Taking a closer look at journalism’s ‘public service’ role

The Rapid City Journal, long known for its lack of genuine affinity for Native Americans, continues on a tenuous and self-righteous path toward the virtual cultural slaughter of not just the local Native community, but of Natives across the state.

A regular feature of the daily newspaper is a “criminals’ corner,” in which dispositional information regarding federal court cases, as well as select state and circuit court outcomes, is published as a matter of course and public record. While the general public is certainly entitled to know – or at least seems to have a somewhat unreasonable, largely insatiable and desperately fatalistic urge to know – who is breaking what laws and where and when those laws are being broken, the Journal has taken that decidedly self-serving belief of America’s highly biased, ethnocentric ranks too far.

The feature is apparently referred to as the “roundup” by Journal staff – a derogatory colloquialism in and of itself that is unmistakably much grounded in the manner of the narrow-mindedness that prevails throughout this agrarian, or agricultural, and very red, or Republican, state. The term was once only applied to livestock.

Most, if not all, of the federally prosecuted cases the Journal obediently, dutifully and mindlessly reports involve Native American individuals. With a sampling of surnames such as Chasing Hawk, His Blue Horse and Left Hand Bull, there is no doubt in any reader’s mind as to the ethnicity of the subjects. And with hometowns ranging from Eagle Butte to Fort Thompson to Mission, doubt most assuredly does not prevail. Any self-respecting Native American should plainly see this for what it really is: a thinly veiled attack on Native Americans in general, whether intentional on the part of those currently in charge at the Journal or not. For most Natives throughout South Dakota, who may have a legitimate “need to know” the criminal behavior of their fellow community and tribal members, the dispositional information, or “federal court action,” eventually published in the Journal is more than likely secondhand news already, especially in cases involving violent crimes such as murder or rape.

In a weak attempt to displace itself from the scrutiny of Natives and to possibly justify the publication of far-flung reservation crimes, a disclaimer of sorts is included at the end of the “roundup” in which the U.S. Attorney’s prosecutorial role is outlined. Nowhere does it specify the reasoning for the publication of these reservation cases. For most newspapers across the state, which regularly publish court records of criminal convictions, the prevailing attitude is that such publication is done as a matter of “public service” or is derived from some twisted sense of a journalistic “duty to report.”.

The set of policies that underlie the feature should be questioned. The practice itself is criminal, though not in the true legal sense applicable under this country’s unfair justice system, and should be immediately ceased. There is no law in place mandating the publication of such information. The Rapid City Journal voluntarily chooses to print the information under the guise of news and has apparently done so for years. The very human perpetrators who continue to ensure that such an obviously prejudicial tradition is carried on, from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of South Dakota, headquartered in Sioux Falls, which supplies the information, to the interim editor, Justin Breen, and publisher, Shannon Brinker, of the Rapid City-based newspaper, need to be asked “Why?” Native Sun News is privy to the same criminal information, but chooses not to publish it in our newspaper.

Those individuals among the general populace who urgently – and dangerously – desire to know the identities of all of those “other” individuals who are convicted of crimes need only contact their local courthouse or, in the case of federal convictions, the appropriate federal courthouse or the U.S. Attorney’s Office to access this very public information.

In the eyes of many Native Americans, the Rapid City Journal is indeed exhibiting criminal behavior by continuing to regularly publish “criminals’ corner” in such a despicably segregated fashion. The feature is a genuine disservice to all of the Journal’s readers, Native and non-Native alike, as it only serves to further criminalize and vilify Native Americans in the eyes of many white Americans. The daily newspaper would do well to scrap the idea.