Queer Action v. Missoulian:
Burning the messenger

Missoulian article fires up members of the community

by Paul Queneau

When arsonists torched the home of two Missoula lesbians and their 22-month-old baby, during the early morning hours of Feb. 8 the community erupted in anger and concern.

Eight days later when the Missoulian printed an article stating the women were possible suspects, members of the same community erupted in anger again, and the newspaper became the focus of intense criticism.

This outrage culminated in the creation of a group called Queer Action, who threatened to picket the Missoulian office if the paper, among other things, didn’t run a front-page apology and have its staff take sensitivity training.

Although the demands weren’t met, the picket never took place. Instead, it was called off in exchange for a moderated community forum, where Mike McInally, editor of the paper, was forced to defend the paper’s coverage before an angry crowd.

At the forum, Queer Action handed out a packet to members of the audience. It included an explanation of the group’s motives, a photocopy of the offending article from the Missoulian and a sheet of paper with a revision of the article “as it could have been,” complete with a new title, kicker and pull-quote.

Reader feedback helps a newspaper keep track of what those on the other side of the page are thinking, but when critiquing gets to the point of having a story rewritten and presented in a public setting, it becomes more humbling.

Tragedy ignites support
The Missoulian had a challenge in covering the arson story right from the start. Gary Jahrig, the cops and courts reporter, would have normally covered the event but he was in Bozeman for a hockey tournament. Ginny Merriam, the social issues reporter, normally would have taken over for Jahrig, but she was out of town as well.

So it was up to the city government and education reporters to cover a major story that wasn’t on their beat.

“We did okay the first day,” McInally said.

The Missoulian began its coverage Feb. 9 with a front-page story listing the general facts of the case: the fire was being considered arson; it was started by a person igniting a flammable liquid inside the house; and the women would not speak to the paper about it.

The couple had already made the news on Monday of the same week by being part of a lawsuit filed demanding benefits for same-sex partners from the Montana University System. They had subsequently received a death threat in the mail Wednesday, which contained a white powder that later proved not to be anthrax.

The women and their baby escaped the flames unhurt, but the community response to the arson was rapid: more than 700 people showed up the next day in a rally of support for the couple and to denounce hate crimes. Missoula, known for its progressive attitude and prominent gay community, came alive. Editorials were written, relief funds were set up. Fliers saying “Hate Hurts: We Stand Together” began showing up on windows and doors all over town.

Article fires up community
When Jahrig returned, it was up to him to follow up on the coverage of the crime. Following a week of minor updates, Jahrig came out with his first major story about the arson on Feb. 16, co-authored with former crime reporter Michael Moore.

Jahrig said Moore came in to help finish the story because he was going to be gone on Friday, the day before the article was to go to print.

“Any time you write about a crime, you have to be careful what you write,” Jahrig said. “If you’re a professional, you pride yourself on being fair and accurate.”

The main part of the story was Jahrig’s work, he said, and Moore just helped him tie it together. Jahrig said he knew that the story would be controversial, but he didn’t know how much.

“I anticipated there would be some backlash,” Jahrig said.

The article was headlined “Police narrow focus in arson investigation: Authorities say two scenarios still within realm of possibility.” The lead said that police were looking into two possibilities: someone both broke into the house and set the fire, or the women set the fire themselves.

The unity that the community had shown at the rally the weekend before was suddenly shattered. Angry letters began flowing in to the Missoulian, taking it to task for casting suspicion on those not yet officially named by police as suspects.

For those who had not heard the rumor, reading the article was the first time the scenario of the women starting the fire themselves had occurred to many people.

“I swore,” said Karen Loos, chairwoman of Missoula Advocates for Human Rights and co-chairwoman of the Missoula Five Valleys Chapter of PFLAG, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. “I just had a sinking feeling that all the support that was at the rally was basically gone.”

Jahrig took the feedback in stride saying he is used to some negative feedback on his stories even though he knows that he has to be careful what he writes.

“In this case people didn’t really appreciate us relaying the message, I guess,” Jahrig said.

