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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Utah reporter casualty of Sept. 11 |
Current rating: 0 |
by Jackie Anderson
(No verified email address) |
31 Dec 2001
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I worked as a staff reporter/photographer at the Sun Advocate in Price, Ut. for 3 years. Prior to that I was a junior high school English teacher. Being a journalist was a life long dream for me. |
I worked as a staff reporter/photographer at the Sun Advocate in Price, Ut. for 3 years. Prior to that I was a junior high school English teacher. Being a journalist was a life long dream for me. It was more a calling than it was a job. Although the Sun Advocate is a small, twice weekly publication reaching a local readership of only 20,000, I felt like I was part of something bigger and more important. I took seriously my role as watchdog for the community and considered balanced and responsible journalism a sacred obligation.
That all ended on Sept. 11. As sickened as I was by the events of that day, my revulsion only grew worse as I witnessed network coverage and the cooperate and government call to war. It stunk of manipulation. I went online to look for the answer to the question I did not see being addressed by TV news- why. The following Monday, Sept. 17, I wrote the op-ed piece that reflected what I had learned. It was completed by early afternoon, approximately 3:00 p.m. I told the editor, Lynnda Johnson, that the piece was saved to her file. The paper is published on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Although my piece was finished and ready to go by early afternoon of production day, it did not run in Tuesday's edition. I asked the editor on Wed. if it would run the following day. She said that if there was an opinion page, she was going to keep it neutral because the paper had been inundated with letters to the editor regarding Sept. 11 which were not yet typeset. She said my piece would run in the next Tuesday's edition on Sept. 25.
I was suspicious at this point. My editor is usually eager to run my editorials. There was only one other occasion when she did not immediately run one of my op-ed articles, rather she made excuses for several months and then finally dumped blame on the publisher, Kevin Ashby. That piece was critical of the BSA's decision to ban gay leaders. Ashby was a Mormon bishop and long time scout leader in his ward. The piece never ran. I protested the action by refusing to go to the company's "employee appreciation dinner," and turning down the shirt with the Sun Advocate logo, saying that I did not wish to be associated with a newspaper so lacking in professional integrity. It was rather lame, but rankled the publisher nonetheless. I mention this because it gives context to what happened following this latest act of censorship.
Monday, Sept. 24, I had a photo shoot in the morning and several interviews for a story on the voting redistricting and its impact to Carbon County. I didn't get the piece put together until after 2:30. At that time I ran out to grab a sandwich, which I brought back to my desk. I decided to pull up the opinion page and take one more read of my piece before it went to press while I ate my lunch. When I pulled up the page, my article wasn't there. Instead there were two canned editorials, the lead strongly supported military action as a response to terrorism, the second outlined coping skills in light of the event, along with the 4 letters to the editor, all strongly supportive of the war effort. It is important to note that by Sept. 20 the paper had published three other op-ed pieces supportive of war. One was written by the publisher and two by the sports writer. Another piece was published in the Oct. 9 issue which condemned those critical of the war effort, accusing dissenters of blaming the victims for the Sept. 11 attack. This piece was also authored by the sports writer, Rick Shaw.
When I saw that my piece was not slated to run, I went into the editor's office and asked her why. She said Kevin had a problem with it. In my three years at the paper, the only time the publisher sees an editorial is when the editor has decided not to run it and wants the publisher to be the bad guy. So I went into the publisher's office and asked him why my piece wasn't running. I documented his response. He said, "That is not the direction I want to take the paper." The end. Period. That statement does not say to me that he was concerned with the accuracy of some of my facts, which were all accredited. That is, nonetheless, what he and the editor have been claiming as reason why the piece was not run since being repeatedly subjected to interviews by other media.
Following Mr. Ashby's response, I told him straight from my gut, (where it felt like I had been punched), that I didn't know if I could continue to work for his paper, but I did know that I could not finish out that day. I left the office and went to my brother's office at the College of Eastern Utah. I called the editor and requested the remainder of the day off. She asked what was going on and I told her I just needed some personal time. She granted the time off. The phone call was documented by my brother.
The following morning I returned to work as usual. I took some phone calls and then the publisher called me into his office where he closed the door. He then told me to clear my desk, that he was accepting my resignation. I told him that I had not tendered my resignation. He said that by leaving the day before I had quit. I explained that I had followed established procedure and requested the time off from the editor, which had been approved by her. He repeated that I should clean out my desk. I asked if I was being fired. He said that I was. I asked for what cause, and he said for quitting. How does one argue with that kind of logic?
Not only did the Sun Advocate censor my article and then fire me, but they attempted to keep the piece from being published in the college newspaper. Lynnda Johnson put in a phone call to the faculty advisor after the student editor of that publication contacted me requesting to run the piece. Because of the phone call, the piece did not run as scheduled. The Sun Advocate provides the printing service for the college paper and is therefore in position to apply pressure. The article did eventually run, but did not indicate that it had been censored from the community newspaper.
Utah Workforce Services, having conducted interviews with both the publisher and myself, concluded that I was not at fault for the termination of my employment and found the paper culpable for unemployment payments. Mr. Ashby appealed the decision. A hearing was conducted and a judge supported the original decision.
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See also:
http://utah.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=1754&group=webcast
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