Some fans may have to throw out their favorite sports team t-shirt

THE Washington Redskins’ NICKNAME AND LOGO WERE “RETIRED” ON MONDAY. (Photo from team website)

Two popular fan choices to replace “Redskins” as the nickname of Washington’s NFL franchise are “Pigskins” and “Red Tails” (in honor of the World War II fighter pilots from Tuskegee, Alabama). I suggest owner Daniel Snyder make everyone happy with a compromise choice of “Pigtails.” (Please push your automated laugh track button now.)

Sports team nicknames can be funny, but the Washington franchise’s adherence to its 87-year-old name in the face of multiple protests in recent decades is not funny. Native American activists brand the name as racist. The franchise cites tradition and says the name pays tribute to the heritage of American Indians. But on Monday, Snyder, who once vowed he would never change the name, agreed to do so. It’s part of a national awakening about memorials and symbols that demean traditionally oppressed groups, but mostly it’s because some big-time corporations threatened to withdraw sponsorship of the Redskins.

I can attest that this is a media issue, also. Somewhere in the early 2000s, when I was sports editor of The Birmingham News, one of our regular high school football correspondents, Veto Roley, objected to use of the team nickname in stories about the Oneonta High School Redskins. I decided that Roley could omit the name from all of his bylined stories but that the name would continue to appear in other reporters’ stories because, well, that’s what the school called itself (and still does). It was a deliberated, judicious decision. And, I now realize, completely wrong.

“Redskins” has carried derogatory connotations for most of its history. The stated intent of an adopter doesn’t change that. I’m aware of polls that found most Native Americans do not find the name offensive, but I put more stock in a larger, more recent study by the University of Michigan that surveyed Native Americans who engage in cultural practices and concluded the opposite.

The NFL team’s decision doesn’t put the issue to bed. According to the MascotDB database, 123 high schools or colleges still use “Redskins” and 50 still use “Redmen.”

Roley, who is now a teacher in Mississippi and has Creek Indian ancestry, maintains his objection to the name “Redskins” today. He looks at it from the context of “an unrelenting war of physical and cultural genocide against Native Americans” from the time of Columbus through the middle of the 20thCentury.

But is it the media’s place to judge? Some already have. A Pew Research study in 2013, when the issue was again in the news, found about a dozen news outlets and a dozen individual journalists who had stopped using “Redskins.” More followed. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune was among the earliest – in the early 1990s. “My sports staff was not happy and criticism came from many corners,” Star-Tribune editor Tim McGuire wrote. In the city where the NFL’s ex-Redskins play, The Washington Post does not use the name on its op-ed pages but does use it in news stories.

OH GOSH. MAYBE JUST IGNORE EVERYTHING I WROTE IN THIS POST.

The debate for the sports world and its media is even broader than “Redskins.” Many advocates for Native Americans seek eradication of all nickname references to Native Americans, such as “Indians,” “Braves,” “Chiefs” and “Blackhawks.” According to a New York Times search of the MascotDB database, more than 2,200 high schools use Native American imagery in their names and mascots, in addition to several pro teams. That number has been trending downward, in part because some states have banned public schools’ use of “Redskins” or Indian-related names in general.

Roley says those more mainstream names aren’t slurs, but he finds some offshoots of the names – logos, Indian war dances, fans in stereotyped dress – to be disrespectful. “When we use caricatures and comical representations, we dishonor Native Americans,” he says. Pro teams have eliminated many of those offshoots, but the Atlanta Braves and the Chicago Blackhawks said earlier this month they won’t change their nicknames. The Kansas City Chiefs haven’t commented. The Cleveland Indians, however, announced a review of their name.

Teams that continue to use Indian-related names are obligated to establish ties with today’s tribes and to educate the local community about them, Roley says. He commends Florida State, for instance, for its close relationship with the Seminole tribe. At the pro level, he says, franchises “can lead the way by educating the public about American Indian culture and history, not with poorly thought-out, slapped-together displays put in the corners of the stadiums, but with living history and museum-quality exhibits that are in the center of the stadium.”

University of Alabama professor Dr. Andrew C. Billings, a department colleague, co-wrote a book on this subject in 2018, “Mascot Nation: The Controversy over Native American Representations in Sports.”  The current discussions represent progress, he believes. The public attaches different degrees of acceptance to names, to images and to rituals. For his book, Billings surveyed 1,000 people and found that the Atlanta Braves’ nickname had the highest acceptance rate among Native American names, but acceptance was much lower for the fans’ Tomahawk Chop. So the debate for that franchise someday might be whether it has to ditch the name in order to ditch the chop, he says.

Billings thinks the best trigger for change might not be the Washington NFL franchise’s decision – because “Redskins” stands out in its overtness – but rather a decision by the Cleveland MLB franchise to drop its more common name of “Indians.”

As long as schools and pro franchises keep using such names, the media must reckon with their policy on use. Yes, team nicknames are a bread-and-butter part of a traditional sports story. But I can think of numerous instances of media foregoing certain facts as a matter of policy when publication of such facts causes harm to people. That is the case with “Redskins.” Ceasing to publish other Indian-related nicknames would seem like overzealous correctness and a lack of local pride. But it would be a meaningful act of respect for the cultural diversity of the nation. And maybe you’d have no regrets in 20 years.

“Changing the way we talk is not political correctness run amok. It reflects an admirable willingness to acknowledge others who once were barely visible to the dominant culture, and to recognize that something that may seem innocent to you may be painful to others.””

