What Happens On The Reservation …
April 07, 2006
A year ago this week, students at Red Lake Senior High School on the Ojibwa Reservation in Northern Minnesota returned to school after the most deadly school shooting since Columbine. No community can ever be prepared for a tragedy like that. But in Red Lake, the inevitable media frenzy consisted in large part of reporters who knew nothing of Ojibwa culture, and the tribe, whose Constitution says nothing about press freedom, declared much of the Reservation off limits to reporters. Louise Mengelkoch, a journalism professor at nearby Bemidji State University lays out for Bob the anatomy of a coverage breakdown.
