More on Native coverage
In my previous post (Are other Montana newspapers doing this?), I wrote “And it is indisputably true that the Missoulian coverage of Indian affairs has been extremely heavy recently — far heavier than the attention given to other Montana ethnic, economic, and social groups.”
One commenter (not very politely, I fear) challenged me to substantiate that statement.
Fair enough.
The Missoulian archive enables one to do a subject search over an extended period of time using a keyword. I decided to survey about a year’s worth of stories. The actual time period was Feb. 3, 2008 (a date I let the program choose) through today, Feb. 17, 2009.
I then entered the names of various ethnic groups, including Indians and Montana’s largest (Germans) and others, such as Norwegians and Irish. I added the Hmong, who have settled in Missoula in some numbers. I also included other sorts of groups – economic groups (such as workers, taxpayers, teachers) and religions.
Here is what I got — the number of stories identified as having each “subject.”
Indians 110
Germans 3
Irish 12
Hmong 1
African-Americans 1
Asian-Americans zero
Norwegians 4
teachers 49
taxpayers 13
professors 22
lawyers 18
ranchers 34
farmers 32
miners 28
loggers 16
truckers 8
Christians 33
Jews, Jewish 4
Muslims 3
Let me be clear: I do not begrudge Native Americans news coverage, and I do not want to give countenance or comfort to racists. But both fairness and good journalism require that papers consider the need to cover other stories as well, and that they apply the same critical standards in all their news coverage.
Good job, professor.
I look forward to reading your research on how “anthropologists and linguists” determined the Hidatsa language group split from the Crow language 930 years ago.
The “challenge” was simply a rhetorical trick, to avoid answering the essential point. This kind of misdirection is not worth addressing.
I would say the Missoulian is not the only daily publication in Montana that spends much of it’s capital on native American coverage. A quick read of the GF Tribune would confirm that observation. I believe I read in an editorial statement the Trib put out a while back something about their ongoing commitment to coverage of “Indian Country”. I’m not certain I understand why, but I suppose it gets down to dollars and cents. I do know nothing brings out the comments on the web version of the paper like a story involving native Americans.
I tried “keyword searching” the Gaz in the past year. The results were 1379 stories with “indians”. Unfortunately, the search brought up the Missoula articles and a host of other Lee papers in combination.
I guess that’s why you’re the professor.
You know, I hate to say anything about your highly scientific methods here, but I call bull crap. I just did the exact same search and it returned 60 matches for the term ‘Indians’. Here, try it yourself.
One of them is this story, where they talk about a trip to East Africa where some UM Students were able to “eat seaweed from the Indian Ocean“, another is about where Torre lost the “American League division series to the Cleveland Indians“. Oh, lets not forget this one, that mentions the book “The Kashmir Paradox – Indian, Pakistani and Kashmiri Views on a 60 Year Turmoil”. Still another talks about the president of Bolivia, an Aymara Indian.
If we are going to critique others scientific methodology, we should watch our own. In the face of this, I would say that it is still incumbent on you to prove the statement:
Shane- Reread the post. The link you provided only searches the last two weeks. You need to do an advanced search of the archives to go back a full year. I did it and it easily backs up Mr. Natelson’s claims. This is where a reasonable man after being made aware of his thoughtless mistake and unfounded caustic accusations would apologize.
Come on Shane, you had to prause several pages just to find the half dozen examples you sited. Maybe there’s one nonrelated Native American story per page, which forecasts a small percentage.
No further explanation needed Rob, they’re grasping at straws.
Swede, the desperation is readily evident when they retreat to their own blogs to personalize their tirades against professor Natelson under the cover of nom de guerres. See Wufgar and the BlackBirds blogs. I give Shane Mason the benefit of the doubt for his error. But he should ‘man-up’ and apologize in my opinion.
I addressed the retreating in the “Manners” post. That being said we shouldn’t be too hard on Shane.
After all he admires Mark T and thinks the remedy to all our economic ills is “cannabis legalization”.
Efforts at replication welcome.
You may get somewhat different numbers depending, for example, on whether you enter “Indian” or “Indians,” “worker” or “workers,” but I think the general results hold up. While there is some slippage for east Indians, there probably would be more subject entries if we added “Native American.”
Shane: You have to remember to do a SUBJECT search, not a word search, and over the full 1+ year time period.
