Fundamentalist Mormon Experts, Survivors Speak Out at Journalism Conference
By: Rhett Wilkinson
Tags: Mormon, Media, Journalism, Utah, Donald Trump

FLDS across the West panelists joined by guests who spoke on marijuana and environmental reporting, Google searches, national monuments and more

“We are dealing with a human rights issue… the (Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) is in a massive state of flux.”

That was Elissa Wall’s assessment. Wall is largely known for her book “Stolen Innocence” and being the first person to press legal charges against FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs.

Now, Wall has moved back to the FLDS community.

She’s doing it to “bring change,” she says. She was one of four participants in the panel Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Across the West. It was moderated by Salt Lake Tribune polygamy reporter Nate Carlisle about the influence of the FLDS church. Others included private investigator Sam Brower, Holding Out HELP Founder Tonia Tewell and 17-year-old survivor Rulon Hamilton.

It was one of many panels as part of the Society of Professional Journalists Region 9 conference, held in late March in Salt Lake City, Utah. Others included Covering Marijuana, iPhone Photography, National Parks: Present and Future, Finding Stories in Your Latino Community, High Country News/Environmental Reporting and a Google Tools training and legal forum.

A regional conference of the Society of Professional Journalists was held in Salt Lake City, Utah, in late March. It included a panel about the influence of a fundamentalist Mormon church. (UtahSPJ.com)

Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Across the West

Among the multiple recent stories about the FLDS church, a product of the religious movement Joseph Smith formally started in 1830, have concerned the church’s efforts for influence over the police. Those have been proven to favor FLDS members in their law enforcement. Wall affirmed Carlisle’s statement that Wall and other folks are hoping to “disband” a police force “controlled by the municipalities to ensure fair elections of a secular government.” She announced that Hildale will have the opportunity to elect its first city council in November, and she’s teaching residents how to vote.

Elissa Wall wrote “Stolen Innocence” with Lisa Pulitzer. She spoke at a journalism conference in Salt Lake City about having returned to the community she fled and more about the fundamentalist Mormon church she left. (Breathing Books)

Carlisle asked for the FLDS/non-FLDS split in Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah, which are “basically the same city but there are two city councils because of the state line,” Carlisle said. The two towns are 60 and 90 percent FLDS, respectively, and everyone else are “non-approachables,” Wall replied.

Jeffs, being in prison, “isn’t going anywhere — but still has influence,” Carlisle said.

That’s why folks must help, Wall said, asking: “where can we create the greatest change?”

The opportunity is there after Jeffs was put into prison, other abusive leaders were successfully prosecuted and attention to FLDS problems arose, Wall said.

But “though the medium of the press and media is important, I see (FLDS members) evolving into a much deeper, darker culture,” Wall also noted.

Wall added that FLDS members were expected to keep quiet and “keep sweet” in spite of any fear and were taught about the 1953 raid of now-Colorado City as Americans in public schools were taught about the Holocaust.

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert signed HB99 on March 28. It keeps polygamy a felony in Utah while increasing the penalties for polygamists convicted of committing frauds and abuses. Prosecution for polygamy has traditionally been mostly ignored by the Utah attorney general’s office and prosecutors. Some, like Salt Lake City Weekly reporter Dylan Harris at the conference, have questioned whether the legislation threatens to push these communities “further underground.”

“It is very naïve of us to create a simplistic solution,” Wall said. “To just say ‘criminalize or decriminalize,’ it doesn’t get to hear to the issue.”

She also said that “the loudest on both sides” of the argument” have been “galvanized.”

“We have to ask ourselves: what are the problems of polygamy?” Wall added.

“There is such a broad spectrum of experience of people coming out of the FLDS that we can’t generalize in any way,” she remarked. “The topic is an incredibly complex issue.”

Carlisle’s answer to the question “why do people stay in this religion?”: “(FLDS members) are worried about their families getting split. (Church leaders) use it as a weapon.”

Tewell then said: “they also believe they need it for eternal salvation to reach highest kingdom, which is the celestial kingdom.” Personnel from her organization estimates that 75 percent have been sexually molested, she said.

Tewell added: “They believe that when (a woman) gives birth, that child is not considered yours, but of the priesthood. And there is slave labor — you do what you are told or you have the potential of losing your husband and all of your children. … And girls start at 12 learn to cook, clean, please their husbands — you name it.”

12-year-old boys do slave labor across the country and money they earn is sent back to the church, Tewell said.

