutinize it.

The fact is, coal is relatively cheap on today's energy market only because coal profiteers like Rogers have been successful in shifting many of its associated costs to the public.

What would the price of coal be if it included the cost of hospital visits and medical treatment for asthma and other illnesses in people forced to breathe coal-plant pollution? If it included the billions paid in public medical benefits to former miners, many of whom suffer from black lung and other job-related health problems? Or the value of forests destroyed by acid rain, landscapes ruined by strip mines, waters rendered unfit to fish because of mercury contamination?

And what's the cost of the coal industry's wholesale destruction of Appalachian communities through mountaintop removal mining? Besides West Virginia, North Carolina is the largest consumer of coal mined by mountaintop removal, thanks in large part to Duke Energy. The company is the nation's third-largest consumer of coal mined via mountaintop removal, in which explosives are used to blast apart mountains to get at the coal, with the resulting debris dumped into nearby river valleys. The practice has destroyed more than 470 mountain peaks, polluted more than 1,200 miles of headwater streams, and wiped out some 800 square miles of diverse ecosystems across Appalachia.

* QUESTIONABLE CLAIM #4: Rogers' Save-a-Watt efficiency plan is simply "brilliant."

Thompson reports on Duke's proposed Save-a-Watt efficiency program, which would allow the company to charge higher rates for its electricity in exchange for reducing customer usage. His sole sources about the program are Rogers and former President Clinton, who calls it a "brilliant idea."

But in North Carolina, the program has drawn opposition from a coalition of environmentalists, consumer advocates and conservative policy wonks.

In an opinion piece published earlier this year in the Raleigh News & Observer, co-authors Daren Bakst of the right-leaning John Locke Foundation think-tank and Shana Becker of the N.C. Public Interest Research Group with help from Pete MacDowell of the N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network called on the state Utilities Commission to reject Duke's proposal. They noted that Save-a-Watt would require consumers to pay for lost sales based on the company's own speculative projections and would have a disproportionate impact on the poor.

Others have criticized the program for excessive profits and for focusing too much on load shifting -- that is, moving power use to off-peak hours when it costs less to generate, which doesn't save energy.

* QUESTIONABLE CLAIM #5: The people who oppose Duke's plan to build a new 800 megawatt coal plant at Cliffside are "elites."

At Duke's annual shareholders' meeting in May, a dozen people stepped up to the microphone and lambasted Rogers over the company's plan to build a new 800 megawatt coal-fired power plant at Cliffside, voicing concerns about its impact on climate and its dependence on coal mined via mountaintop removal. (The company's original plans called for two new plants at Cliffside, but that proposal was rejected by state regulators.) Rogers is reportedly "annoyed" by opposition to the plant -- and he accuses the protesters of being "an eco-elite" unsympathetic to working-class families' need for affordable energy.

In fact, the movement to stop the Cliffside plant involves a broad cross-section of North Carolinians -- students concerned about the climate, mothers worried about mercury, doctors alarmed by increases in pollution-related illness, people of faith distressed by the destruction of Appalachia. The Canary Coalition -- a grassroots clean air advocacy group that organizes weekly boycott actions to stop the new Cliffside plant ---reported in a press advisory this week that it's grown to the point that it's now financed by its members alone and no longer needs to rely on "industry funded grant foundations" or "government funds."

It's unlikely that many of the Canary Coalition's members are as "elite" as Rogers himself, who was paid about $9.9 million last year in a compensation package that includes personal use of company aircraft. Few of them probably live in mansions like his, either.

Labels: coal, coal combustion waste, Duke Energy, Jim Rogers, media, new york times, toxics

The latest Institute Index -- about deep budget cuts at newspaper publisher McClatchy Co. -- as featured in our e-newsletter Facing South. If you don't get Facing South, sign up now in the box in the upper right hand corner!