I find it interesting that there were so few results for “taxpayer” — it confirms the general impression of the press coverage held by many of us.
I don’t have time to do it, but it might be interesting to do subject searches under titles like “Republican” “Democrat” “Obama” “McCain” “conservative” “progressive” and other key words.
Rob, you are correct, I misread the dates. With that said, there are obvious reasons why the Missoulian would write more on ‘Indians’ than Norwegian, Irish, German or the hand full of Hmong. Not in defense of anything Lee newspapers produces, I could care less, but I am viewing this conversation with a weary eye my friend.
The most powerful tool for doing news reseach is Google’s Advanced News Archive Search. We use it all the time to generate contrary opinion trades (the mass media is always wrong).
Start here:
http://news.google.com/archivesearch/advanced_search?hl=en&ned=us
Learn to use the tool. Once you have the data you’re looking for, set the View to create a timeline chart.
Shane:
I agree that “there are obvious reasons why the Missoulian would write more on ‘Indians’ than Norwegian, Irish, German or the hand full of Hmong.” However, maybe twice as much, or three times — but not a 25X or 100X.
Actually, my bigger gripe is not the disproportion toward other ethnic groups, but toward other concerns. There are a lot of people out there who are farmers, ranchers, miners, workers — and just about everyone is a taxpayer. But look at the coverage.
Some day I’d like to see as many stories about how small businesses get pushed to the wall by taxes and regulations as about the hardships faced by Indians and other groups. Or about the businesses that DON’T get started and the jobs that don’t get created because of taxes and regs. There would be plenty to write about, but the press is rarely interested.
Stupid shane, stupid
Shane:
I’ve made plenty of mistakes, too.
Anyway, to proceed: If the Missoulian had different priorities, they might do two things: (1) Have Ms. Rave continue to watch the Indian beat (much as Betsy Cohen watches the univerity beat), but require that she also cover very different stories as well.
(2) Have other reporters assigned to subjects that concern the rest of us. For example, a taxpayer columnist might do a semi-weekly column on legislative bills, with a serious focus on qualifying costs v. benefits. (Not just “a million extra, but better schools.”) This sort of thing is supposed to be done by the Lee Bureau in Helena, but there has never been a huge amount of sympathy for taxpayers there.
Also, business could be covered better. Back in the 90s, the Missoulian had a terrific business reporter, but he left to go to New Mexico or somewhere, and the coverage has never been as good since.
Of course, no small newspaper can do everything. It’s not that they need to do more, but that they need a different mix, in my view. Of course, I can’t tell them how to spend their money.
Knight 1 is interested in how “anthropologists and linguists”
determined how Crow and Hidatsa split linguistically 930-
years ago. A little background first.
In the late 1960’s I was the 7th grade teacher at Crow
. Over 90% of my students
Agency (I was very young
(aged 11-13) were dominant Crow language speakers
(the rest were non-Crow). In the fall of 1969 I was
approached by a Ray Gordon, a linguists, about helping
him and others out on a project to translate the Bible
into modern Crow. Gordon was involved with other
linguists (most, but not all of whom were non-Crow) that
desired to match the basic Roman alphabet with the
Crow language. He requested that I select several
students for him to work with that were both strong
Crow speakers, and who had very limited English language
capabilities. The linguists did not like to use Crow
who were proficient in English or too educated; for,
we constantly tried to match Crow sounds and words
so that it made sense to dominant English speakers.
I suggested three or four kids that he might work
with on their time (after school). He, or his funding
group, paid the pupils for their efforts.
Over a period of a decade the linguists developed
a Roman alphabet that completely matched the
Crow language. That is similar to what happen
in Turkey in the 1920’s when Ataturk mandated
that the Turkish language alphabet be Romanized
from Arabic script. Thus, if a Crow child (or adult)
speaks Crow and knows all the sounds, plus understands
the Crow (new Romanized) alphabet, it should be
impossible to misspell a Crow word; for, there is a
100% correlation between spoken and written Crow.
A Crow ten-year old should be able to spell correctly
a hundred Crow words, even if they were Crow words
he had never heard before.
During the entire period of 1969 to 1980 various
linguists involved in the Crow language project
studied the Hidatsa language, from which Crow
evolved. The glottochronologists in the group
came up with some interesting data.
