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Recent hand-wringing news stories detailing alleged problems faced by those hoping to develop a Seneca casino here have been greatly exaggerated, sometimes to the point of misinformation, informed sources told the Reporter this week.
"It's like Chicken Little going around telling people the sky is falling," said one Niagara Falls businessman closely involved in the negotiations. "People who know what's really going on read this stuff and just laugh."
A case in point is a front page story by staff writer Tom Precious that appeared in the Buffalo News last Tuesday, Nov. 20.
Titled "Casinos face a new hurdle," the 1,100-word piece pointed to alleged similarities between Gov. George Pataki's proposed compact with the Senecas and a completely unrelated agreement struck between the state of New Mexico and the Pueblo Indians there.
"The hopes of Buffalo and Niagara Falls to capture a portion of Seneca-owned casino profits are far from guaranteed, judging by the tough questions federal authorities asked about a revenue-sharing plan involving another Indian casino and a state government 2,000 miles away," Precious wrote.
At issue was a revenue-sharing provision in the New Mexico compact that provided for annual payments to the state amounting to 8 percent of the casino's total net winnings. The story implied that if revenue sharing was found to be illegal in New Mexico, it would also be illegal in New York, a fundamentally flawed premise which would also prove completely irrelevant just one day after the piece was published.
The primary source for the story was Alexis Johnson, a New Mexico attorney and longtime vocal opponent of Indian casino gaming. Although Johnson is not licensed to practice law in New York State, he has spent considerable time since 1998 advising gullible newspaper reporters on why Indian casino gaming would be illegal here.
"New York expects to climb Mount Everest in flip-flops and Bermuda shorts. Believe me, they're not going to make it," Johnson told Precious. "If there is anyone in New York depending on revenue sharing from the tribes, they ought to be real worried about what Interior is reviewing in New Mexico."
It turned out they didn't have to be worried for long, because the very next day, on Wednesday, Nov. 21, the Associated Press reported that federal officials approved the New Mexico deal. The state is expected to realize revenue-sharing payments of $90 million this year and $25 million annually through 2015.
Neither Precious nor any other News staffer has seen fit to write a word on the New Mexico approval and what it may mean to the situation here.
"You've got to wonder what their agenda really is," said one Albany insider. "Some yahoo out in New Mexico tells them it's illegal and they splash it all over the front page. But when the federal government rules it is legal, it doesn't even get in the paper."
Even prior to the New Mexico approval, sources close to the Governor's office told the Reporter that President George Bush had personally assured Pataki of "fast-track" approval of the Seneca compact by the Department of the Interior. Bush and Pataki became friends when the President served as governor of Texas, and having at least one of three proposed Western New York casinos up and running by Election Day next year is widely seen as crucial to Pataki's hopes for re-election.
Another instance in which seemingly non-existent opposition to the Seneca compact was turned into a major news story occurred in the Nov. 11 edition of the News. In the wake of an unofficial straw poll that showed more than 90 percent support for casinos among the 2,000 Senecas living on the reservation, Precious teamed up with staff writer Agnes Palazzetti in an all-out attempt to find some opposition.
The information contained in the resulting story, "Senecas put gambling compact vote on hold," came as no surprise to readers of the Reporter. The state Assembly had delayed its vote on the agreement for five months, and Seneca leaders simply said they needed more time to have their legal experts look over the final result before a vote was held.
The Seneca referendum is now tentatively scheduled for early January, and negotiations between the tribe and Pataki's office have been ongoing. But the Precious-Palazzetti story focused instead on a series of potential and largely illusory "deal-breakers."
The only Seneca quoted in the lengthy story as being critical of the compact was Tyler Heron. Although Heron currently holds no official leadership position within the tribe, he is a former tribal Councillor and the son of the former Seneca president George Heron.
On the reservation, he is widely seen to be in the initial stages of mounting a campaign to become president himself one day, and of using the casino issue both as a means of gaining notoriety and knocking the current administration of President Cyrus Schindler.
This information appears nowhere in the Precious-Palazzetti article.
The deliberate withholding of relevant information isn't confined to the pages of the Buffalo News, however. A three-page anti-gaming screed that ran as the cover story of last week's Artvoice uses as its primary source Susan Abrams, another political wanna-be and former Schindler challenger who, like Heron, holds no official position with the tribe.
Nowhere are Abrams' presidential aspirations mentioned, despite the fact they are well known on the reservation. The story does attempt to discredit at least one Seneca casino supporter, Tribal Councillor Arthur Montour Jr., by claiming that his father once belonged to the Mohawk Warrior Society.
This isn't just "spin," it's racism.
The possibility of lawsuits filed by those with moral or religious objections to gambling have also been exaggerated in various news reports. Earlier this month, the Saratoga Chamber of Commerce announced it would need at least $50,000 from Buffalo area groups to mount a legal challenge to the Seneca compact. In recent years, the Saratoga Chamber has dropped more than $100,000 in an unsuccessful suit to stop Indian gaming in the eastern part of the state.
But severe social services cutbacks necessitated by Buffalo's fiscal crisis have many religious leaders now thinking the money could be better spent helping the needy in their own communities.
Sources said a number of groups and individuals who had previously gone so far as to pledge money for the anti-gaming effort headed by the Rev. Stanley Bratton's Western New York Coalition Against Casino Gambling have since backed out, citing more pressing financial needs at home.
Federal approval made to seem like a stumbling block, minimal opposition on the reservation depicted as a groundswell and underfunded do-gooders portrayed as serious threats. All journalistic claptrap concerning "objectivity" aside, it has become clear over the past month that the Buffalo News and its writers are intent on painting the issues surrounding the opening of a Seneca casino in Niagara Falls in the worst possible light.
Unfortunately, because the Niagara Gazette has done so little original reporting on the issue -- and the News stories are routinely run word for word the next day under an Associated Press slug in our "hometown" paper -- the misinformation reaches an even wider audience here.
The result is a pessimistic citizenry, many of whom believe the casino will "get screwed up like everything else has gotten screwed up" over the past 40 years.
At this time next year, when the Niagara Falls Seneca casino is up and running, a lot of hack newspapermen and the people who pay them will have some explaining to do.