By Les High
leshigh@nrcolumbus.com
Recently, I had the privilege of being part of a panel discussion hosted by the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Media and Journalism to commemorate 100 years of the Pulitzer Prize, the highest honor in journalism.
Six North Carolina newspapers have won gold medals for Meritorious Public Service. Other North Carolina journalists have won individual medals.
The News Reporter and The Tabor City Tribune were the first two non-daily community newspapers to win the public service medal.
The papers won the Pulitzer in 1953 after a three-year battle with the Ku Klux Klan, which had moved from Horry County, S.C., into Columbus County and organized klaverns in several rural areas. There were floggings, marches, kidnappings, threats and intimidations.
The Klan capitalized on fears in the South of segregation and communism to gain sympathy, using lies and exaggerations.
The Klan permeated law enforcement, with the Fair Bluff and Whiteville police chiefs being members. Early Brooks, the Fair Bluff police chief, was a Klan leader. Tabor City had officers who were members.
Willard Cole led the fight at The News Reporter and Horace Carter was sole owner and editor of The Tabor City Tribune. My grandfather, Leslie S. Thompson, was owner and publisher of The News Reporter.
Rusty Carter, Horace’s son, was with me on the panel. We related how Cole, Thompson and Carter were men of principle. They wrote numerous stories and front-page editorials in strong terms, using words like “cowardly” and “hoodlums.”
All three men received death threats and carried guns for protection. The Klan had planned to kidnap and flog Carter and Cole. They might have succeeded had sympathetic Klansmen not tipped them off.
Both papers endured advertising boycotts and subscription cancellations.
Hugh Nance, sheriff of Columbus County, was also a man of principle and joined Carter and Cole in their campaigns. When Klansmen kidnapped a couple and transported them across the state line into South Carolina for a flogging, the FBI stepped in.
There were around 100 arrests. After the first wave, Cole reported, tongue in cheek, that in Fair Bluff, “all you could smell for days was the odor of burning cloth (robes).”
Thanks to the newspapers’ efforts and upstanding citizens across the county, public opinion turned against the Klan, and trials in both federal and state courts resulted in the group’s demise in Columbus County. Justice had prevailed.
Other panelists included John Rainey, representing the Winston-Salem Journal, which won the Pulitzer in 1971 for the paper’s campaign highlighting secretive plans to open strip-mining operations in North Carolina’s mountains. The paper’s campaign effectively prevented the ecological and environmental disaster that strip mining would have unleashed on the North Carolina mountains.
The Charlotte Observer won two Pulitzers, the first in 1981 for reporting on serious health problems endured by workers who breathed dust at local textile mills. The paper won again in 1988 when it unveiled how the Praise The Lord Network bilked unsuspecting people of their hard-earned money to support the lavish lifestyles of charlatans Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker.
The Washington Daily News won in 1991 for reporting a cover-up by the town government that hid the results of water testing revealing high levels of carcinogens in the water supply. Reporter Betty Mitchell Gray explained to the audience how the mayor had told the local television station one night that the newspaper was exaggerating the threat, then boldly drank a glass of water on camera to demonstrate the water’s safety. The next day, the state issued an emergency warning to Washington residents not to drink, bathe in or even smell the town’s water.
The News & Observer won the Pulitzer in 1996 for its reporting on the rapid expansion of commercial livestock operations in eastern North Carolina and how these operations were endangering public health. Reporter Pat Stith said the story took on new meaning when several storms caused holding ponds to breach, spilling millions of gallons of hog waste into waterways.
The common thread among all these stories is that the reporters, editors and publishers had to take on powerful private interests and/or public officials who had little regard for the people they served. Each of these stories required months, if not years in the case of The News Reporter and Tabor City Tribune, of hard work, perseverance, and moral force of character to see that the job was done.
CBS’s Edward R. Murrow, the iconic reporter who was the face of “See it Now,” asked Cole what the newspaper’s campaign and Pulitzer Prize meant to him. “The greatest benefit I’ve received from it,” Cole replied, “is the realization and renewal of faith that an awakened citizenry can defeat any individual or group of individuals who strive to defeat those principles that America stands for.”
Cole was never one to flaunt the Pulitzer. He used it as a paperweight on his desk, saying that awards were insignificant compared to the responsibilities of a community newspaper.
Fast forward to 2017, when the president in his first month of office calls the press “an enemy of the people.” This is unprecedented in the country’s history.
Indeed, the popularity of the press is pretty low, but it’s never been high. Why?
Because the press isn’t supposed to be popular.
A free and untethered press, the Founding Fathers envisioned, would be an adversary to the rich and powerful. That’s why the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights guarantees a free press and freedom of expression.
The press, the only private enterprise specifically mentioned in the constitution and commonly referred to as the Fourth Estate, was designed to be one of the checks and balances against the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.
I believe we’re living in potentially dangerous times that jeopardize our freedoms. When the president calls the free press an enemy of the people, when he personally attacks and insults members of the judiciary and the concept of judicial review, people should take note.
In the rise of autocracies, freedom of the press is always the first freedom to go.
We are living in disruptive and transformational times, which mean our sacred institutions matter more than ever.
When a president, or any elected official for that matter, has difficulty telling the truth or greatly exaggerates it, a free press must hold him or her accountable.
When the federal government prepares to mobilize 10,000 ICE officers and open “detainment centers,” the press and the public must turn an eye toward history and be diligent.
Whether it be the Ku Klux Klan or McCarthyism, a free press and an “awakened citizenry,” as Cole put it, have always risen to defend our freedoms. Let’s pray that continues.
Yes, the press can be unpopular, but it comes with the territory.
A free press is not the enemy. The real enemy are those who oppose it.
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