Hamilton spoke about working in Pocatello, Idaho, South Dakota, Texas and Cedar City, Utah. He wouldn’t be permitted to certain locations, where he still performed child labor for no pay of his own, because he wasn’t deemed “worthy,” he said.

In Pocatello, Hamilton was with other boys and considering leaving the church. Then each of their mothers arrived in town.

“We can assume the leaders said to the mothers to go to Pocatello to claim your children so they don’t get into state custody,” Carlisle remarked. The children would not be property of the FLDS families — and thus, the church — if they became state custody. That was especially bad for a top-down organization that “revolves around children,” Carlisle added.

“They magically appeared,” Hamilton said, ”to claim their sons legally.”

Washington County put a school in the community after Jeffs, who created a private school, went behind bars.

Carlisle spoke to the panel name when he said that the topic may seem “Utah-centric” but properties of the FLDS-owned construction company Phaze are found in other SPJ Region 9 states. Also, the company poured concrete at the University of New Mexico and Utah State University, Carlisle said.

Nate Carlisle has covered the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for The Salt Lake Tribune. One investigation he did showed that the FLDS-owned construction company Phaze has influence throughout many western states and that it poured concrete at the University of New Mexico and Utah State University. (Nate Carlisle)

Carlisle’s investigations resulted in the revelations of FLDS-owned companies with stronghold locations across the west.

“Nate did a wonderful job on this. He not only listened to sources but went out and did research himself,” said Brower, who did similar work for his book “Prophet’s Prey.” “And that kind of research and reporting is just wonderful and incredible.”

Covering Marijuana

Kate McKee Simmons of Westword Magazine has a beat solely on marijuana, as she works in Colorado and smoking the plant was legalized there.

A Brigham Young University student asked Simmons if she has the opportunity to present on the economy because of the economic influence of marijuana.

When I go to city council meetings, (council members) say ‘how will we pay for this? Oh — pot money,” Simmons replied. “They used it for a drug rehabilitation program — they use the money for (good purposes).”

A Utah Valley University student and UVU Review reporter asked Simmons if she is worried about being “pigeon-holed” into covering marijuana the rest of her career.

“I had some interesting conversations with my parents. … I am lucky they support me,” Simmons said of covering the weed. “Professionally, I don’t want to move to a state that doesn’t permit legalized marijuana. It’s weird you can’t (smoke marijuana in Utah).”

Simmons added that she graduated from college a few years ago and some of her cohorts from school are “doing well,” “reporting on very interesting issues and doing wonderful work.”

Kate McKee Simmons is the marijuana editor of Westword Magazine. She said at a journalism conference in Salt Lake City that she supports marijuana legalization because it provides her employment. (Kate McKee Simmons)

“But I was invited to speak at SPJ over marijuana,” she said. “Because my job is so unique, I get invited to stuff like this, so it’s really cool.”

Then she said: “Yeah, it scares me that if the (Colorado) legislature or Trump acts on (restricting marijuana), I’m out of a job. And that’s part of my bias. I support legalization because it gives me a job.”

Simmons added that Westward, which runs a column called Ask a Stoner, has received some angry reader comments because the reader thought the publication was supporting illegal activity.

“I will refer to what our social media editor said, which is ‘it’s ‘Ask a Stoner, not ask a responsible person,’” Simmons said. “Yes, there are the outliers, but I have been so impressed that people have respected he laws. Not necessarily in the black market, which is another issue — people are moving to Colorado to grow lots of weed — but tourists… are legal.”

Davis Bonner of the Rocky Mountain Collegian remarked that Bonner works just down the street from the Denver Post and asked about her “freedom as to what to report.”

Simmons said that it was “brilliant” of the Post to create a publication with its own URL about marijuana.

“I have so much respect for who created it,” she said.

Simmons added that she is “the one-stop shop” for marijuana reporting and that the Post scoops Westword because only Simmons is writing about the issue there, as opposed to the Post’s many reporters who cover it.

“That’s part of being in the small market. … there is not as big a team to collaborate on it,” she remarked.

She added that state versus national coverage brings dynamics, including a different level of understanding of the unethical nature of smoking marijuana.

“I know unethical because I report it every day,” she said.

iPhone Photography

Kim Raff has made a freelance photography career and much of her work is done through her iPhone.

“It’s interesting, showing yourself in journalism. As a freelancer, you can do that kind of thing,” Raff said. “So my Instagram is showing the behind-the-scenes.”

Kim Raff is a freelance photographer who presented at a journalism conference in Salt Lake City. She said that freelance journalism allows the journalist to show themselves. (TSKW.org)

But she added: “Figure out what your style is going to be with your photo coverage and stick with that.” She noted that she decided that there wouldn’t be any filters to her photos on a regular basis.