— Slate editor David Plotz on the decision to stop publishing "Redskins" (poynter.org, 2013)

Sometimes, media have to remind government who it works for (that’s you)

Imagine giving some money to an investment broker and when you later ask what the broker did with it, you’re told it’s none of your business. I see no difference between that and what agencies of state and local governments in Alabama do whenever they reject or ignore a citizen’s request for government records.

This happens too often in Alabama and elsewhere:

• In June, the City of Decatur denied open-records requests by multiple media outlets for disciplinary records of a police officer involved in a physical assault of a storeowner.

• In May, the environmental advocacy group GASP and the Environmental Defense Alliance filed a lawsuit against three State of Alabama agencies that have denied access to emails involving state opposition to a federal environmental cleanup of a North Birmingham neighborhood.

• Last year, the state Attorney General’s Office (one of the agencies sued by GASP) rejected a request by an Alabama Media Group reporter to see a contract signed with an industrial safety expert as part of a new plan to allow death-penalty executions by nitrogen gas.

• In 2017, WBRC-TV asked to see the $2.6 million contract between the City of Birmingham and a company called ShotSpotter that detects gunshots and pinpoints their location. The station also asked for data compiled by ShotSpotter. Three years later, the city still has not provided the data or even the contract.

• You’d think that in a pandemic, when smart behavior depends on having full and accurate information, that there’d be no secrets. But you’d be wrong, as shown by the Alabama Department of Public Health’s refusal of an AMG request to identify individual state-licensed nursing homes that have reported coronavirus cases.

In each of these cases, there is a legitimate public interest. And in each of these cases, the reason cited for rejection was an incorrect interpretation of Alabama’s open-records law. For more examples of valid records requests that were denied or ignored, read this alarming commentary written in July 2019 by WBRC News Director Shannon Isbell.

Government should be an open book. The access rights of the public spring from the public tax money that supports government, from the implicit pact made between voters and successful candidates during election campaigns, and from the open-records and open-meetings laws of every state.

Which brings up a big honkin’ problem in Alabama. Our open-records law is terrible.  It mandates that citizens can see all public writings – printed or electronic – unless a specific law says otherwise. So far, so good. The fatal flaws are these: no specified time period by which a government agency must respond to a records request; no appeal process (other than a court of law) if an agency turns down a request; and no clear definition of reasonable copying costs. So, governments in Alabama can quash the public’s rights by perpetual delay, or with outlandish fees, or by groundlessly denying a request knowing the requester probably doesn’t have the money to go to court.

Several members of the state media have said publicly that Alabama’s law is the nation’s worst. Some research says they’re right. University of Arizona professor David Cuillier examined open-records data from 2014 to 2017. The lowest compliance rate in the nation – at a ghastly 10 percent – belonged to Alabama.

A bill sponsored by Sen. Cam Ward of Alabaster and Rep. Chris Pringle of Mobile to fix the problems with the state’s law regrettably died in a legislative committee in February. The main opposition? Local governments, which claimed compliance with a stronger law would impose too much burden on the small staffs of some cities and counties. No one ever explained how other states manage to do it. And I’d like to note you’d never hear a small police or fire department claim that responding to the public is sometimes just too burdensome to do. 

All of this matters not merely because of concepts of ideal government. There are tangible consequences. Research such as Cuillier’s has shown that less openness correlates with more waste and fraud. So, what can be done to try to achieve greater access to records in Alabama or anywhere?

Journalists know the fundamentals: how to write an effective request; to continue to apply pressure; and to write publicly about rejections. They also know to push editorially and in person for better legislation, ideally with the support of vocal citizens. This is especially critical in Alabama.

Kyle Whitmire, state political columnist for the Alabama Media Group, says comparisons to other states show the “absurdity” of Alabama’s law. Whitmire has written valiantly about the situation. “The more we talk about this, the more likely we are to get a better law … We have to show why we need it,” he said in an interview.

He knows why. “Whenever public officials deny a records request, they automatically show people they’re hiding something.”

security camera video of a police assault on a decatur storeowner in june. the city is withholding officer disciplinary records and other records related to the incident.

I’d like to see news organizations pursue cases in court more often. This expensive tactic has fallen off significantly in recent years in Alabama and everywhere as news companies flounder financially. Increasingly, freedom-of-information lawsuits are brought by advocacy groups, such as GASP, rather than by media. Such suits are worthy no matter who launches them, but depending on single-issue advocacy groups likely means fewer suits than if media were regularly initiating actions on multiple fronts.

Dennis R. Bailey, general counsel for the Alabama Press Association, points to a hopeful sign: an increase in collaborative litigation among state media, which lowers cost for each outlet. In 2015, for instance, the APA represented multiple outlets in suing for release of Gov. Robert Bentley’s divorce records. In 2018, the Alabama Media Group, the Montgomery Advertiser and the Associated Press filed an eventually successful case against the Alabama Department of Corrections for release of the department’s execution protocol.

Going to court can be risky, of course, as there’s always the chance of ending up not just with a loss, but also with a precedent that makes access worse. Whitmire believes court often is “home-field advantage” for governments. But a demonstrated resolve to litigate would send statewide notice that the media are serious about their records requests, especially if they could persuade a judge or two to make offending governments pay the media’s attorney fees.

A new records law supported by selective but determined litigation would change the freedom-of-information climate in this state. Open government is essential to accountability, which is essential to good governance. It is highly insufficient to claim accountability can wait until the next election. Accountability needs to be constant, no matter how uncomfortable that makes some government officials. They need to remember it’s part of the deal. And the public, with help from the media, needs to insist on it. Because secrecy is the safe harbor of incompetence and corruption.