Size of workforce cuts announced this month by California-based newspaper chain McClatchy: 10 percent

Jobs lost: about 1,400

Jobs lost at the Miami Herald: 250, or 17 percent of the workforce

At the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer: 123, or 11 percent

At the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer: 70, or 8 percent

At the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader, which is unionized: 17, or 4 percent

Annual savings expected as a result of the cuts: $70 million

Year McClatchy went heavily into debt to buy the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain: 2006

Debt remaining from the deal even after McClatchy sold a dozen former Knight-Ridder papers in slow-growing markets: $2.5 billion

Proportion of McClatchy ad revenue that comes from papers in Florida and California, which have been hit hard by the housing market crunch: more than 1/3

Fall in sales of print ads in the first quarter for U.S. newspapers overall: 14 percent

Last time there was such a dramatic quarterly decline: more than 30 years ago

Growth in McClatchy's online audience in 2007: 25 percent

In the first quarter of 2008: 41 percent

Gain in online ad revenue McClatchy reported last month: 12.9 percent

Drop in McClatchy's stock price in reaction to the job-cut announcement: 13 cents, to $8.02

Fall in company's stock value over the past year: more than 70 percent

Shares of McClatchy stock CEO Gary Pruitt beneficially owns: 13 million

Last year's pay for Pruitt: $4.6 million

Pruitt's additional bonus in 2007: $800,000

Salary of a newsroom aide laid off from one McClatchy paper: barely $20,000

Year in which McClatchy was founded by an Irish immigrant fleeing the potato famine: 1857

Labels: facing south, institute index, mcclatchy, media

Beside the bullying behavior of Big Energy, another troubling aspect of the story about environmental activist Panagioti Tsolkas' spirited fight against Florida Power & Light's expansion plans has been the media coverage.

Writing last week for the Palm Beach Post's "Seeing Green" blog, for example, reporter Christine Stapleton called Tsolkas a "self-described anarchist." She also deployed the "anarchist" label in the post's headline.

Now, could you imagine a Big Media reporter calling the CEO of a Big Energy company a "self-described capitalist"? Or the director of a Big Green organization a "self-described social democrat"?

What's the rhetorical purpose of a designation like "self-described anarchist"? To let readers know they shouldn't take the activist's ideas seriously because he inhabits the political "fringe" -- even though some of the United States' most prominent intellectuals inhabit that same "fringe"?


Also troubling is the unwillingness of some Big Media reporters working the Big Energy beat to call a spade a spade.

Take for example a June 11 story on a public hearing about Progress Energy's plans to build a new reactor at the Shearon Harris nuclear plant near Raleigh, N.C. News & Observer reporter John Murawski included the pro-nuclear comments of one Nina Cann-Woode, who he identified as a field representative of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition.

But Murawski did not identify the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition.

Guess it's a grassroots group like Tsolkas' Palm Beach County Environmental Coalition?

If so, guess again.

It's actually a public relations campaign for new nuclear reactors funded by the nuclear industry's trade association and headed by former Bush Environmental Protection Agency administrator Christine Todd Whitman -- a fact anyone could learn with a quick visit to the Center for Media and Democracy's SourceWatch website.

But when the swarmers at the N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network contacted the newspaper to ask for a clarification, they were told to write a letter.

For the opinion page.

Labels: energy policy, Florida Power and Light, media, NCWARN, news and observer, north carolina, nuclear power, palm beach post, Progress Energy

Newspaper publisher McClatchy Co. announced today that it was slashing 1,400 jobs -- 10 percent of its national workforce -- in the largest budget cuts in its history.

The issue was the same facing other newspapers -- loss of print advertising revenue. The impact will be felt especially in the South, where McClatchy owns 15 newspapers -- more than any other part of the country.

News rooms and reporting budgets will feel the knife, although McClatchy insists cuts in news reporting will be less than that seen at Gannett and other chains.

A survey of the cuts at various Southern papers shows some will be affected more than others:

[The] Charlotte Observer plans to cut 123 jobs, or 11 percent of its work force, the paper reported on its website on Monday. The Miami Herald plans 250 job cuts, or 17 percent of its work force [...]. The Herald-Leader in Lexington, Kentucky, by contrast, is dropping 17 positions, or about 4 percent.

The McClatchy saga echoes the realities behind the broader newspaper shake-out. The problem isn't necessarily declining readership -- online readership grew 41% in the first quarter of 2008 at McClatchy papers -- but an economic mis-match between declining ad revenues and shareholder demands for high profit margins on one hand, and the money needed for in-depth reporting on the other.

