It can take decades to win a free press, but only a moment to lose it. Bad Press, a woolly but instructive documentary in the Storyville strand, begins by showing us one such moment. A group of casually dressed people are hunched round a long table in a room cluttered with filing cabinets and spare chairs. This is the legislative council of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, sitting in Okmulgee, Oklahoma. After a brief debate, the motion in front of them is carried by seven votes to six. With that, the Nation’s government‑funded newspaper and radio station lose editorial independence.
This is 2018. Three years earlier, the Muscogee Nation had enshrined the freedom of its press in law. Native American tribes are not bound by the US constitution – which includes that protection – because they govern themselves independently. Almost none of them have chosen to legislate to protect a free press; the Muscogee was one of only five of the 574 federally recognised tribes to have done so.
