Letter from Hawaii

 When former Vice President Dan Quayle stopped in Honolulu on his return from Asia in 1989, he had this to say about our fiftieth state: Hawaii, he noted, "is in the Pacific. It is part of the United States that is an island that is right here." Quayle may have sounded like he was in outer space because he was visiting the most remote place on earth, farther from any land mass than any other island.

In places of such splendid isolation, things -- from flora and fauna to, say, the media -- tend to evolve in unusual ways. Ecologists struggling to save Hawaii's endangered plants and animals say that the island's isolation has nurtured delicate and unusual species found nowhere else on earth, species that have adapted to unusual environments and need special protection. This can also be said of the island's major newspapers. Its two largest dailies are already sheltered by the newspaper equivalent of the Endangered Species Act -- a joint operating agreement that lets them carve up reportedly huge profits. They also have no competition, since their closest competitor is 2,500 miles away in California. They ply their trade in an environment that extols the virtues of aloha, the Polynesian equivalent of "love thy neighbor." They circulate to a population largely made up of Asian immigrants, whose native cultures covet personal privacy and shun public controversy. And they report on a government dominated for decades by one party -- the Democratic party -- that stifles dissent and throttles the tiny voice of Republican opposition.

In this protected environment, creatures and institutions alike demonstrate that adapting to Hawaii's ways, rather than challenging them, is the way to survive. The ruby red i'iwi bird adopted the color of the native lobelia flower and twisted its beak into the fluted shape of the bloom to ease extraction of its nectar. Since Hawaii's human nectar is tourism dollars, the economy is directed at selling the state as paradise on earth. The newspapers are not immune to this survival technique. It does not go unnoticed by even uncritical observers of the local media that the largest newspaper on the islands, circulation 172,500, is called The Honolulu Advertiser.

"In Honolulu," says former New York Times reporter Richard Halloran, "hard, compelling news is rare. Incisive analysis is even more rare. Vital news from across the nation and around the world is scant."

It is not surprising, then, that the most recent challenge to the powers that be in Hawaii came not from the powerful media establishment, but from a group of student journalists. Tired of a wall of secrecy built around state disciplinary proceedings, the University of Hawaii chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists decided to test the power of the local public records law. They demanded to see the previously secret files of disciplined police officers.

At first, the State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers (SHOPO) only agreed to search its files for a $20,000 fee. When the students sued, the police turned to the public for support. "SHOPO does not believe that the officers' children and family should be punished . . . by the release of their names," said union official Michael Joy. When that appeal failed to arouse much public support, the police started playing hardball. In a letter to the University of Hawaii, SHOPO asked for the names, addresses, and phone numbers of all students working at the university newspaper, their grades, academic standing, financial aid, salaries, source of funding of the newspaper, and any licenses that students must have to work at the paper. The university handed over only what was public record.

Then, last March, 500 off-duty officers, most dressed in their uniforms, crowded the courtroom of Judge John Lim to show support for keeping their secrets. "It is a peaceful presence," Joy said of the unprecedented police gathering. "We're not trying to intimidate anyone." Asking young reporters not to worry about 500 policemen is like asking them not to think about elephants. Nevertheless, Judge Lim ruled that the names must be released. While the police are appealing his decision, the names remain secret.

While the local newspapers and TV stations eventually joined the students' lawsuit and editorialized against the police tactics, they didn't take up the secrecy issue on their own.

"There is a deep distrust of dissent in this community," says Jahan Byrne, the student instigator of the SPJ battle for the police files. "Some say it goes back to the plantation days of colonialism. Some say the Democratic party has a lock on political institutions in the state. There are certain allowable places of dissent. One of them, luckily enough for us, is the university."

Jeffrey Portnoy, the students' lawyer, traces investigative timidity to the high value put on privacy. "If it comes down to the right to know versus the privacy of people, generally people would prefer that other people be left alone. Look at the Daniel Inouye thing," he adds, referring to the media's handling of 1992 allegations of sexual misconduct against the most powerful man in the state: Senator Daniel Inouye.

During the 1992 reelection campaign, Inouye's weak Republican opponent revealed secretly taped charges from a hairdresser that Inouye had forced her to have sex with him seventeen years earlier. The media focus quickly shifted from Inouye's alleged conduct to the conduct of his accuser and challenger, Republican Rick Reed.

Even though the polls showed that 42 percent of the voters thought Inouye was guilty and 38 percent weren't sure, it was Reed's support that was cut in half. Reed took the strange defensive tactic of claiming he was compelled to reveal the incident because he was basically an investigative reporter, having owned a small newspaper in Maui in 1977. But taking refuge among reporters did nothing to improve his public image and only furthered the death of the story and Inouye's victory at the polls.

During the controversy, the respected newspaper columnist A.A. Smyser, of the afternoon Star-Bulletin, went so far as to suggest that a lawsuit be filed in an effort to stifle reporting about the extra-curricular sex lives of politicians, although he cautioned that the lawsuit should "probably not [be] against the media organizations."

For political science professor Neal Milner, of the University of Hawaii, the lesson was clear: "When you are reporting on an extraordinarily powerful and influential political figure and there aren't a whole lot of opposing forces in the state, [the media] tend to fall into a pattern of reporting in a certain way," he said in a 1992 interview with the Advertiser. "For example, one of the places you get stories about an individual is from rivals or adversaries, but there was nobody running against [Inouye] with whom the media felt comfortable as a source."