As Thomas Jefferson said, "Information is the currency of democracy." In-depth investigative reporting is vital to the health of our politics and culture whether it turns a buck or not. The newspaper business model may be on the way out, but the need for fearless, independent media -- like this blog and others -- is needed now more than ever.

Labels: charlotte observer, herald-leader, mcclatchy, media, miami herald

This past weekend, I attended the National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis. Organized by Free Press, the nation's largest media reform organization, the conference drew some 3,500 journalists, scholars, activists and concerned citizens for three days of lectures, workshops and panel discussions on the state of our nation's media at this critical moment for our democracy.

Some of the conference highlights included an opening talk by Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig on the connection between battling government corruption and media reform; Saturday morning's keynote address by the legendary Bill Moyers, who in the words of singer-songwriter Arlo Guthrie called on us to "rekindle the patriot's dreams"; a Saturday night speech by Dan Rather that blasted the corporate press for its emphasis on boosting profits over delivering critical information; a packed screening of Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro's new film "Body of War"; and a rousing closing speech by Van Jones of Green for All about the moral responsibilities that come when a reform movement makes its way into the corridors of power. There were also moving presentations by journalist Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, the Rev. Lennox Yearwood of the Hip Hop Caucus, and Bleeding Afghanistan author Sonali Kolhatkar.

There was just as much interesting action taking place outside the lecture halls. The Institute for Southern Studies was among the dozens of organizations set up inside the exhibit hall, where we had the chance to pass out our publications and talk one-on-one with an amazing array of journalists and activists from across the country. BirchBark Books, an independent bookstore founded by renowned author Louise Erdrich, was also there as the conference's official bookseller. And attendees had the chance to create their own sessions on a wide range of topics and to gather to talk about what's happening around media reform in various regions of the country.

Not surprisingly, the gathering inspired a backlash from some in the corporate media it critiqued. Before the conference even began, Bill O'Reilly of Fox News attacked it on the air as a gathering of "crazy" people and "real nuts." He also sent a producer to accost Moyers in what Democracy Now! called an "animated confrontation" -- a description that could also apply to filmmaker Robert Greenwald's response to the presence of Fox News at one panel discussion.

My head is still spinning as I try to digest all of the information I took in over the last three days. I'll be writing more about some of what I learned as well as linking to other attendees' thoughts. In the meantime, visit the Free Press Web site for more information. And if you haven't already signed up to receive the group's action alerts and other materials, please do -- for the sake of our democracy.

Labels: Free Press, media, National Conference for Media Reform

A new study by scientist Tom Knutson and colleagues offers a little bit of good news for the hurricane-battered South.

A meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's fluid dynamics lab in Princeton, N.J., Knutson says that global warming isn't the culprit behind the recent increase in Atlantic hurricanes -- and that warmer temperatures will actually reduce the number of hurricanes overall as well as those making landfall. That's a significant finding coming from Knutson, because he previously raised concerns that global warming would lead to a jump in hurricanes.

Knutson's latest findings were reported by Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press. It was interesting to see how the AP article was treated by some of the outlets that ran it.

For instance, the newspaper I read over my coffee every morning -- the Raleigh News & Observer -- published much of Borenstein's story, including concerns that other scientists have raised about the weaknesses in Knutson's work. But the print edition left out this arguably critical passage that appeared in the original:

It's not all good news from Knutson's study, however. His computer model also forecasts that hurricanes and tropical storms will be wetter and fiercer. Rainfall within 30 miles of a hurricane should jump by 37 percent and wind strength should increase by about 2 percent, Knutson's study says.

And Knutson said this study significantly underestimates the increase in wind strength.

While the N&O's online edition did include that passage, this information is just as important for those of us who pay to get our news on paper.

Thanks to Jim Warren of N.C. WARN for bringing this to my attention. Warren also points out that the AP story's frame is "far different" from the reports on the Knutson study that ran in National Geographic and Science Daily, which he observes are "more balanced about the likelihood of more intensity in storms that do occur, and the overall uncertainty about the new findings."