Glottochronology is the branch of lexicostatistics
that studies the rate of replacement of vocabulary
and attempts to determine what percentage of basic
vocabulary two distinct but related languages share.
They use the information obtained to estimate
how long ago they ceased being a single language.
To the amazement of historians, anthropologists,
.
and even linguists, it was estimated in 1980 that
Crow linguistically split from Hidatsa at least 800-
years ago and maybe as long ago as 1000 years.
To date,and to my knowledge, that information
has not been challenged. I (Awé) and others split
the difference and picked the linguistic separation
at 900 years ago (circa 1980). Thus, the Crow
linguistic split happen about 929 years ago (I rounded
off to 930
I hope this answers Knight 1’s question.
Awé, you are awesome. Thank you. What caused it to split?
Rob, this is really silly. You are claiming *bias*, when in fact you are really just dissatisfied with the product. That’s the same (notice, I’m not even using the word ’similar’) to claiming that Ford is biased because they focus on selling trucks instead of luxury sedans. If you want more news about X, then write the seller of X and tell them so.
That isn’t what you’ve done, in these posts. What you’ve done is denigrate the Missoulian for what they are doing, and claiming that they have an obligation to do what you want them to do. No, they don’t. They have an obligation to sell product. That product could be more pleasing to you, but the paper has no obligation to provide that. Where this becomes truly telling is that you defend an obvious racist letter with the awful logic that they owe you what you want instead of what you don’t. I would like to think that you recognize the simple fact that you have attacked the Missoulian, not for failing to provide what you want, but for providing too much of what you don’t. And the “too much” is based solely on racial reporting. They’re giving you too much ‘Indian’, and not enough ‘business’. This isn’t subtle, Rob. That’s a racial qualification for the quality of a story. By almost any metric, that’s a defense of racism you’ve just offered.
I’m certain you could see my response as ‘rude’ or ‘ill-mannered’, but it doesn’t make your argument less silly. Let’s add even more of the silly here. Klemz, at my site, pointed out something that is truly prescient. In a newspaper, any newspaper, you can choose to read what you want. If subscribe to the Comical, and it wouldn’t be difficult to argue that it’s the most wingnut major distribution rag in the state. I only read the headlines (most of which I know from the InterTubes well before it ever hits print), the letters to Ed, the sports page and the comics. I choose what I want to read. Any claim from me the Comical is *too* ‘wingnut’ would be kinda silly. Of course it is, for my taste. Which is to say, I’m not getting what I want from the product.
But we’re not talking about political orientation here. We’re talking about a paper being too obsessed with a race. And the Missoulian’s fixation (just following your lead) with native peoples isn’t just what the writer of the letter which sparked this conversation doesn’t want to read. They are printing articles that offend because they exist, because they deal with Indians. We choose what we read, and this person is offended because of their choice of what they don’t want to read. All of your claims concerning “balance” aside, you have defended that same view; that we can and should be offended by what we don’t want to read. And when that is based on race, it is an easily won argument to state that that is a view that is racist. This isn’t an argument about what isn’t printed. It is an argument concerning the offense of what is.
I don’t have so much a problem with the amount of coverage as I do with the quality of coverage. Rave seems to have no interest in taking a hard look at the tough problems that exist on the reservations, but just wants to paper them over. At least I can’t remember any tough stories shes done in all the time she’s been on that beat.
Just to give an example. The Tribune has a reporter, I think his name is Erik Newhouse, who just did a series of stories on reservation criminal jurisdiction problems. I remember one story he did a few weeks back in which he interviewed a guy who had come to Montana and bought several businesses in or near the Blackfoot reservation. He had hired several tribal members to work in one of his businesses, a restaurants, and someone who worked for him broke into the place after hours and trashed it and stole money. But he couldn’t get tribal authorities to do any thing about it. Newhouse found that was a problem that happened over and over…. that reservation law officers were ignoring crime problems, even the evidence and perpetrators were right in front of them. The upshot is that is outside investors don’t want to invest on the reservations.
I don’t want to make this sound like a white vs Indian thing; it isn’t. This example just popped into my head. Most of the victims of these crimes are tribal members. And there are some real tragedies happening on the reservations. Some good reporting could make life there better.
