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A Reader Tells Leslie Stahl About Indians

A Nasty Thing Happens To A Nevada Immigration Critic

[See also: PC Firing at the Post: How I Wrote About Puerto Rico and Lost My Job, by Scott McConnell]

My weekly op-ed column on education, which frequently noted the socio-economic impact of immigration, was recently terminated by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.   Here is a short piece I wrote on my demise for the Reno News & Review, an alternative newspaper:  

(excerpts)

I am a media casualty. After a 5 1/2-year run, my weekly op-ed column in the Las Vegas Review-Journal was summarily executed. ….

Because I skewered Nevada's education bureaucracy--including its reactionary teacher unions--I was branded "anti-education." I burnished this misbegotten label by exposing how the state's fast-growing Hispanic population impacts our schools. A May 15 column headlined " Getting Bigger, Not Better" sparked a noisy picket line outside the R-J office. Apparently, my words were offensive…

The R-J, to its credit, stood by me ... at the time. The editors at Nevada's largest daily appreciated the fact that I had my facts straight.

Yet the feeding frenzy was under way. A month later, the Nevada State Education Association [email NSEA] purchased a half-page advertisement accusing me of "bashing" teachers. The union's strategy appeared to play in my favor, since the price of the R-J ad paid my salary for a year. According to the time-honored journalistic axiom that notoriety trumps apathy every time, I figured my modest paycheck was secure. …

While the Review-Journal is historically viewed as a conservative newspaper, it is actually quasi-libertarian with liberal social impulses….

It is no coincidence that the R-J is now pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into its Spanish language tabloid, and desperately wants to protect that investment. And no amount of First Amendment pontification from the front office can paper over the reality that a dissenting voice has been squelched.

(A left hook in Vegas , by Ken Ward, Reno News & Review, January 16, 2003)

It's significant that there's not one media outlet in Las Vegas (pop. 1.5 million) that will publish Michelle Malkin’s column. VDARE.COM is doing the Lord's work.

(Ken Ward (email him) is author of Saints in Babylon: Mormons and Las Vegas. Read his December 26 2002 Reno News & Review column on the impact of immigration on Nevada wage levels here. Contact the Las Vegas Review-Journal here.)

Peter Brimelow writes: As I wrote in my review of Michelle Malkin’s book Invasion, nasty things seem to happen to people who write critically about immigration.  That’s why VDARE.COM came into existence. We look forward to publishing Ken Ward in the future.

January 22, 2003