An informal survey of local activists found no shortage of opinions about topics that weren’t reported – or weren’t reported in enough depth. What follows in no particular order are eight stories cited as "censored" in 2000.

The lack of state and federal enforcement of environmental laws is perhaps the most underreported story in Louisiana for the year 2000, according to two of the state’s top experts on environmental issues.

  When asked the same question independently, Suzanne Dickey, supervising attorney for the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, and Dr. Paul Templet of the Louisiana State University Institute for Environmental Studies, both say environmental enforcement is not being covered or talked about.

  Dickey is now looking at a long list of pollution permit violations where the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), "have done absolutely nothing, or collected tiny, meager fines on these giant corporations that are polluting the environment and violating the law," she says.

  "It comes as a surprise to me that there is so little on the environment these days (in the local press), and particularly on the lack of action by [Gov. Mike] Foster’s DEQ," Templet says, adding that enforcement actions against polluting companies is about 10 percent of what it was under the Roemer administration.

  Templet says the local newspapers recently reported a story from coverage of the Legislature about DEQ not wanting to inspect industry annually. But it was not covered in any depth or with any interpretation to put the issue in context, he says.

  "We already have a self-reporting system, which means the only data we get is from industry," Templet says. "Yet here was DEQ saying we don’t even want to go out and look at them. That’s kind of crazy. But none of that seems to raise anybody’s hackles. … Maybe no one cares anymore."

Kathy Gess, who along with her husband, Tom Gess, heads up the nonprofit prisoners’ advocacy group Louisiana Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants (CURE), says she doesn’t understand why major media aren’t reporting on the high cost of phone calls from Louisiana prisons.

  "At Avoyelles Parish Women’s Correctional Facility, several women recently went on a hunger strike," she says. "One complaint – a call to New York to one woman’s children cost $7 per minute. I’d like to see the dailies pick up on this issue."

  (Editor’s Note: Gambit Weekly wrote about this topic twice last year, on Nov. 7 and 14.)

"Nationwide, there were nearly 20,000 inmates serving their sentences in local jails," says Kathy Gess of CURE. "More than 10,000 of those were in the state of Louisiana. That number has now jumped to more than 17,000."

  The reason: it’s a money saver. The Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections pays $41 per day per inmate in a state prison; if the same inmate is kept in a local jail, the daily tab drops to $22.39. Yet the savings are short-sighted, says Gess, because jails are designed for short-term stays and don’t have the types of rehabilitation structure – drug treatment, education and work programs – that are found in many prisons.

  "Almost all of these inmates will be released one day," says Gess. "[Without structured rehabilitation] will they come out better or worse?"

The Gannett newspaper chain’s purchase of newspapers across the state troubles Jim Brandt, president of Public Affairs Research Council (PAR). The media chain has purchased newspapers in Alexandria, Shreveport, Monroe, Opelousas and Lafayette, and in Lafayette they own not only the Daily Advertiser, but the weekly Times of Acadiana as well. "The concentration of print media in one place and the lack of locally owned media is a concern," Brandt says.

  Other issues Brandt considers underreported include immigration policies and practices, merchant power plants, the status of welfare reform in Louisiana, and the budgets of levee districts and port commissions.

  Concerning levee districts, Brandt notes there are more than 20 levee districts and port commissions statewide, all of whom are appointed by the governor. "With the exception of the Orleans Levee District, we know very little about how they spend their money," Brandt says.

Louisiana media last year failed to cover local and statewide events observing the anniversary the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark abortion rights decision Roe v. Wade and "Abortion Providers Appreciation Day." But it’s not for lack of effort on the part of activists. "I sent out press releases all over and we got absolutely nothing in the way of media coverage – nothing," says Joe Cook, executive director of the Louisiana chapter of American Civil Liberties Union. "The news media are afraid of the reaction of the Catholic Church and fundamentalist Christian right wing. Now, if it’s an anti-abortion issue, the papers are all over it."

  Cook also says the news media don’t cover the constitutional issues arising from school prayer stories. For example, a group called Partners in Prayer got permission from the Beauregard Parish Public Schools System to mail out a letter to parents of students requesting permission to pray for their students by name at a DeRidder school. The School District not only approved the mail-out but also endorsed the idea, Cook says.

To C.B Forgotston, an outspoken New Orleans lawyer and a sharp-tongued critic of the state’s embrace of gambling, a scary story lies just beyond the "raw numbers" of jobs lost from layoffs and closings. Forgotston says the media has failed to quantify the exodus or provide any meaningful analysis of why it’s happening. "If the public knew the facts it would scare the shit out of them," he says.

  Forgotston also believes the changing demographics of Jefferson Parish haven’t been fully reported. "The rate of people living at or near the poverty level is growing faster than Orleans Parish and nobody seems to notice," Forgotston says, adding that overall the Jefferson Parish population has stagnated and begun to decline.

Longtime activist Gary Groesch, executive director for the Alliance for Affordable Energy, offers some good news about the state that he says has been underreported. Louisiana, he says, is a national leader in its recognition of the dangers of global warming. "We are the only state in which the governor, the head of the major utility and the mayor of the state’s largest city have all committed to early action on climate change," Groesch says, noting that Gov. Mike Foster, Entergy CEO Wayne Leonard and Mayor Marc Morial have all spoken out on the topic.

  Other stories Groesch considers underreported: Foster’s bitter criticism of pollution from Houston, Texas, drifting into Louisiana; the failure of the city to institute an ethics code or an ethics board, even though voters approved a charter change to provide for both in 1995; the failure of the New Orleans business community to critically review the business practices of Florida Power & Light, prior to supporting FP&L’s merger with Entergy; and Entergy’s "over-profiting" beyond the 7.5- percent limit set by its franchise with the city of New Orleans.

When Bush reversed the ergonomics plan that Clinton put through shortly before he left office, he was eliminating a regulation that would have stanched a disorder "unique to people – Latinos, poor people, people of color – who work in low-income industry where they do the same thing every day and end up with carpal tunnel," says Curtis Muhammad, district manager for Louisiana of the union UNITE and one of the founders of Community Labor United, a New Orleans coalition of organizations. Muhammad says both local and national media failed to reveal this human cost of Bush’s decision.

  To Muhammad, this isn’t an isolated story. Rather, he says, it’s all tied to an "organized, planned-out process to eliminate public support for the poor," a process which he says includes Bush’s tax cut, the elimination of welfare and public housing, the build-up of prisons (which provide "free slave labor") and the establishment of vouchers for private schools. "The mission of moving public money into the private sector is now in full bloom," he says..