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Why the press needs to speak out against the Arizona camp debacle

In my opinion, the failure of this county in Arizona to hand the decision over to a jury to make for or against the original felony charges is as grave a misjudgment as the actions of the counselors who attacked pre-teen boys. Hank Nuwer, April 11, 2006

Journalists and citizens should keep these words in mind:
“The greatest threat to our industry lies not in the high drama of prior restraint — we won’t see another Pentagon Papers-style showdown, as governments don’t want the PR fallout of true banana republic repression. No, what we are seeing instead are fresh challenges to our ability to gather the news, sprinkled with some good old-fashioned strong-arming. In each instance, with rare exceptions, we’re not raising enough hell when we are silenced, detained, arrested or flakked to death.”
–Bill Moyers, newsman, 2006. (Thanks to alert WORDster Linda Mah and Ted Pease’s TODAY’S WORD ON JOURNALISM–Tuesday, April 11, 2006)

By Hank Nuwer

Journalist Hank Nuwer is the Alaska author of Hazing: Destroying Young Lives; Broken Pledges: The Deadly Rite of Hazing, High School Hazing, Wrongs of Passage and The Hazing Reader. In April of 2024, the Alaska Press Club awarded him first place in the Best Columnist division and Best Humorist, second place.

He has written articles or columns on hazing for the Sunday Times of India, Toronto Globe & Mail, Harper's Magazine, Orlando Sentinel, The Chronicle of Higher Education and the New York Times Sunday Magazine. His current book is Hazing: Destroying Young Lives from Indiana University Press. He is married to Malgorzata Wroblewska Nuwer of Warsaw, Poland and Fairbanks, Alaska. Nuwer is a former columnist for the Greenville (Ohio)Early Bird and former managing editor of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner in Alaska.
Nuwer was named the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists columnist of the year in 2021 for his “After Darke” column in the Early Bird. He also won third place for the column in 2022 from the Indiana chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. He and his wife Gosia, recently of Union City, Ind., have owned 20 acres in Alaska for many years. “The move is a sort-of coming home for us,” said Nuwer. As a journalist, he’s written about the Alaskan Iditarod sled-dog race and other Alaska topics. Read his musings in his blog at Real Alaska Daily--http://realalaskadaily.com and in his weekly column "Far from Randolph" in the Winchester Star-Gazette of Randolph County, Indiana.

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