A point of contention for many people seemed to be the arrangement of the facts, and in particular the headline, kicker and lead, all of which focused on two possible scenarios in the arson: either the women did it, or somebody else did.

“They could have just said ‘as in every arson investigation, the occupants are being investigated,’” said Gaiyn Taylor, member of Queer Action.

McInally said he didn’t think that the arrangement was so much of a factor.

“There are always different ways you can approach a story, different ways to write a story. Certainly some things could have been done differently. Maybe you could have structured the story a little differently. I don’t know that that would have mattered. Any way you slice and dice the words, any way you arrange the story, that information that’s bound to upset some people is bound to be in the story.”

The main reason for discussing the couple’s possible culpability in the article was because it was a rumor that needed to be either confirmed or dispelled.

“It was information that was being widely discussed in the community, the rumors were inescapable,” McInally said, “and in fact what happened with the story that we published on Saturday I think put some meat on the bones.”

Direct action
As response to the article began to arrive in letters and phone calls, McInally got into his normal mode of being open for discussion, and telling people he would take their thoughts under consideration.

But on the following Friday, McInally got a fax from a group he had never heard of, with only an e-mail address for a contact.

Queer Action is a “direct action” group, a form of protest made popular by groups like Earth First!. Rather than lobbying, educating and having workshops, they practice direct action, or a “direct response to an issue of concern,” according to their mission statement.

Using a series of escalating responses, direct action targets policies, laws, actions and statements, but not people. Although actions are nonviolent, they include the possibility of civil disobedience, where there is risk of arrest if a law is broken.

When the article in the Missoulian was published, some of the members-to-be of Queer Action were taking part in a direct action workshop, and they decided to use the knowledge to start their own group.

“We did not form to do actions against the Missoulian,” said group member Christina McKnight. “It just happened that way.”

Queer Action said the Missoulian was “sensationalizing ordinary facts” by structuring the article in a way that hyped the situation of victims being suspects, something they understood was an ordinary part of every investigation, and therefore not news.

“The article was incredibly damaging for many reasons,” said Queer Action member Sarah Howell. “It wasn’t libelous, so to speak, but the choices they made, the length, the arrangement of facts, I feel were very conscious.”

Queer Action also felt the Missoulian was treating the victims differently in this case because they were lesbians.

“If it was a straight couple with a baby, would it have been slanted this way?” McKnight said.

So on Friday, Feb. 22, Queer Action sent the Missoulian a fax issuing six demands that would result in a picket if they were not met. That Sunday, the group tucked a flier in practically every Missoulian in every newspaper stand around Missoula.

The flier, which used an imitation Missoulian insignia was titled “Misinformation” and included the sentence “The Missoulian is disseminating false information about lesbians” in bold lettering.

The flier included faxed demands already faxed to the Missoulian, and threatened a picket the following Wednesday at 5 p.m. if the demands were not met.

As Queer Action gave only an e-mail address to communicate with, McInally was forced to try to make amends with the group without actually talking to them.

He offered to meet the group in a public setting to discuss the matter, a move that prompted many in the gay community to begin criticizing the planned protest.

“My offer has always been to go out and talk about the paper’s coverage,” McInally said. “(That offer) was made to Queer Action.”

Community forum
The picket was finally called off at the last minute in favor of a community forum, and McInally gave some suggestions for a possible moderator and location, but it was ultimately up to the Queer Action to plan the event.

As the forum began the following Monday night at the University of Montana before an audience of about 75, McInally was surprised at the rigid structure of the conversation, with opening and closing speeches, timed rebuttals and other formalities.

“I really didn’t know what to expect,” McInally said. “I was a little taken aback at how formatted the meeting turned out to be.”

Queer Action demanded an apology for the way the Missoulian had written the Feb. 16 article and a promise that the paper would change the way it was covering the arson.

McInally responded by saying that although he was always happy to have feedback about the paper’s coverage, he still stood behind everything the Missoulian had published on the arson.

“I’ve been accused that our coverage has been shameless sensationalism,” McInally said at the forum. “This story has not been unverified in any way. It’s been accurate.”

