Obama Administration Official Bars News Team from Public Hearing
Israel Balderas/KFOX Morning News Anchor/Reporter
Posted: 5:06 pm MDT June 5, 2009
Updated: 6:14 pm MDT June 5, 2009

http://www.kfoxtv.com/news/19672831/detail.html

When local Hispanic farmers and ranchers from the El Paso area invited KFOX to cover a public hearing involving their discrimination complaints against the federal government, the last thing expected to happen was to have the door closed by a high ranking Obama administration official. But that's just what happened as the news crew tried to get their personal stories. "It’s a first amendment right,” said Craig Hodgens, a local farm worker said, laughing sarcastically. "I've never seen it happen till today."

What Hodgens and about 30 other attendees experienced was government censorship. KFOX was the only TV station present at an Anthony, Texas family restaurant, where journalists were forced to leave. The closed door meeting was organized by the farmers. The federal government official doing the censoring was Joe Leonard, the new Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights for the Department of Agriculture. “I’ve attended other similar public hearings," said Leonard, “and the media was never in attendance.”

Not only did Leonard attempt to avoid the camera lens, in several instances, a government attorney who refused to give her name or title, tried to block the KFOX camera as well. The unnamed female attorney also was the one who closed the door on the news team. At times, she said the farmers inside the public hearing did not want KFOX to cover the event, but when asked if the reporter could ask the farmers whether that was true or not, she refused entrance. At one point, the government attorney invited a local print journalist to be the only reporter covering the event. But no other print reporters or cameras were allowed inside the public hearing room.

So, what was so secretive that mandated exclusion of KFOX? Alfredo Alvarez Contreras is a local cotton farmer. He told Leonard inside the closed door meeting how the Department of Agriculture admittedly discriminated against him and his farming colleagues for years. Speaking in Spanish, Contreras said, “We're all suffering because, you know, we're asking help from friends - lend me a tractor-trailer. We don’t have money and nobody is lending to us because of this pending litigation.”
The case Contreras refers to is a class action lawsuit on the part of Hispanic farmers and ranchers against the Department of Agriculture. The case was filed nine years ago, but the discrimination dates back to 1981. The Commission on Civil Rights, Congress and former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman have all said that the federal government discriminated against Latinos in connection with farm credit and benefit programs. “For example, to plant cotton, you need the money in January,” said Contreras. “The government would give us money in May when it was too late to help us.”

KFOX contacted Howrey LLP attorney Stephen Hill based in Washington, D.C. He represents several farmers in the class action lawsuit against the government, many of them present at Friday’s hearing. When Hill was informed that the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights would not allow the news crew to cover this public event, he said, "It's ironic that a government official working on civil rights denies the right of the First Amendment." He pointed out that during the confirmation hearings of Agricultural Secretary Tom Vilsack, he made strong encouraging statements that the Obama Administration wanted to settle the cases as soon as possible and be transparent about the litigation. "Their actions today have not been consistent with those pronouncements."

So how long did this "hearings" gathering last? About an hour. When KFOX tried to talk to Leonard after the hearing about what he was told by the farmers and ranchers regarding the various discrimination instance plus comment on Friday's censorship he said he had no comment. Leonard did not want to talk to KFOX about the testimony uttered during the hearing. Leonard did say he had to go to other similar public hearings in other states, but no word on how public they will be.