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The tale of a small-town muckraker and his murky First Amendment victo
By Louise Mengelkoch
Six hundred billion dollars. That’s how much the First Amendment is worth, according to Adam Steele. That’s almost seven times the $87 billion Pres. Bush requested from Congress to fight Sadam Hussein. It’s more than a half a trillion dollars. The man who made this calculation is the founder, publisher, editor, reporter, ad salesman and columnist for the Northern Herald newspaper, and a resident of the small resort town in northern Minnesota where I teach First Amendment law at a state university. Steele recently had the opportunity to test that hypothetical value in federal court, after five years of litigation against our city government and 21 businesses and individuals. He claimed that they all conspired to keep him from distributing his newspaper ever since he wrote a scathing obituary story about Richard “Mort” Morton, the 46-year-old owner of a downtown bar aptly named Hard Times, who died quite suddenly of a brain aneurysm on the day after Christmas in 1997.
“It is hard to speak positively about anyone’s death,” wrote Steele, in his Jan. 5, 1998, issue, “but the Bemidji community was greatly served by the removal of this dangerous and malicious person from it. It is like a piece of trash gone from our streets.” The unfortunate Morton had not only had the back luck to die an untimely death, but to have tangled with Steele on several occasions in his bar. Law enforcement said Steele was buying drinks for underage women. Steele denies it. Whatever the nature of the feud between Steele and Morton, one thousand Bemidji citizens placed an anti-Steele ad in the Jan. 18 issue of The Pioneer, the local mainstream newspaper. It was an open letter to Bemidji that ended with the following words in large type: “Shame on you Adam Steele for your so called ‘leading edge journalism.’” That was the beginning of the end of an already prickly relationship between Steele, the city and the local business community and the beginning of a legal nightmare for the burghers, enforcers and administrative elements of an isolated community that has been experiencing the cracks and strains of growth and changing demographics ever since Adam Steele moved to the area in the early 90s.
Perhaps it’s his strange power as a catalyst that I find so fascinating about Steele. He has managed to open the seemingly benign veil of secrecy that makes us northern Minnesotans seem so “nice.” It’s why I, like many others, await in covert eagerness for each issue of The Northern Herald to see who’s next. His methods comprise a textbook example of the perfect balance between tabloid sensationalism and startling investigative reporting. I find myself defending him to my students even as I shudder at the sight of him and the thought of what he does. I don’t doubt that he will sue me for writing about him. And yet, I see him as a test of my belief in the elegant beauty of the First Amendment. I want to find out as much as I can about what he does and why he does it to face my own squeamishness about the raw nature of free expression, especially during these troubled times when those of us who believe in it need to find a way to galvanize. see it as a test of the bumper sticker on my Honda: “Talk is cheap: Free speech is not.” Just how hard can it be, I often wonder. I’m about to find out.
Adam Steele v. The City of Bemidji
As I sit in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis on this gray, chilly June morning in 2003, I remember the first time I’d met Steele. It was at the office of the Northern Student, the campus newspaper of Bemidji State University, in September 1991. As the publication’s adviser, I was a frequent visitor, since the problems never ceased. We were still recovering from a year-long fight with administration over the release of campus crime records, which culminated in our breaking a story about a resident assistant who’d raped a female student, left the campus in secret, and then committed the same crime on another state university campus because administrators refused to reveal his actions to outsiders, but preferred to handle it within their student conduct system. Our student editor had won a national First Amendment award for her work, but she could not afford to travel to Chicago to receive the honor. I thoroughly enjoyed the constant, dangerous, creative chaos of all these students who had become good friends. This day, however, I was met at the door by a stranger -- a rather stocky man with a squared-off, sand-and-dirt colored beard the texture of a metal brush. He smelled of cheap cherry tobacco and Old Spice aftershave.
His strange, stammered greeting was something on the order of “Delighted to meet you, I’m sure. And how are you on this fine day?” He used arcane words and phrases like “verily” and “most assuredly,” and “carry on with vigor.” All in all, he made me increasingly suspicious. He’d been hired, it turned out, to be the Northern Student’s new part-time business manager while he took a few courses in business and accounting. I paid little attention to him at the time, since, as at most campus newspapers, odd characters were a regular feature of the landscape. He didn’t last long in his job, but that may be because he decided to get on with his real work – afflicting the comfortable in our little town.
