The media likes to portray itself as a mirror, an entity that reflects the state of society and represents the public it reports to. But sometimes, as Pamela Newkirk mentions in “The Minority Press: Pleading Our Own Cause”, the media has failed and continues to fail in properly representing a multitude of minority groups that have suffered grave injustices in the past. She concludes that this has led to the “…ever present yearning by distinct groups to assert their unfiltered voices in the marketplace of ideas”. The result is an explosion of newspapers focused on reporting news that is relevant to and represents certain minorities. These papers stretch back to the 1800s with the African American Freedom’s Journal and the Native American Cherokee Phoenix. Both provided platforms for these oppressed groups to express frustrations, ideas, and social injustices relevant to them – most of which had been left uncovered by the mainstream press of the time.
Today’s press is much more diverse but it still carries inherent biases that prevent it from reporting on issues important to certain minorities. The Native Times is in the same vein as the original Native newspaper – Cherokee Phoenix – hoping to cover news that is relevant to America’s original peoples. It is the largest independent Native American news source and is nationally distributed. The top federal news stories have nothing to do with what I had been seeing for the past week on mainstream news. No mention of the Petreus Scandal, no articles on the looming fiscal cliff, and no analysis of foreign affairs. Many of the articles had a connection to the federal political landscape but focused on legislation or issues that pertained to Native American life. The most significant and simple example was the posting of a White House press release that declared November 23rd Native American Heritage Day. This recently came out of the Obama camp and all other news sites, even local ones, failed to even mention it.
But the federal news took a back seat to reservation news. Reservations, after all, are technically a sovereign nation with their own governance and culture. The federal news is taken from AP clippings or White House press releases but articles on native land acquisition or reservation law are produced by the paper’s own writers. From my experience on several reservations, it is safe to conclude that news relevant to reservation law and governance is much more important than anything taking place nationally. Whether this stems from a remaining distrust of the government or a more localized culture is unclear but the fact remains that a native newspaper would be wise in focusing more attention towards news on the res.