Raff touted Snapsy, which allows users to “create fragmented photography.” When she spoke about “getting your name out there,” Raff asked attendees to consider what it would mean to take over TIME Magazine’s Instagram for a week and told attendees to get an Instagram account.

Also: “You have got to force yourself to get onto Twitter,” Raff said.

She also pointed out Everyday Africa, a project that shows perspectives of Africa from Africans with photos that have been featured in TIME and other major publications.

Raff was asked: how do you build up your following? (“Hashtags” was a guess.)

“Cross-promote and network with people,” she replied.

National Parks: Present and Future

Robert Keiter is the director of the Wallage Stegner Center for Land, Resources and the Environment at the University of Utah. “With the advent of the automobile,” he said, “the national parks became available to every person.”

The Model-T Ford car, which is often viewed as spurring the regular usage of automobiles, was created in 1915. The Antiquities Act was signed into law just nine years earlier, in 1906, and 53 of 59 national parks have been created since then. The Act grants presidents the authority to declare such monuments.

Another in Utah in Bears Ears was declared by former President Barack Obama, but Utah’s Republican federal representatives are fighting it. Moderator Tom Williams, program director for Utah Public Radio, turned to Sara Dant, a history professor at Weber State University, to talk about “environmental politics.” Dant spoke about Frank Church, a Democratic senator from Idaho. Church had the “unique ability to bring together groups like the Sierra Club and Chambers of Commerce, helping them realize that what they valued made them more united than divided.

“I think we saw that with Bears Ears,” she then added, “in terms of bring about a consensus.”

When Williams then asked for an example of that consensus, David Nimkin, the senior director of the Southwest region of the National Parks Conservation Association, spoke.

“There are very few things that offer opportunities to have some common ground, and in many ways, national parks offer that for people… throughout the planet,” Nimkin said. “There is great power in recognizing what this national park effort can mean and how to respond to it.”

Then Nimkin said: “It may not be as apparent in the state of Utah, for example, given the discord here.”

Dant said that if you ask a “roomful” of people if they have visited a national park, “nearly every hand will go up,” and if you ask if they thought doing so “was a remarkable experience,” “nearly all hands will stay up.”

“It’s a remarkable unifier in our society,” said Dant, who co-authored “Encyclopedia of American National Parks.”

Williams said there is “a sizable number” of folks who don’t like Bears Ears and that Utah’s elected officials asked President Donald Trump to rescind Obama’s designation. Nimkin then said that four of Utah’s five national parks were created as monuments through the Antiquities Act and that opposition to Bears Ears has to do with former President Clinton’s designation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996 and the opposition of persons in rural parts of Utah who “can no longer rely on traditional industries of mining and ranching and logging.”

“Similarly, I think the… rhetoric of blaming the federal government for all that is wrong in the United States contributes to that,” Nimkin said.

David Nimkin is the senior director of the Southwest region of the National Parks Conservation Association. He said at a journalism conference that the designation of Bears Ears as a national monument followed a “transparent process” that “followed the abject failure of the legislative process with (Rep. Rob Bishop’s) Public Lands Initiative. (Ravell Call, Deseret News)

Nimkin also described the designation of Bears Ears followed a “transparent process” that “followed the abject failure of the legislative process with (Rep. Rob Bishop’s) Public Lands Initiative.”

Dant then described the Bears Ears process as “an example of grassroots coalition” and that “Native voices” were prioritized “for the first time.”

Arguing for consensus behind Bears Eears, Dant said that surveys indicated that the “general population” of Utah was “actually quite in favor” of designation.

Dant then used the word “false” to respond to some arguments against Bears Ears, like farmers not having access to it and water rights going away from those who had them.

Others say it’s a matter of the federal government taking control, Dant said. “False — it was federal owned before,” she noted.

Williams then wanted to know if a president can reverse the designation of a monument by their predecessor.

Prior experts have… concluded that the president “probably” cannot undo a prior presidential authority because the Property Clause in the U.S. Constitution, Keiter said. He noted that courts had not made a decree certifying that probability but added that the Property Clause “says nothing about undoing a designating.”

“And there are several attorney general opinions and solicitor opinions from the Interior Department that reach the same conclusion,” said Keiter, the author of To Conserve Unimpaired: The Evolution of the National Park Idea and other books.

But it’s different for the legislative branch. “At the end of the day,” Keiter said, “Congress has authority under the Property Clause… to (undo) a national park.”