Labels: climate, global warming, hurricanes, media, NCWARN

We got an anonymous comment yesterday from someone responding to Chris's recent post about the South Carolina church sign asking if "Obama" and "Osama" were brothers. As comment moderator, I aim to avoid spreading misinformation in our forum. But I wanted to share this particular comment with readers, because it repeats a lie that unfortunately is believed by too many Americans and that needs to be confronted. Here's the relevant excerpt:

This is just another case of "just don't get it!" The sign has NOTHING TO DO WITH RACE or POLITICS. It has everything to do with RELIGION. The church is trying to get people in America to get their heads out of the sand and recognize a religious problem. I thought that was what churches were supposed to deal with.

Radical Islamists have declared war on America and the rest of the "Infidels" in the western part of this world. They have very plainly stated their intention is to kill us. They teach it in their schools where Obama attended.

It's true, unfortunately, that radical Islamists have declared war on America and want to kill us. And it's true that there are schools where this ideology is taught.

However, Obama did not attend them.

During his family's stay in Indonesia, the young Obama attended both Catholic and Muslim schools. But the Muslim schools he attended were no more "radical" than the Catholic ones. These were mainstream institutions, where children learned about religion, yes, but also basic subjects like reading and math. These schools were nothing like the madrassas that "educated" Afghanistan's Taliban, where students were taught a narrow interpretation of the Qur'an through rote repetition.

But in fact, the very idea of madrassas as terrorist factories may be mistaken -- at least according to a 2006 Washington Quarterly article titled "The Madrassa Scapegoat" by Johns Hopkins Professor Peter Bergen and Los Angeles Times writer Swati Pandey:

...[C]areful examination of the 79 terrorists responsible for five of the worst anti-Western terrorist attacks in recent memory—the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the Africa embassy bombings in 1998, the September 11 attacks, the Bali nightclub bombings in 2002, and the London bombings on July 7, 2005—reveals that only in rare cases were madrassa graduates involved. All of those credited with masterminding the five terrorist attacks had university degrees, and none of them had attended a madrassa. Within our entire sample, only 11 percent of the terrorists had attended madrassas. (For about one-fifth of the terrorists, educational background could not be determined by examining the public record.) Yet, more than half of the group we assessed attended a university, making them as well educated as the average American: whereas 54 percent of the terrorists were found to have had some college education or to have graduated from university, only 52 percent of Americans can claim similar academic credentials.

For a thorough debunking of the Obama madrassa myth, see Jonathan Alter's Newsweek story from last January titled "Behind the 'Madrassa Hoax,'" which explains how this untruth was spread by right-wing media and used to slime not only Obama but also the Clinton campaign, which was wrongly named as the source of the misinformation. Also, Media Matters for America has assembled a timeline showing how the smear was spread.

Labels: barack obama, Election 2008, hillary clinton, media, politics

At a luncheon for Mississippi's Capitol Press Corps, state Attorney General Jim Hood (D) spoke out about the growing influence of corporate media:

"Something that worries me more so than the war and Iraq and money in politics is freedom of the press," Hood said. "Is our press free anymore? The corporate ownership of the press nationally is a concern to me." [...]

He said he worries that newspapers’ editorials are dictated by out-of-state corporate offices.

Big Media execs don't have to worry about seeing Hood in court anytime soon. As the AP clarifies, "[Hood] said he was not threatening litigation. He simply wanted to express his frustrations."

Labels: jim hood, media, mississippi

We recently brought you the story of Bob Dumas, a controversial disc jockey with Clear Channel's G-105 radio station in Raleigh, N.C. He was the target of a protest by North Carolina's American Indian leaders over derogatory comments he made after learning an intern was getting married to a member of the Lumbee Tribe.

This week, leaders with the N.C. Commission of Indian Affairs accepted an apology from the station and are no longer seeking his firing. That decision followed a meeting with G-105's general manager, who promised that the station will no longer air negative stereotypes of American Indians.

However, the Lumbee Tribe -- which has a history of militancy in the face of racist attacks -- has not been so quick to forgive. Lumbee leaders continue to demand the firing of Dumas and his crew and are calling for a boycott of the station's advertisers. Tribal Chair Jimmy Goins is also urging members to send a letter [PDF] to the Federal Communications Commission requesting an investigation. Said Goins:

"I just want to put G105, Bob and the Show Gram, Raleigh, American Indians and Lumbee tribal members on notice ... I stand willing and ready to push this as far as possible; until Bob Dumas, Mike and Kristin are fired, the show is off the air and bigotry like this is no longer tolerated in the great State of North Carolina."

