'Indian Country Today' Seeks PBS Newscast

By: Mark Fitzgerald Indian Country Today, the national weekly newspaper, is looking to start a newscast on PBS to expand its audience -- and influence -- from Native Americans to the general public.

"We've been looking at strategies on how to address the public-perception issues within mainstream media that tribes are concerned about," Indian Country Today Executive Editor Tim Johnson told E&P Wednesday. "Even in this day and age, the American Indian is cast as the bad guy."

Despite a readership that includes not only ordinary American Indians but also inside policymakers of tribal and non-Native government, Indian Country Today has essentially been preaching to the choir, Johnson argued. "In some ways it's an audience already aware of what's going on with American Indians," he said, "and yet the public perceptions in the mainstream media are created by groups that are adverse to Indians on issues" such as historic tribal land claims and Indians casinos.

The proposal to create "Indian Country Today on TV," which was first reported Monday in a New York Times article by James Ulmer, is still in the very early stages of development, Johnson said. The idea of a television newscast, he said, came from Peter Golia, vice president of the Communications Group, the business unit of the Oneida Indian Nation of New York, which owns Indian Country Today.

Tribal leaders, Johnson said, had been angered by coverage, especially in a Time magazine cover story on Indian casinos, that they believed "while accurate in some parts at least lacked context." This would not be the first foray into television for the Oneida Nation, which operates a casino resort and other businesses in upstate New York. In 2003, it financed a documentary on American Indian dance that was shown on the NBC network, the Times reported.

Oneida leaders have not interfered with the newspaper, Johnson said, since buying it in December 1998, and moving its operations to New York state from South Dakota. "Our stance ever since has been that nothing comes between the editors and the printers," Johnson said. "They have not asked us to publish anything, to write anything or to not write anything."

PBS would be a credible and natural partner for Indian Country Today, Johnson said. "We already have a national network of reporters and correspondents, and have editors in place to guide the content, so it's just a matter of doing it on video or digitally or however you do it these days," he said.

"The need for American Indians now is to really find appropriate avenues to communicate with the broader American public," Johnson added. "We really have enough communications venues to talk among ourselves. That's there, especially with the Internet today. we've done that -- now we have to focus everybody's attention."