Indian coverage

Unless you see the magazine Editor & Publisher, you probably have not heard of a significant First Amendment issue involving the leading American Indian newspaper.

The newspaper, a weekly called Indian Country Today, has been trying for a year and a half to get its Washington correspondent accredited, so that he can enter the Senate and House press galleries, enter the White House and cover presidential press conferences. Correspondents for the Chinese government newspapers Beijing Daily and People’s Daily have press cards. So do representatives of the Kuwait News Agency and the Saudi Press Agency. But not those from this newspaper that serves Native Americans.

On the face of it, Indian Country Today should have had no problem. It has a circulation of more than 12,000, is in all 50 states and a dozen foreign countries. Its Internet edition gets more than 1 million “hits” a month, suggesting a Web readership of 50,000 to 100,000. Editorial offices are in Rapid City, S.D. It has eight reporters, including Jim Adams, who covers tribal affairs in Maine. It covers Indian news, culture and politics. Its access to the Capitol and the White House is especially important because usually the federal government, not the states, deals with Indian affairs. Congress considered more than 300 bills last year involving Indians.

So what’s the problem? The trouble is a quirk in the press gallery rules. The galleries that handle daily newspapers and photographers could have admitted Indian Country Today. But since it is a weekly, it comes under the rule of the periodical gallery, which says an applicant “must be owned and operated independently of any government, industry, institution, association, or lobbying organization.” The gallery committee rejected the application, since the newspaper was bought in 1998 by the Oneida Indian Nation in New York State. It made no difference that the Oneida set up a subsidiary corporation, Standing Stone Media Inc., as owner, to insulate the newspaper from the tribe and ensure its editorial independence.

The newspaper appealed the matter on April 5 to the Senate Rules Committee, which has sat on it for two months. The newspaper’s Washington lawyer, Markham Erickson, says the gallery fears if it issued the press pass it would be flooded with requests from publications by cities, counties and various lobbying groups. He doubts that such publications would meet the requirement that advertising or subscriptions support them. But he has suggested a neat way out: Why not amend the rules slightly, in the interest of equity, and make an exception for “federally recognized Indian nations”?

Editor & Publisher carried a story headed, “First Americans come last” and an editorial declaring it “unconscionable that, when at last an American Indian-owned newspaper is able to cover Indian issues first-hand for an Indian readership, it finds itself shut out of the Congressional press box.”

Mr. Erickson is looking to the Senate Rules Committee rather than the courts to clear up the matter. In earlier cases, the courts have given the gallery committees broad discretionary power and have refused to interfere.

The new makeup of the Rules Committee should help. The new chairman, a Democrat, will be Christopher Dodd, replacing Republican Mitch McConnell. And the ranking Democrat will be Tom Daschle, of the state where Indian Country Today got its start – South Dakota.