Meanwhile, Dumas is involved in a new controversy -- this one involving Hispanics.

Earlier this month, a member of his crew visited the Mexican consulate in Raleigh wearing a T-shirt that had taped to it a sign reading "INS," the acronym for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, an agency replaced five years ago by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He approached people in line and asked them what they were doing there, the Fayetteville Observer reported.

Meanwhile, Dumas told his listeners, "It made me a little mad when I saw the giant Mexican flag" outside the offices. He also accused those seeking services at the consulate of being illegal aliens, according to the paper:

Though some of them told Clark that they had come to get passports, Dumas continued with an on-air spiel that they were largely illegal aliens.

"Where are their American papers?" he asked Clark from the studio. "What do they have proving they’re American citizens?"

Dumas concluded that these Mexicans "don’t have American documents."

Then, as the consulate’s [Ricardo] Pintado tried to explain the reasons why Mexicans come to the consulate, Dumas cut him off mid-sentence. Pintado serves as the documentation officer at the building.

"They have zero documentation because they're illegal," Dumas said. "Illegal means illegal, dude."

Pintado told the paper that the stunt frightened some people who had appointments to get passports. He also said he didn't think the comment was racist but showed that Dumas was ignorant about the consulate's work. The director of El Pueblo Inc., a nonprofit advocacy group, sent an e-mail to the station complaining about the remarks, reports the Raleigh News & Observer -- and got a reply from the general manager, who said he didn't understand how the comments "could have been heard as insensitive."

Labels: Clear Channel, FCC, immigration, Lumbee Indians, media, north carolina, race and racism

American Indians and their allies from across North Carolina gathered at the state Capitol yesterday to demand the firing of a Clear Channel station disc jockey who made denigrating remarks about indigenous people. They are also calling for an investigation of Texas-based Clear Channel by the Federal Communications Commission.

While on the air April 1, Bob Dumas, host of a morning radio show on Clear Channel's WDCG "G-105" in Raleigh, teased an intern about her upcoming wedding to a member of eastern North Carolina's Lumbee tribe. Joining in were his co-hosts Mike Morse and a woman who goes by the name of Kentucky Kristin. Dumas began:

"This is the God's honest truth ... now I mean you can look at the statistics,” he said while on the air. "Indians are lazy. Do you know that before you get married?"

Continued Mike Morse and "Kentucky" Kristin on the radio show, "After you guys get married are you going to have a teepee warming party? I hear Pottery Barn is making really great stuff for teepees these days."

Dumas also asked the intern if the groom's grandfather would stand by the road and shed a single tear, apparently a reference to the famous "Crying Indian" ads for the Keep America Beautiful campaign.

In response to public outcry over the statements, G-105 suspended the three hosts for three days without pay. The hosts also read an apology on the air, and G-105 posted another to its Web site that says the station "does not condone inappropriate behavior, language or insensitive remarks."

Among those participating in yesterday's protest were Lumbee Tribal Chairman Jimmy Goins; N.C. Commission of Indian Affairs Executive Director Gregory Richardson; state Rep. Ronnie Sutton, who is a Lumbee; UNC-Chapel Hill Native American Law Students' Association President Candace Harke, also a Lumbee; and members of the Lumbee Warriors Association, a veterans group.

Richardson told the Raleigh News & Observer that Clear Channel had invited Indian leaders to discuss the issue this week, and that they had accepted.

Dumas has been in trouble in the past for controversial on-air statements. In 2003, he was suspended and the station management broadcast an apology after he encouraged listeners to call in with stories about terrorizing bicyclists and said he threw bottles at them. In 2004, he organized a heterosexual pride parade in Chapel Hill and sold T-shirts emblazoned with the phrase "Flaming Heterosexual." That same year, he and another host were suspended for saying on the air that American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino of High Point, N.C. was "ghetto" and "low class."

But Dumas has also used his position to help charities. For example, his "Bus to the Bayou" campaign in the wake of Hurricane Katrina collected enough supplies to fill 11 tractor-trailers, and he helped personally deliver them to the Gulf Coast.