The New York Times, he pointed out later in an opinion piece in the Star-Bulletin, had no problem finding sources when reporter Jane Gross came to Honolulu to cover the Inouye story. Inouye's response to her piece was revealing. He called her an outsider, which is, as Milner says, "the ultimate put-down in Hawaii politics."

Outsiders have broken some of the biggest stories and stirred up some of the biggest media controversies in recent years. In September 1991, The Wall Street Journal exposed a state program that was failing to fulfill promises to give land to native Hawaiians. In November 1992, Newsweek took apart the prison system. According to former Advertiser political reporter Peter Rosegg, the local media reported some of these stories "in bits and pieces," but, he concedes, Hawaii reporters do think carefully about the fallout of sensitive stories because "you are going to live on this rock forever."

Investigative reporter Jim Dooley, of the Advertiser, disagrees. He says he has the easiest job on the islands. Since the power elite is so small, he says, all he must do to break a story is follow one trail of connections or money. He nearly always finds malfeasance or scandal involving powerful figures. "That's what happens when your friends and friends of friends run everything," he says.

In an effort to evaluate how well the local media serve their public, the Honolulu Community Media Council in 1991-1992 did an analysis of the state's two major newspapers and the three major TV stations. Led by the late journalist and author Fletcher Knebel, a dozen retired mainland editors and producers were invited to monitor the local media for a week and make recommendations. The newspaper editors found that, for the most part, "today's papers are fair, relatively unbiased, reliable, moderate in tone and sensitive to the nuances of acceptable behavior in our multiracial island population." At the same time, however, the editors faulted Hawaii's papers in several areas, including:

¥ not enough national and foreign news;

¥ a reluctance to uncover cronyism, illegal acts, and corruption among the powerful;

¥ no competition between the newspapers;

¥ poor coverage of native Hawaiian issues.

Since the report was issued, the Gannett company, of Arlington, Virginia, sold the Star-Bulletin to Liberty Newspapers Limited Partnership, of Merrifield, Virginia, and bought the Advertiser, but the criticisms remain largely valid today.

While the newspapers make an occasional nod to events outside the islands, on local Hawaiian television, it is clear, the rest of the world does not exist.

 The council's report leveled criticism at the most influential anchor in the market -- Joe Moore. "Maybe it is reading per se he finds difficult," said the report. Possibly in an attempt at self-deprecation, Moore has a tendency to trip all over himself. Once, after reading a story on tax reform, he told the audience he was glad he had the script so he could read it over later to try to understand it.

Ethical lapses were cited at all the stations. KITV once allowed a Mickey Mouse cartoon clown to help with the weather report and promote a new show at Disneyland in Los Angeles. KGMB anchor Bob Jones once solicited customers through a newspaper ad for a tour of Southeast Asia, which he would lead, in return for free airfare and travel expenses. Station KHON (anchor Moore's base) let a resort on Kauai pick up the $20,000 tab for moving its evening news program and broadcasting from the resort.

Since anything else is too far away to care about, local news predominates in Hawaii, adding to the parochial feeling. Most sports coverage focuses on high school competitions because there are few college teams and no professional ones. Meanwhile, the search for the ever-interesting local angle forces reporters to play up stories that aren't news. On January 5, for example, the front page of the Advertiser was dominated by a story about a theft of some plants and trees from an intermediate school garden.

And sometimes this short view leaves out half the story. The biggest crime stories lately have been about child abuse among the military, which comprises 16 percent of the population of the main island of Oahu, where 65 percent of Hawaiians live. The alleged smothering death of an eighteen-month-old child by her father in Pearl Harbor military housing was front-page news for months. But when a report on family abuse in the military was released in Washington, it was printed deep inside the Advertiser and there was no local follow-up.

And sometimes a global story almost disappears altogether. When Nelson Mandela won the presidency of South Africa, the story was buried inside the Advertiser. When Indira Gandhi was assassinated, her death merited only a note on the front page that a story could be found inside. And, despite the fact that the movers and shakers of Hawaii public life are largely Japanese-Americans and that the economy of the islands is dominated by Japanese investment and tourism, no reporter for any news organization is stationed in Japan.

 It is easy for Hawaii visitors and locals alike to be lulled into a feeling that nothing matters beyond those breaking waves. The incessant blowing of the trade winds and the heat of the tropical sun invariably suck interest away from events in Moscow and Washington. Even refugees from more aggressive media environments find themselves seduced by the small-town feel. "I don't need The New York Times or Washington Post, which I used to always read," admits Portnoy, an East Coast transplant. "I don't wonder so much any more what is going on over there."

"There may be a little of Polynesian paralysis here," former Advertiser editorial editor John Griffin admits. But there is also a fear that while importing the more aggressive ways of mainland newspapers may root out wrongdoing, it may also disrupt the ecology of Hawaiian social and civic life in ways that cannot be anticipated.

 There is much to protect. The downtown area of Honolulu is so safe that thousands flock there every New Year's Eve for a non-alcoholic mega-block party right out of Norman Rockwell, except for the flowering leis and swaying palms. The political discourse includes heated debate over preserving aloha. It is hard to imagine in any other American city serious civic discussion over whether people are being nice enough to themselves and strangers. They worry that "mainland" ideas will corrupt this local sensibility.

 One journalist tells the cautionary tale of the fierce mongoose. The ferret-like creature was introduced into Oahu to help control a burgeoning rat population imported on Western boats. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But biologists failed to note that rats are nocturnal and the mongoose diurnal. Since the two creatures keep different hours, the mongoose decided to lunch on many of Hawaii's rare birds instead, sending many of them onto the endangered species list.

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