He also bristled at the comment that recent articles were an attempt by the paper to meet some of Queer Action’s demands.

“The one thing said here that ticks me off a little bit was that recent articles were an attempt to atone for past sins,” McInally said at the forum. “We were working on these stories for weeks, I did not accede to the Queer Action demands. I’m not going to do that.”

The audience was mostly critical of the Missoulian.

Peter Shober, pastor of University Congregational Church, was one of those who spoke. McInally is an active member of University Congregational.

“Mike (McInally) is a dear friend of mine, but I’m not afraid to tell him I did not like this article,” he said at the forum.

Merriam had written a preview of the forum, and attended with hope of covering it in the next day’s paper.

She said she had a false impression of what the event would focus on.

“I went there with the idea of possibly covering it. Not about just us, but about all media,” Merriam said.

But after seeing that the forum was only going to center around that one article, she decided she couldn’t write an objective story when it was so close to home.

“I didn’t write a story because I couldn’t imagine writing a credible story,” Merriam said.

McInally said he was disappointed with the outcome of the forum.

“From my perspective, what I wanted to do mainly was listen and respond. I really wasn’t interested in going to the forum and debating the details of whether the coverage was appropriate,” he said. “I think what happened at the forum didn’t make it any easier for anybody to come out of their corners.”

Howell of Queer Action had mixed feelings about the event.

“I feel good that it happened, and I think it’s a positive step toward seeing more community involvement, and more acknowledgment of the responsibility of newspapers, especially in places like Montana where we often don’t have more than one daily newspaper,” Howell said. “But the end result coming from Mike McInally was pretty disappointing to me. For me, his whole take on it was that he didn’t want to quibble about the individual word choices and placements. But I really feel that acknowledging the power of language, especially as the editor of our only daily newspaper in Missoula, is of utmost importance.”

“Afterwards, though, I feel that we haven’t seen any more truly damaging things,” Howell said.

Column asks for time
Little has been written about the arson since March 6, when Fred Van

Valkenburg, the Missoula County attorney, asked police to stop talking to the press about the case.

Van Valkenburg wrote a guest column in the Missoulian April 16 titled “Quiet is allowing investigators to do their job in arson case,” which praised the success of the silence.

“I have been pleased with the response to my request — not only within law enforcement circles, but also within the community as a whole,” Van Valkenburg wrote. “Because public speculation and inquiry have been relatively quiet in the past month or so, investigators in this case have been able to focus their attention on the day-to-day work involved in a difficult case such as this one, rather than having to spend their time defending or justifying any motives attributed to their work.”

In a later interview about the column, Van Valkenburg said, “It has sort of settled the community down.”

Others active in the gay community agree.

“There needed to be a cooling-off period,” said Loos. “I think it has helped the gay community feel a little bit better about the justice system.”

Mona Bachmann, a member of the Outfield Alliance, a gay and lesbian group of faculty and staff at UM, agrees.

“I think it has helped,” said Bachmann. “They (the police) should

have kept a lot to themselves from the very beginning.”

However, Howell had a different opinion.

“I thought it was horrible,” she said. “He said what he had to say well, and he was respectful, but I really feel like his whole message was stay silent and everything will be okay. I really feel (it’s dangerous) to applaud the people of Missoula for not asking questions, for not seeking out information about what’s going on in their community, with their police and their safety.”

Van Valkenburg said the silence is temporary, and answers to questions people have will eventually be answered.

“It’s just a short term thing here,” he said. “Certainly (the public) wants to know what happened, and at some point they’re going to have to be informed.”

“You’ve got to try and provide some answers, too.”

Van Valkenburg said he hopes his editorial in the Missoulian has helped give people confidence that the investigation has not been forgotten.

“I wanted to give people enough confidence that law enforcement is doing its best and making progress on the investigation.”

Whether the crime will be solved anytime soon is anyone’s guess, Van Valkenburg said.

“All I can say is that I hope so. It would be almost like trying to read a crystal ball, but I hope it will.”