(Photo of Bob Dumas from G-105's photo gallery.)

Labels: Clear Channel, FCC, Lumbee Indians, media, north carolina, race and racism

Remember the curious glitch that prevented a CBS affliliate in northern Alabama from airing the recent 60 Minutes' report -- and that report only -- on the politics behind the controversial prosecution of former Gov. Don Siegelman? Well, the Federal Communications Commission has launched an inquiry into the incident, Reuters reports:

The FCC issued a "notice of inquiry" to WHNT, a CBS affiliate in Huntsville, Alabama, in connection with an outage that cut off a segment of the February 24 broadcast of "60 Minutes," an FCC spokeswoman said.

WHNT, which has blamed the black-out on equipment failure, has 30 days to respond with an explanation of what happened in the incident.

The inquiry came at the request of Commissioner Michael Copps, one of two Democratic appointees on the five-member body. The agency's chairman, Kevin Martin, is a Republican.

WHNT is owned by an investment firm whose founder's family has close ties to the Bushes, and it's managed by Local TV, a company headed by a former Clear Channel Communications executive and major Bush contributor. After initially blaming the blackout on a CBS transmission problem, the station management has since maintained that the problem was caused at the receiving end by an equipment failure that cut off the feed. The station later re-aired the segment twice.

The FCC inquiry comes amid mounting calls from across the political spectrum for Siegelman to be freed from prison and for the case to be investigated. Last week former Former Reagan Treasury official and Wall Street Journal editor Paul Craig Roberts joined the chorus, writing in CounterPunch that Siegelman "was framed in a crooked trial ... and sent to Federal prison by the corrupt and immoral Bush Administration."

Labels: Alabama, criminal justice, don siegelman, FCC, karl rove, media, politics

A top executive at WHNT in Huntsville, Ala. denies that his TV station intentionally blacked out the CBS "60 Minutes" report about the politically motivated prosecution of former Gov. Don Siegelman -- even though the 12-minute blackout came just as the report started, and ended just as the report drew to a close. The New York Times reported yesterday:

"We know what our license means to us," said Stan Pylant, the chief executive at the station. "There were no political motives in this."

Pylant blamed the mysterious blackout on a signal receiver, which strangely enough had no problems receiving CBS's feed up until the report started or after it ended. Somehow it managed to malfunction only during the report on Siegelman.

As we previously noted, WHNT is owned by Oak Hill Capital Partners, an investment company managed by prominent supporters of President Bush, whose former advisor Karl Rove was implicated in the "60 Minutes" Siegelman investigation. But as the New York Times notes, the station is managed by a separate company, Local TV -- whose chief executive, Robert "Bobby" Lawrence, is a former Clear Channel Communications executive and also a major Bush contributor.

In an editorial in today's paper, the New York Times sounds skeptical about WHNT's explanation. The paper points out that in 1955, when Mississippi NBC affiliate WLBT didn't want to run a network report about desegregation, it hung up a sign that said, "Sorry, Cable Trouble." The editorial concludes:

In 1969, the F.C.C. revoked the license of WLBT in Jackson after the commission established a systematic effort by the broadcaster to suppress information about the civil rights movement. Today, broadcast rules have changed, giving stations more leeway to decide what to air. Dropping a single report is unlikely to set the regulators in motion. Still, it would be deeply troubling if a partisan broadcaster could suppress information on the public airwaves and hide behind a technical fig leaf.

In this case, if the blackout was intentional, it may also have been counterproductive. Rather than take attention away from allegations that Mr. Siegelman was the victim of a partisan campaign, WHNT’s technical glitch seems to lend support to the charge.

Labels: Alabama, don siegelman, karl rove, media, politics

WHNT -- the CBS affiliate for northern Alabama where the "60 Minutes" report on former Gov. Don Siegelman's controversial prosecution was blacked out last night -- is owned by Oak Hill Capital Partners. The investment firm was founded by billionaire Texan Robert Bass, the son of oilman Perry Richardson Bass. Robert's brother Ed was a Yale classmate and personal friend of George W. Bush, and along with brother Lee they put up $25 million to finance Harken Oil in the late 1980s while George W. Bush was serving on the board of directors.

