Bad Press

This is an interesting examination of the essential role of a free press in a democratic society. But surely the first thing that must strike any viewer is that a lot of people in the upper echelons of the Muscogee Nation - and this is even more true of the media than of the apparently corrupt politicians they are investigating - appear to be white. They could certainly pass for that, anyway. All the business of both groups is done in English, and it is clear that most of the principals don't speak Muscogee. So we have to ask ourselves, are they there because they identify, and have always identified, with the Nation? Or because it offered them an opportunity?

The film - which has no voiceover, and in which we only rarely hear the film-makers speak - does not address this issue. At one point someone worries about being 'not Creek enough', but it's not pursued. It's an unfortunate historical irony that US white guilt, and the well-intentioned wish to let native tribes run their own affairs, has denied them the protections of US citizens and apparently left them - yet again - at the mercy of unscrupulous whites.