Dant added that monuments have shrunk but never been undone.

A “leading representative” from Bishop’s office said that if Congress was “not able” to move forward without action on disputed lands, “then it would in fact be the appropriate response by the president of the United States to create a national monument,” Nimkin said. “And (Bishop’s) Public Lands Initiative had a part in San Juan County that would be created as a national conservation area with lesser protections, but it was essentially the same size as the 1.35 that was protected now in the Bears Ears National Monument.”

Thus, Obama’s designation led to the “right size,” Nimkin added.

Finding Stories in Your Latino Community

Univision covers all topics, from immigration to breaking news, station reporter Lester Rojas said. He presented with Univision on-air talent Viviane Quintela, who said that Univision thought it was important to give a voice for the Hispanic population in Salt Lake City since its state, Utah, has a growing number of folks from Spanish-speaking countries. Utah’s Hispanic population grew 78 percent in 10 years, according to the most recent census, and nearly two-thirds of Hispanic households speak Spanish.

Rojas said journalists need to be identifiable. He recalled alarming folks at Utah Valley University, when covering a formal presentation in which Utah’s governor gave awards to students. A child had to be an interpreter for her mother: “I’m a journalist; I’ m a reporter for Univision.”

“I needed to put my name out there to find stories,” Rojas said.

“Now he’s famous,” Quintela remarked.

“The Hispanic culture is about trust,” Rojas said. “Trust is built by getting your name out there.”

Univision reporters will do that by looking for any Latino thread in stories including crime and politics.

Rojas then asked attendees to guess what issues are most important to his audience. Immigration was an answer; Rojas said that is third, behind economy and then education.

Know communications directors and have a business card, Rojas said.

“Do the follow-up calls and built that trust,” he added, noting that the tactic resulted in Unision doing an “awesome story” on fruit pickers in Santaquin. He also said “don’t generalize” as cultures like Hispanic ones have aspects within them that provide various story angles.

Viviane Quintela (right), a Univision reporter, with Utah House Rep. Norm Thurston. Quintela suggested at a journalism conference in Salt Lake City that reporters speak with children who speak English for stories if their parents don’t. (NormThurston.com)

Quintela then talked about navigating translation.

“Maybe the parents won’t speak English, but the kids will,” she said. “Don’t miss out on good stories for Spanish.”

An attendee who reports for Good4Utah asked about competition and motivation.

“We like competition if it is helping (us),” Rojas said. “Telemundo is our competition.”

“We are our own competitors,” Quintela said. “If we, on a Saturday omring, see a protest, we wonder why didn’t get a press release; we’ll get out of the car and give our card and say ‘please contact us.’”

High Country News, Environmental Reporting

Brian Calvert, editor-in-chief of High Country News, was the speaker and a freelance journalist for a decade before he entered environmental reporting, thinking that climate change was the “pressing issue of the time,” said Emma Penrod, a Salt Lake Tribune environmental reporter who introduced Calvert.

Because of the magazine’s name, its board advised the publication’s reporters to limit its reporting on marijuana, Calvert said to chuckles.

Regulations to pursue clean air, clean water and other land management were passed through legislation called the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976. Then environmental journalism became a watchdog on government for these regulations, Calvert said.

Brian Calvert, editor-in-chief of High Country News, said at a journalism conference in Salt Lake City that his publication was six months ahead of the story about the conflict at the Malheur wildlife refuge in Oregon happened. (Brooke Warren, High Country News)

“I think of us as helping the west (United States) explain itself to itself,” Calvert added.

High Country News was ready to go to press about sagebrush insurgency before the conflict at the Malheur wildlife refuge in Oregon happened.

“We were six months ahead of the story,” Calvert said.

The magazine reports on 11 states in the west including Alaska, which has similar policy issues as the other 10, Calvert said.

Calvert joked on a podcast that perhaps the $54 million in President Donald Trump’s military budget will include research about forest fires. (High Country News has a cover story on wilfires about once per year.) He now regrets making that joke.

The publication reported on the U.S. military learning how to firebomb German houses. That practice created a vacuum from the houses that would literally suck people, Calvert said.

Google Tools training

Scott Leadingham is the director of education for the SPJ. He pointed out the Google News Lab site g.co/newslab and the URL to request related trainings, spj.org/google.asp, before defending Google in its relationship with journalists.

