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SPLC slams AP, Daily News, Times-Tribune for calling neo-Nazi's org white people's rights group
The Southern Poverty Law Center criticizes Scranton Times-Tribune, Philadelphia Daily News and Associated Press for article that described an organization led by prominent neo-Nazi Steve Smith as a "white people's rights group."
SPLC slams AP, Daily News, Times-Tribune for calling neo-Nazi's org white people's rights group
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The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is criticizing the Scranton Times-Tribune, Philadelphia Daily News and Associated Press for running an article last week that described an organization led by prominent neo-Nazi Steve Smith as a "white people's rights group.”
“It’s a shame that the European American Action Coalition is being described, ridiculously, as a ‘white rights group,’” SPLC senior fellow Mark Potok tells City Paper. “The reality is obvious from the group’s website. The EAAC is a white supremacist group that promotes well-known right-wing extremists like Derek Black, the son of former Alabama Klan leader Don Black and a racist activist in his own right, Canadian neo-fascist Paul Fromm, and the conspiracy-minded John Birch Society, which once accused President Eisenhower of being a ‘communist agent.’ A simple Google search would have made this plain to anyone who took five minutes to look.”
A Google search would also have quickly produced a photo of Smith, head shaved, standing before a framed portrait of Adolph Hitler. One of the state's most outspoken white supremacists, Smith is described by the SPLC as “a longtime racist activist with a history of violence and top-level ties to numerous white nationalist hate groups.”
The offending article, about a dispute between the European American Action Coalition and the borough of Moosic, Pa., over an event permit, was first published in the Times-Tribune and later picked up by the Daily News. A version was also carried by the Associated Press.
No publication, however, has issued a correction since City Paper first reported this story last Friday, just one week after a white supremacist opened fire at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin.
“I suggest you call AP and the Scranton Times-Tribune,” said Daily News city editor Gar Joseph.
The Times-Tribune did not respond to a request for comment, and the AP claimed that it scrubbed its version of the “white people's rights” language and was just 93 words. But they refused to provide City Paper with a copy of their story.
“What possible purpose would there be for me to send you this story when you're trying to cause trouble for how it was written?” said an angry Karen Testa, East Region Editor at the AP. Before hanging up, she added: “That's a good way to build a journalism career.”
City Paper has since discovered that Testa's denial appears to be substantively false. A number of Pennsylvania newspapers carried a 93-word version of the story credited to the AP with the headline “Pa. borough: White-rights group can't use park.” The version went on to refer to the European American Action Coalition as a “white-rights group” in the body of the text (see here and here). One such link routes through an AP URL.
Smith, recruited into the neo-Nazi movement while stationed at Fort Bragg, co-founded Keystone United (formerly Keystone State Skinheads) and is probably Pennsylvania's most prominent white supremacist. In 2003, he and two other skinheads were arrested after attacking a black man in Scranton.
The Times-Tribune did mention Smith's neo-Nazi background in a June article on his election, by one write-in vote, to the Luzerne County Republican Committee. Yet that article led with the strange headline “GOP Committee seeks way to get rid of man with ties to racial groups.”
The correct term, of course, would be “racist” groups.
White supremacists like Smith are eager to use more anodyne language like “white people's rights” and “European American” as they attempt to build support in the mainstream conservative movement. Users of Stormfront, a popular white supremacist web message board, celebrated last week's newspaper coverage. One user hopefully opined that the “media might be getting an honesty streak.”
Smith, who has used Stormfront to promote his new group, has called Tea Party gatherings “fertile grounds for our activists.” It's not hard to see why Smith would find a conservative movement that includes Glenn Beck (who called President Barack Obama a “racist” with a “deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture”) and Newt Gingrich (who called Obama “the food stamp president”) appealing. What's surprising is that the so-called liberal media is helping him make that appeal.
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