CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Sloppy, biased and unscrupulous reporting wasn't invented yesterday. It was evident 130 years ago when a young United States was in the throes of a genuine national crisis -- the so-called "Indian problem."
As thousands of immigrants pushed West, reshaping the landscape and everything in their path, ambitious and largely untrained correspondents turned in a great many unreliable stories, ignoring, stretching or inventing the facts and twisting reality around their own agendas.
However, excellent reporting also made its way into the same papers -- in the editorial columns. Unlike their counterparts in the field, editorial writers had the benefit of time: They could verify information. They also could write, some of them masterfully. Many of the New York Times editorial columns were so well conceived and crafted they "could serve as models for editorial writers today."
So claims Robert G. Hays, a professor of journalism at the University of Illinois who has studied more than 1,000 Times editorial columns on "the Indian problem." In "A Race at Bay: New York Times Editorials on 'the Indian Problem,' 1860-1900," (Southern Illinois University Press), Hays spotlights 150 columns to show how pervasive, permanent, bitterly divisive and wrenching the problem was.
His chapter titles trace the tragedy: Encroaching Civilization; Massacres and Lesser Injustices; Treaties and Other Broken Promises. To be sure, Times editorial writers were not always sympathetic to the Indian's plight: Rantings about "thieving, murdering Indians" abound. Yet, whatever their position, these writers never lost interest in the Native Americans, Hays writes. In the Times editorials "are the roots to our challenges today," the author argues.
During the period covered in the book, the Times was not as influential as it is today. It had a modest circulation -- perhaps 75,000 at its height -- and tough competition. By the end of the Civil War, New York City had 17 daily papers. Still, in its editorial pages, the Times was "significantly ahead of U.S. public opinion on the Indian problem," Hays said. Indeed, as early as 1868, "its editorial staff had concluded that the conflict between Native Americans and white settlers would never be resolved if simply left to those people, and that there had to be some consistent government policy or else there was just going to be continual conflict."
At about the same time, based on all of the information they had accumulated, the Times editorial writers also concluded "that most of the problems were instigated by the white settlers. But it wasn't until the 1880s that public opinion began to catch up with them," Hays said.
Hays' favorite column dates from Oct. 9, 1879, and concludes: "The Ute reservation will be rubbed out of the map of Colorado. Perhaps this is destiny, as hurried on by the American people. But it is impossible not to feel at least a passing pang of commiseration for a tribe thus systematically improved off the face of the earth."