Scott Leadingham is the director of education for The Society of Professional Journalists. He said at a regional SPJ conference in Salt Lake City that Google is “not trying to steal our lunch as journalists… they are trying to… help (journalists) do their jobs better. (HMAPR.com)

“(Google) is not trying to eat our lunch as journalists or steal or jobs or anything like that,” Leadingham said. “They are trying to… help (journalists) do their jobs better. They are not trying to take over The New York Times or the Tribune or Deseret News. … they know they aren’t trained journalists and they need trained journalists.”

On advanced Google searches, Leadingham said that if you search your name on your mobile device or desktop, “you will get results that are Twitter-optimized. … because Google Search is integrated with Google Now,” he said.

Google Search is the function most may recognize, where you type something into the open bar and results follow. Google now is a virtual-intelligent personal assistant.

With Google Search Refinements, users must include or ignore words and characters in their search, similar to Boolean language, in which to specify something like the speed of the Jaguar vehicle, a user would type “Jaguar speed:car,” said Leadingham. Using examples for each topic search type, he added that that specifications for searches of NBC’s coverage of the Olympics would look like this: Olympics site:nbc.com. Searches of sites related to another like vogue.com would look like this: related:vogue.com. Searching by file type for the Affordable Care Act would look like this: Affordable Care Act filetype:PPT. Finding PDFs on injuries would look like this: injuries site:.gov filetype:pdf. (Yes, Leadingham types those search queries with no space at those points where it perhaps looked like there should be.)

Leadingham then presented on Google Trends. He said that folks ask many questions on Google Trends that are not asked publicly and that it is useful since it shows comparisons for a topic searched for during a given amount of time, providing an example that The Bellagio in Las Vegas was searched for 20,000 times one day but only 500 in another.

Legal forum

The First Amendment protection of freedom of the press was less robust in the past, particularly before New York Times v. Sullvan in 1964, said David Reymann, a shareholder at Parr, Brown, Gee and Loveless.

The nation saw the “infuse” of constitutional protections into common tort law, which the founders didn’t intend, Reymann added.

“The media needs room to make mistakes,” Reymann said. “You punish the media (for innocent mistakes), it’s a concern.”

Jeff Hunt is the president of the firm.

“The main threat I see (to freedom of the press) is a president (Donald Trump) who is not only very disdainful of the news media and the constitutional role the news media plays, but is totally paranoid about leaks,” Hunt said. “He’s trying to drive a storyline not about substance and what happened… so I could very easily see this administration going after leakers.”

Jeff Hunt is the president of the law firm Parr, Brown, Gee & Loveless. He said that President Donald Trump is a threat to freedom of the press. (ParrBrown.com)

Hunt mentioned a discussion among the nation’s top lawyers who defend press freedoms at a New York conference two days after the election. It concerned having a “robust defense of journalists because (Trump targeting leakers) is a real risk that could happen in the new few years,” he said.

The panel, which included Ed Carter, BYU School of Communications director, was asked what happens in the subpoena process. Lawyers issue subpoenas under the authority of the court and reporters’ notes, recordings, outtake material relating to the stories in question and other material is subject to a subpoena, Hunt said.

If a hearing is closed, is a recording nevertheless kept at a hearing that a reporter can obtain? “That’s exactly correct,” Hunt said.

Does the same apply for an improperly closed meeting? Region 9 President McKenzie Romero asked. “Yes, under Utah’s Open Records Act, that is the remedy,” Hunt said.

Has there been any Utah court decision on the issue of invading the privacy of juveniles in a public hearing or space? Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch took photos with postal workers that implied that they supported him and they weren’t happy with that. They sued on the accounts of invasion of privacy and that the photos were published without the postal workers’ consent. In Cox v. Hatch, a Utah court said that Hatch was protected because the postal workers were in a public place, Reymann said.

“If you are walking in a public place and are photographed, you have exposed yourself to the public view and a (media outlet) can publish (the photo),” Reymann said. “If it’s something false, or you are put in a false light,” that is a different story, he added.

A professor allegedly assaulted his girlfriend and the school reporter went to his lecture. Can the lecture be recorded? Public universities may “prohibit, in some cases, the recording without consent,” Reymann said.

Can private universities like Westminster or BYU say “get out” in all cases? “We had a broadcast journalist (a student) saying he was on a public street and ‘you can’t make me move,’ but he didn’t realize he was on the campus,” Carter said. “Cooler heads prevailed a few days later and the video (made rounds) and made the (police) officer look like a jerk. I say to students that if a student or maybe faculty asks you to leave, you don’t have to, but if the president or police asks, you should, because it’s private property.”

Almost all states have their own wiretap act, Reymann said.

This article was originally seen in The Good Men Project.

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