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Media needs to look deeper to cover American Indian issues well Posted at Native News by MJLABurt
http://www.boston.com/dailynews/311/region/Media_needs_to_look_deeper_to_:.shtml
By Jennifer L. Brown, Associated Press, 11/7/2002 18:51
NORMAN, Okla. (AP) Mainstream media give superficial coverage to American
Indians, avoiding complicated sovereignty and health issues in favor of
stereotypical casino stories, Indian journalists said Thursday.
''A lot of people are missing the Indian story just because they don't know
what they don't know,'' said Suzan Harjo, a columnist for Indian Country
Today. ''That's happening all across America because America is so used to
looking at us as non-human beings, noncomplex human beings.''
She said many journalists ask the wrong questions and use stereotypical clich
Des in their stories.
'Indians don't roam. Antelopes roam. Buffalo roam,'' she said. ''Indians have
psalms not chants. Indians have religion, not rites.''
Harjo, who was among the speakers at the University of Oklahoma journalism
school's ''Native Americans and the Mass Media'' conference, said mainstream
journalists should dig deeper and tackle the real Indian stories ones that
aren't concentrated on tribal bickering over casinos or Indians building a
totem poll.
George Benge, news executive for Gannett's Corporate News Department and
former editor of the Muskogee Daily Phoenix & Times-Democrat, said tribal
sovereignty, cultural erosion and health issues are important topics being
ignored.
''All too often news coverage is executed in a very shallow, superficial
manner,'' said Benge, a Cherokee who grew up in Lawton.
What's worse, he said, is that some newspapers ignore American Indian issues
completely.
''It would be a mistake to say they are covered poorly because that implies
that they're being covered period,'' he said.
'Many reporters and editors at newspapers think they don't have the faintest
idea how to appropriately cover a Native American community and as a result,
they don't. When they do, all too often, they cover it in terms of
conflict.''
The two-day conference was organized to educate reporters and editors, as
well as encourage American Indian students to choose journalism careers, said
Charles Self, dean of The Gaylord College of Journalism. Oklahoma has one of
the largest Indian populations in the country and is home to 67 nations, he
said.
'We feel the issues for Native Americans in Oklahoma are not getting the
national attention they deserve,'' Self said.
Part of the problem, he said, is that non-Indian journalists do not
understand tribal culture, history or laws.
''It makes it difficult for mainstream journalists to try to go into these
tribes and figure out what's going on,'' he said.
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