Amy Goodman reporting on the Dakota Access Pipeline. (image: Democracy Now!)
When Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman asked security guards at the Dakota Access Pipeline construction project why they were using pepper spray and dogs to attack Native American protesters, the guards backed off, taking their mace and attack dogs with them. It was a lesson in how journalism can defend the rights of citizens.
The state of North Dakota had a response to this kind of journalism: It issued a warrant for Goodman’s arrest, charging her with criminal trespassing. This is an extraordinary action; Jack McDonald, a lawyer for the North Dakota Newspaper Association and for the Bismarck Tribune, told the Tribune that in 40 years of doing media law in the state he’s never heard of a reporter being charged with trespassing (9/15/16).
So how did reporters respond to one of their own being threatened with arrest for doing her job? Mostly, they ignored it. The story was covered locally, in the Bismarck Tribune (9/15/16) and the Duluth News Tribune; it was covered internationally, in the British Guardian (9/12/16) and a mention in the Toronto Star (9/13/16); the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Organization for Security (9/12/16) and Co-operation in Europe’s Representative on Freedom of the Media (9/14/16) put out statements calling on the state to drop the charges.
But most national US outlets—the ones who complain about not getting a seat on a candidate’s plane—breathed not a word on North Dakota’s assault on the press’s ability to cover a major story of the moment. (The internet-based Salon—9/12/16—and Mashable—9/11/16—deserve credit as exceptions.) Elite media coverage of a million issues makes clear that they don’t mind taking sides. It’s a real shame they won’t take the side of the right to do journalism when and where it matters.
Box: ‘All of This Is Not a Coincidence’
(photo: Little Redfeather Design/Honor the Earth via Indian Country Today)
Everything is impacted, not just what a person might see on the surface. It’s not just the water, and it’s not just us as human beings. It’s everything that relies on that water, the four-legged, the winged, everything that swims in those waters is impacted, yet doesn’t have a voice to say, no, protect us, we don’t want this either. It’s all of the processes that go into getting that pipe there in the first place—and then that pipe isn’t just here, it’s through several states, in fact.
In the big picture, the long term, what that’s doing is, it’s saying that it’s OK to continue business as usual, when we know that our planet is in climate chaos because of anthropogenic causes, human-induced causes, of messing with our Earth systems and our Earth cycles. We burn these oils and these fossil fuels and we put them into the atmosphere, never knowing the full impact of what it’s going to do.
Well, I should correct myself. We didn’t know before, maybe, at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, but we certainly know now. We know that ethane and methane are causing warming temperatures, which are causing people to be displaced in the island states. In the Philippines, people are being displaced right now. We have all of these storms that are occurring, these hurricanes, and flooding in Louisiana, where my friend Cherri Foytlin down there is fighting to say “another Gulf is possible,” yet she’s cleaning the walls out of her home, cutting the walls out so they don’t get mold, because they were flooded.
There’s fires in California that are burning everything. There’s intense heat in the Northeast. These are related; all of this is not a coincidence. And it’s kind of taking a step back and looking at the big picture and seeing that this is not just a fight about this one pipeline. This is a fight to protect our planet for all of us as humanity.
—Kandi Mossett of the Indigenous Environmental Network, interviewed on CounterSpin (8/26/16) about the mobilization of Native American nations to block the Dakota Access Pipeline