The scene of the crime: the land of Paul Bunyan
With a population of 11,245, Bemidji is one of the largest towns in northern Minnesota. It lies right in the middle of the Arctic dip on a North American weather map. The town hugs the western shore of an oval-shaped northwoods lake of the same name. The downtown waterfront features a modest 1950s-vintage amusement park that promotional literature describes in hyperbolic language so the present doesn’t seem to be a shadow of the past. There are the carny rides, including paddleboats and canoes for the more adventurous. There is an ersatz Victorian chamber of commerce building. There’s the Beltrami County Historical Society housed in the old Great Northern Railroad Station. Its dusty treasures include ill-gotten Ojibwe artifacts and a photo of downtown Bemidji depicting a bear cub sitting in the middle of a dirt street in the early 20th century. There is also a Paul Bunyan museum in the chamber of commerce building, where you can still see Paul Bunyan’s toothbrush and his toenail clippings. One wall boasts a fireplace of the states, with a native stone from each of the fifty states in its construction. You can also see pages from a 1938 issue of Life magazine featuring Bemidji’s proudest accomplishment, its Paul and Babe sculpture.
The concrete and chicken wire statues were created in 1937 by the local Rotary Club for Bemidji’s first Paul Bunyan Winter Carnival. The next winter, the nearby town of Blackduck joined the celebration and built a giant black mallard for the parade. One hundred thousand people attended the celebration. That’s when Life magazine came. The town fathers still claim that the statues are the third most photographed tourist attraction in the United States.
Just north of the chamber of commerce building is Library Park, so named because the old Carnegie library building and a band-shell were built on the shaded grassy beach area. The beach is, for the most part, clean and pleasant, and seagulls, ducks and other waterfowl keep children amused for hours on end. Looking out over the water stands another statue--of Chief Bemidji, named after a friendly Ojibwe local settlers had designated a chief. He shades his eyes with his right hand and holds the upright barrel of a muzzle-loader in his left, which has occasionally been reported as stolen and then replaced. This is actually a replica of the original Chief Bemidji sculpture. The first one was carved from boards around the turn of the century by Gustav Hinsch, a sculptor and naturalist. Gustav was afflicted with severe epileptic fits and would sometimes be forced to delay his creating of the Chief because he would lapse into a coma for a day or two. He often threatened to end his life because of his illness. One day he walked out into Lake Bemidji and disappeared. The statue was raffled off to pay for the lumber used in its creation, and it stood outside a saloon as a cigar store Indian. It was falling apart by the time it was given to the historical society and a copy was erected in 1952.
Across the street at Morrell’s Trading Post, a 25-foot tall fiberglass Indian brave also looks out across the water, his huge arm extended in what appears to be a Nazi salute. Next to him, in a glass case, poses “Lobo, the Killer Wolf,” now stuffed, linty and harmless. Across the street from the carnival sits a Pamida store. Its parking lot covers Ojibwe artifacts and graves. Down the road toward the southeast end of the lake lies the old Georgia-Pacific property, the former site of a paper mill that still holds unknown quantities of unknown toxic chemicals. The development of an ambitious waterfront theme park and upscale hotel has been halted until all the stakeholders can iron out their philosophical differences about how much cleanup is necessary and, most important, who should pay. All in all, the waterfront is the heart of Bemidji’s past.
The town is hemmed in by three great Indian reservations. Canada looms close and large. Winnipeg is closer to the north than the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul are to the south. The great Mississippi River wends its way randomly through the area as a nascent stream. Its source is only 25 miles by road from Bemidji, but the same trip takes three days by canoe. It’s a land of frigid winters, achingly brief summers and delicate beauty--fragile, peeling birch trees, tiny yellow and brown moccasin flowers, soft and gentle white pine needles. Its residents take pride in the toughness required to endure forty below temperatures, but it’s fragility that defines the geology of the area.
It’s the lakes that dominate the landscape. Every road ends at a lake or goes around a lake. They were named after Indian chiefs, French explorers, politicians, saints and sinners. When the state-hired cartographers ran out of those names, they began naming them after vegetables: Potato Lake, Squash Lake, and Broccoli Lake. Then they tried shapes, which may or may not have borne any relation to the actual shape of the lake: Square Lake, Round Lake, Bottle Lake. The lakes themselves are as varied as their names. Some are more than 100 feet deep, some as shallow as 15 feet. Some are surrounded by dense woods, others by savannah. But most are connected by an endless series of streams, rivers and channels that make canoeing the logical method of transportation for the outdoors enthusiast. You can canoe from Bemidji south to Minneapolis in about a month.
