NATIVE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER CAN'T GET CREDENTIALS

By: Mark Fitzgerald Congressional Press Passes Are Denied


CHICAGO -- Brian Stockes is like any other full-time weekly
newspaper correspondent in Washington -- except he cannot obtain
press credentials for the Capitol or the White House because an
American Indian tribe owns his paper.

"It hasn't limited me in getting to hearings that are public, but
there are certain areas that you have to have those credentials
to enter," said Stockes, a correspondent for Indian Country
Today in Rapid City, S.D.

Stockes' dilemma stems from a little-known rule that effectively
prohibits nearly all Native American publications from qualifying
for congressional credentials, which in turn are necessary to get
White House press passes. The U.S. Senate Periodical Press
Gallery (PPG), which issues press passes for nondaily
publications, will not credential papers owned by governments,
including American Indian tribes. Most Native American newspapers
publish weekly or less frequently and are owned by tribes. "They
are government entities as well. Indians pride themselves on
being part of Indian nations," said David Holmes, director of the
PPG.

The Oneida Nation, which became wealthy operating gambling
businesses based in New York state, bought Indian Country
Today in late 1998 via Standing Stone Media Inc., a
corporation whose only shareholder is the tribe. Managing Editor
Jose Barreiro said the structure removes the paper from tribal
control: "The separation between Standing Stone Media and the
Oneida Nation is taken very seriously. There is a fire wall that
several of us are very attentive to."

But the paper's first Washington correspondent, Mark Anthony
Rolo, said PPG leaders didn't seem to care about that
arrangement. "Once ownership was mentioned, that was it," said
Rolo, now interim executive director of the Native American
Journalists Association. Two other groups that issue credentials
for dailies, news agencies, and broadcasters do not have anything
similar to the PPG's ban on government media. Among those they
have credentialed are journalists with China's official
People's Daily newspaper.

Indian Country Today attorney Markham Erickson appealed
the credential rejection in an April 5 letter addressed to the
Senate Rules Committee, which authorizes the press galleries. The
paper is proposing an amendment to the PPG rule stating, "For
purposes of this rule, the term 'government' does not include
federally recognized Indian nations." He said last week he had
not yet received a response.

Indian Country Today is apparently the first Native
American paper to try for press credentials since 1976, when the
gallery turned down an application from Mark N. Trahant, then
with the Shoshone-Bannock tribe's Sho-Ban News in Fort
Hall, Idaho. "What's interesting is a year later I thought about
setting up shop as a free-lancer, and they said even then I
couldn't get credentials if my clients were government-owned,"
said Trahant, now chairman and CEO of the Robert C. Maynard
Institute for Journalism Education.

Trahant said tribe-owned papers are worthy of press credentials:
"There's a long history of tribal papers acting in the interest
of their readers -- and not their tribal governments. Now,
sometimes, the editors get fired for that, but that's another
story."



Mark Fitzgerald (mfitzgerald@editorandpublisher.com) is editor at large for E&P.



Copyright 2001, Editor & Publisher.