One of the problems is with nepotism and related matters. Newhouse reported how one of the tribal officials was refusing to extradite one of his relatives to Missoula, where he was wanted on sex crime charges, claiming that the family was being racially harrassed. The problem isn’t just with bungling by tribal officials. The feds, particularly the BIA and Congress, also have mismanaged things.
There is absolutely no reason that Rave couldn’t be doing these kinds of stories, instead of the boring stuff she normally does. She actually could be doing something to improve the lives of the people in Indian country.
Bingo Anon.
Is it true gum shoe reporting, to step over the bodies (so to speak), to get some fluff story?
For instance, in the stories that I searched only a small percentage portray true reservation living. Just mentioning the dark side traits, abuse-domestic and substance, crime-theft and assault, poverty-real and self imposed, will bring down the rath of the self righteous.
But what the hell, I got big shoulders.
The word you need is ‘wrath’. And, on what basis do you posit that you haven’t seen writing about “true reservation living”? Are these “dark side traits” true reservation living? Do inform us all, Swede. What do you know that isn’t being reported, and how do you know it? Inquiring minds want to know … no wrath involved. I just think you’re full of it. Care to prove me wrong?
(Remember, Swede, the letter in question wanted less reservation reporting, not more accurate by your view. Keep that in mind, lest you too look racist to those who actually recognize such things …)
Must have gotten one of those leftover Clinton adm. adjusted keyboards, right olf?
Anon. broached the subject, I confirmed. Do you want crime statistics, reported or not, or just my 30 plus years of experience of owning ranch and farm property next to reservation boundries?
Anonymous:
Good comment.
Newhouse is personally liberal. But he is an example of how, if you have professional discipline, you don’t let your political views stop you from being a good reporter. A few years ago, Eric brought a Pulitzer Prize home to the Great Falls Tribune.
Anon-
Rave was hired to write a specific kind of column for the Missoulian about Native Americans in general – and you’re suggesting that she turn gumshoe on us and become an investigative journalist covering all of the problems with reservation life?
In order to be fair and balanced one has to talk about the issues with Reservations that you deem important? That’s identical to the argument that Rob is making, except for so specific that it makes it even more nonsensical.
When you do a search for Native Americans, Indians, etc. take the time to read the articles. You will rarely see an article stating: a white man of german descent…. a spanish woman from…., or any other race but with Natives, we are usually identified as Native or Indian or by Tribe. I think in fairness, reporters need to state: a white man of ….. descent ….., etc. etc. or what ever. Get real folks, you know as well as I do that Natives are the only ones who are identified as such and they are all full bloods until the White man says they half, quarter, etc. How many partial white men besides Natelson live in this State?
If you don’t like it subscribe to “USA Today”! In addition, you must consider that there are 15+ distinct tribal groups on seven reservations in Montana. So do the math, 110/15 that’s roughly 7.3 stories per tribal group 15.7 stories per reservations. This would put “Indian” related articles between “Trucker and Jews” or “Loggers and Taxpayers”. This leaves teachers, ranchers, Christians , farmers and miners in the top 5. Seems balanced?
Historically speaking, how many of those people were in this country before Caucasions? American Indians. “The People,” is what many tribal nations call themselves. Never, by any color. Why is it Jodi Rave’s fault that all this news is not covered? And what would happen if I were to turn the tables? Why is there so much news about White people? I’m so sick and tired of hearing about White people on the front page. I’m so sick of all the news coverage about White people. Remember how White people came to this country and subjected millions of Indigenous people to genocide? Remember all the terrible things White people did to Indigenous people in America? White people get everything FREE because they live in America. Tell me that is not racist.
Dilussionist (racists) need to get their brains screwed on right and realize that negative statements about ANY ethnic group is racist. It is not only a poor opinion, it is racist. You need to also realize that by speaking out, and supporting that racist letter, you have proved to be an unethical professor. Furthermore, American Indian students will know they can never count on you to understand these things.
Also, if you are so focused on the lack of news coverage, why don’t you ask all the White journalists in Missoula why they are not covering these issues. It was not until Jodi Rave began her career with the Missoulian, that Native issues were FINALLY portrayed positively. White journalists could only report the from a negative perspective, and it’s plainly visibly on your blog, professor. So, as a student, I would like to kindly thank you for all your racist support of NON-Indians in Missoula, MT. And as an American Indian student, thank you for letting me know to NOT count on you. Good luck at the University of Montana!