Tim Giago: Mainstream media lacking in accuracy

Opinion
Tim Giago: Mainstream media lacking in accuracy
Monday, November 27, 2006

Accuracy in the media has almost become a simile for inaccuracy. What is one editor�s version of accuracy can easily be another�s version of inaccuracy. It usually comes down to whose ox is about to be gored.

One would think that with all of its vast resources, a television show such as The Oprah Winfrey Show would be steeped in accuracy. I was on Oprah�s show in 1992 to talk about the use of Indians as mascots and I found her to be a very warm, understanding and compassionate person. So the inaccuracies I saw on her much publicized Oprah and Gayle�s Big Adventure I will attribute to her overzealous and badly informed producers.

With much fanfare Oprah and Gayle showed up on the Navajo Nation. Some Navajo reported that her advance entourage urged the Navajo leadership to stage a �pow wow� for Oprah and Gayle. Well, the Navajo people are not too keen on pow wows and holding them is not a part of their culture. But, as a part of the footage of Oprah�s visit, footage of a pow wow was also a part of her show. Never mind that the pow wow participants were attired in the clothing of the Plains Indians and were dancing the dance of the Plains.

In reconstructing the infamous Long Walk of the Navajo to their incarceration at Fort Sumner, Oprah�s narrator told of how many Navajo died on that long march. But, of course, the narrative would not be as effective without actual photos. The producers of the show dug up some pictures of Indians lying dead in a field. Unfortunately the photos were actually photos of the dead Lakota men, women and children at the Massacre at Wounded Knee. I suppose the producers figured that images of any dead Indian would suffice because after all, who would know the difference.

Many of us Lakota immediately knew the difference because those photos of the dead at Wounded Knee are burned into our minds. It is an event that we commemorate annually.

The History Channel can be infamous for its one-sided version of history. Let me give you two examples of how it applies one set of rules for all occasions. That set of rules is inevitably the one as seen through the eyes of the white producer.

A recent History Channel show covered how forensics was used to search out the true story of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, or as the Lakota call it, The Battle of the Greasy Grass. You see, we even have a different name for the same battle.

In studying the bones of the soldiers recovered at the battlefield, the forensic experts talked about the horrific way in which the soldiers died. There was evidence of knife marks on the skulls leading to the conclusion that the soldiers were scalped. Knife marks in the pubic area suggested the soldiers had been castrated. And on and on. Well, this evidence of how they died is probably accurate, but it is unfair in one respect: What would a similar forensic investigation of the Indian bones of the victims at Wounded Knee or Sand Creek show? How did those Indian men, women and children die? I believe it would show that they also died in a terrible fashion, victims of vicious disfigurement whose body parts were taken as ghastly souvenirs by the rabid soldiers.

But even a kind of happy show about how American cuisine developed can overlook a portion of history as regards the Indian people. The History Channel did a very good show on the history of hotdogs, hamburgers and pizza. When it talked about pizza it talked about the importance of tomatoes in preparing a proper American pizza. They could have talked about the origin of tomatoes because, after all, tomatoes are a product of the American Indian, one that was unknown in Europe before it was discovered in early America. Perhaps if they do a show on the taco they will include the fact that the corn tortilla and jalapeno peppers were also indigenous to Native Americans.

So, as I said at the beginning, accuracy in the media is oftentimes calculated in degrees of perception. What is seen as accuracy by one race of people may not be seen in the same way by another race. For example, as an American of Indian heritage you might be alarmed to learn that your heroes are not necessarily my heroes.

In this day of mass communications I am often appalled at the use of inaccurate material in the media in general. Too often press releases are pulled off the Internet and inserted into the newspapers, broadcast on the radio or viewed on television simply because it is about Indians. I suggest the editor check the article for accuracy also. An Associated Press story of several years ago would lend credence to this observation.

The story goes that a boy from the Rosebud Reservation, a boy who was half Sioux and half Jew, was living in Israel where he was about to have his bar mitzvah and completing this plus additional training, he would return to South Dakota and become chief of all the Sioux. Can you believe this story appeared in newspapers all over America?

Of course it was untrue and a simple phone call by any editor to Rosebud would have debunked it, but no one bothered to do that. The story was funny and an eye-catcher and that was enough for AP to pick it up and run it nationally and probably internationally.

Accuracy is a word with many interpretations, but when it is boiled down to its most common denominator, it is a word that should be incorporated into all aspects of the media.

As Rob Armstrong, my retired friend from CBS Radio was fond of saying, �If your mother says she loves you, check it out.�

McClatchy News Service in Washington, DC distributes Tim Giago�s weekly column. He can be reached at P.O. Box 9244, Rapid City, SD 57709 or at najournalists@rushmore.com. Giago was also the founder and former editor and publisher of the Lakota Times and Indian Country Today newspapers and the founder and first president of the Native American Journalists Association. Clear Light Books of Santa Fe, NM (harmon@clearlightbooks.com) published his latest book, �Children Left Behind."