The Bass brothers' political action committees donated more than $200,000 to Bush's gubernatorial campaigns, while their personal donations topped $270,000, according to UTWatch.org. Lee Bass was also among the Bush Pioneers in 2000 and 2004, raising at least $100,000 for the presidential campaign in each election cycle, according to Texans for Public Justice.

Meanwhile, Harper's Scott Horton -- who has been following the Siegelman story closely -- reports that the station's general manager initially gave an incorrect explanation for the broadcast failure, blaming it on "network problems." He also notes that the station "was noteworthy for its hostility to Siegelman and support for his Republican adversary."

Labels: Alabama, don siegelman, karl rove, media, politics

Last night the CBS show "60 minutes" aired a powerful report on what appears to be the politically motivated prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman. Unfortunately, viewers in northern Alabama who tuned in to watch the show found a black screen during most of the Siegelman piece. Reports Facing South reader mooncat:

Strange coincidence, but WHNT, the local CBS affiliate in Huntsville AL which covers the northern part of the state, had "technical problems" during the Siegelman segment of 60 Minutes tonight. They showed a black screen for the first 12 to 13 minutes of the show, including most of the Siegelman story.

They caught a lot of flack from viewers and did rebroadcast that segment in its entirety at about 10:20 pm.

The station said the problem was at its end and blamed it on a failed satellite receiver.

Labels: Alabama, don siegelman, karl rove, media, politics

Apparently Muslim extremists aren't the only ones angered by irreverent political cartoons.

Kentucky state Rep. Jim Gooch, a Democrat who chairs the Natural Resources and Environment Committee, is unhappy about the way he's been portrayed by editorial cartoonists because of his efforts to kill a coal mine safety bill and declare global warming a hoax. One recent cartoon showed him basking in a hot tub with King Coal.

In response, Gooch is pushing legislation that would classify editorial cartoonists and editorial writers as lobbyists, which would effectively ban them from the House and Senate chambers while lawmakers are in session. David Thompson, executive director of the Kentucky Press Association, told the Associated Press that the legislation is an obvious First Amendment violation:

"If I had to classify it, I think it's harassment."

But Gooch claims his bill is simply an effort to rein in abuses by a too-free press:

"It’s almost as if they want to silence you," he said. "They want to hurt your credibility. They do it by either trying to make you look stupid or corrupt."

As you may recall, Gooch is the same fellow who held a hearing on global warming but declined to invite any scientists. Instead, the featured speakers were Lord Christopher Monckton, an adviser to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who once called for HIV/AIDS patients to be locked up for life, and James Taylor, a Florida-based fellow with the Exxon-funded Heartland Institute, which a Facing South investigation found has been fighting state efforts to regulate greenhouse gas pollution.

(Photo of Jim Gooch from Kentucky House of Representatives' Web site)

Labels: coal, global warming, kentucky, media, politics

A bullet pierced the window of KPFT, a Pacifica station in Houston, early Monday morning, Democracy Now reports. The bullet missed DJ Mary Thomas, who was hosting a zydeco music show at the time, by less than two feet. Station staff suspect that the shooting may have been more than just a violent objection to the play list: KPFT's transmitter was previously blown up twice by the Ku Klux Klan. Adding to their worry is the fact that the bullet found at the scene is typically used in AK-47 assault rifles. Police are investigating. Meanwhile, the station is soliciting donations to make repairs to its studio; for more information, click here.

Labels: gun violence, media, texas

A fascinating quote about U.S. media, from a surprising source:

The American press is overwhelmingly owned and operated by Republicans who fix the rules of U.S. political debate. And I use the words "fix" advisedly.

It is a press that has generally grown comfortable, fat and self-righteous; and which with some noteworthy exceptions voices the prejudices and preconceptions of entrenched wealth rather than those qualities of critical inquiry and rebellious spirits we associated with our noblest journalistic traditions.

It is a press that is generally more concerned with the tax privileges of any fat cat than with the care and feeding of any underdog.

It is a press that sanctimoniously boasts of its independence and means by that its right to do what its Republican owners damn please.

The press used to be regarded as a public trust, not a private playground.

Who said that? Michael Moore? Noam Chomsky? Hugo Chavez? Find out after the jump ...

Labels: media