Cherokee Nation considers free-press statute

By The Associated Press

05.17.00

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	Cherokee Nation Chief Chad Smith speaks during Cherokee Nation Inaugural, Aug. 14, 1999, in Tahlequah, Okla.

TULSA, Okla. — Cherokee Nation Chief Chad Smith says if he's not doing a good job, he wants to read about it in the tribal newspaper.

Tribal lawmakers are considering a statute that establishes a free tribal press. The statute would give the tribal newspaper license to print the truth about the tribe "whether it be good, bad or ugly," said Smith, who made freedom of the press an issue while seeking election last year in the midst of a bitter tribal dispute.

Tribal council member Mary Flute-Cooksey said she favors the free-press provision because of the fighting.

She sided with Smith's opponent, then-Chief Joe Byrd, and felt the mainstream news coverage was one-sided against Byrd. An independent tribal newspaper could have provided more balanced coverage, she said.

"I think it should tell everything, not just the wonderful things that happen to make someone look good," she said. "I think it should tell the true story."

The proposed tribal act provides for a press that is free from "undue influence" and particular political interests. It would create an editorial board whose three members would be barred from participating in tribal political activities.

After discussion at a meeting on May 15 in Tahlequah, Okla., tribal lawmakers tabled the issue. Some members had concerns about how editorial board members would be nominated, and about proposed educational requirements for the editor and board members.

Dan Agent, editor of the quarterly Cherokee Phoenix and Indian Advocate, said the act would establish an editorially independent newspaper, something he said wasn't in place when tribal fighting broke out in February 1997.

Agent said Byrd's administration laid him off from his job as the tribe's public affairs director after the newspaper gave "very balanced" accounts of the dispute.

"It continued to publish but basically had nothing in there about the Cherokee crisis," Agent said.

The Cherokees' long newspaper history has been marked by tangles between press and politics.

The tribe began publishing the nation's first Indian newspaper in 1828 in Cherokee and English. When the tribe split over whether to accept or fight removal from its lands in the South, the newspaper's editor sided with removal. Cherokee historians said he was killed by opponents after arriving in what is now Oklahoma.

Indian tribes are obligated to provide press protections under the 1968 federal Indian Civil Rights Act, but tribes interpret that requirement in different ways, said Sam Deloria, director of the American Indian Law Center in Albuquerque, N.M.

"Obviously, there are special problems created when it's the government that owns the newspaper," Deloria said.

Richard La Course, associate editor of the Yakama Nation Review in Toppenish, Wash., has spent years studying issues of free press in tribal media. Seventy of 548 federally recognized tribes have free-press provisions, La Course said. But the Cherokee Nation proposal is unique in its detail and in providing a hearing before the tribe's highest court before an editorial board member could be removed, he said.

"This is the first time that the railroad is laid out after a potential train wreck," he said.

Reporters for tribal publications face the challenge of covering close-knit communities where they may have blood or political ties, La Course said. Added pressure comes from tribal administrators who control the purse strings of tribal publications.

He said, for example, that the Cherokee editorial board created under the proposal leaves room for potential interference down the road.

The proposal calls for three members appointed by the chief and confirmed by the tribal council to establish and enforce editorial policy. The members must have a degree in journalism or related field.

"If the full letter of law is implemented, it shouldn't go awry," La Course said. "But in the real world, things do go awry."

Smith said he had told Agent he doesn't want to see what is going into the newspaper and won't tell him what to write.

"If I'm not doing a good job, he should be reporting that to the people," the chief said.