The natural beauty of northern Minnesota is such that people make great sacrifices to get here and to stay. They give up careers, work at two or even three low-paying jobs, create their own jobs. For the most part, they can be divided into two camps: the hunters/snowmobilers and the cross-country skiers/environmentalists. They coexist relatively peacefully. Fishing seems to be the great unifier. Almost everyone fishes and there are few philosophical arguments between the two groups, except, perhaps the upper limit on the horsepower of an acceptable motor. And, of course, whether Indians should have the right to break the rules of the game because of old treaties. That has yet to be determined and will probably not be decided until sometime well into this millennium.
The people are mostly nice. They work hard and complain little, believe in family values and understand something about the poetry of nature, even if they can’t express it in words. They don’t hesitate to help a stranger stuck in a ditch on a cold winter night. They don’t make public spectacles of themselves. They rarely question authority. They never invade the privacy of others. They aren’t noticed much by the rest of the world. But when Adam Steele arrived in 1991, the town was forced to notice itself.
Curbstone College
Adam Steele is acting as his own attorney, as he has done in previous lawsuits. He arrives about 15 minutes early to U.S. Federal Court with his exhibits strapped to an airport luggage cart with bungee cords. They comprise hundreds of yellowed newspapers clipped in presumably meaningful bundles, accordian-style file envelopes held fast with rubber bands running lengthwise and crosswise and a large laminated poster board of some kind, the significance of which would become clear during Steele’s colorful, elliptical testimony.
My 14-year-old son and I are the only representatives of the public besides a handful of witnesses and what appear to be a few attentive, serious law clerks or students. Steele seems unruffled as he sorts through his pile, making new piles. The City of Bemidji is represented by John Iverson, an attorney procured through the League of Cities. Sitting next to him is Al Felix, our beleaguered city attorney, who, it turns out, had written a stunning letter that will become central to this case.
When Judge James M. Rosenbaum opens the proceedings by announcing that the City has waived its right to a jury, Steele is visibly puzzled. “Could I have a few moments to number my exhibits?” he asks, surveying his piles. The judge tells him it’s not necessary and gives him the option of questioning himself or simply making a statement.
Steele opts for the latter and takes the witness stand. He rambles on about the origins of his newspaper, painstakingly marking exhibits as he goes along. He refers to himself in the third person and to the newspaper as “we.” He wants to show the judge “representative copies,” such as Vol. I, Number 1, which carries a front-page story headlined “Should the DNR have nuclear weapons?”
“Let me tell you,” says Judge Rosenbaum in an icy tone, “I’m familiar with your newspaper. Let’s focus on the case.”
“Certainly, your honor,” replies Steele with a noticeable stutter. He shuffles his exhibits some more. At some point, the judge begins cracking his knuckles. Steele describes the distribution methods of his newspaper – human curbside vendors, sales racks in businesses, subscription. Here’s where Steele makes use of his curious tag board. Exhibit 112 is the sign he had his curbside vendors wear (although I’d never seen anyone but Steele himself hawking his papers). He steps down from the witness stand and demonstrates how it’s worn, almost exactly like a backyard barbeque chef’s apron. A string slips around his neck, and, he explains as he turns around, the side strings slip through one’s belt loops so it doesn’t fall down. The sign itself is a mockup of a newspaper with the headline “On Sale Here! 50 Cents!”
“I told you, I’m quite familiar with the facts!” thunders the judge.
Undeterred, Steele holds up a drawing of the entrance road to the Paul Bunyan Mall, the spot where he was apprehended and told to cease and desist from distributing his papers that cold winter day in 1998. The judge is not looking at the drawing. The two Bemidji police officers await their turns to testify, one with his arms folded hostilely and the other covering his mouth to keep from laughing.
Ostensibly what’s at issue is whether Steele should have had a peddler’s permit from the City, whether he was actually “lunging” at vehicles as the vigilant manager of the mall reported to law enforcement, whether he stepped on or off private mall or MNDOT (Minn. Dept. of Transportation) property while on the median. This will answer the question of whether Steele violated an obstructing, endangerment or soliciting ordinance. Steele does his best to show the court his knowledge of who owns what property, his efforts to gain permission and his “vendor policy” of always being polite to drivers because they’re potential customers.
By Steele’s admission, he left the Paul Bunyan Mall area without an argument, but Steele apparently believed he’d been wronged and brooded until June, when he announced to the city council that he was suing them for $600 billion for infringement of his First Amendment Rights. When I interviewed him shortly before the trial, I asked him how he’d arrived at that figure. He said he had done calculations indicating that was how much the First Amendment was worth. Accounting, he explained, bases value on the cost of replacement or repair. (Steele holds a CPA license in the State of Minnesota, one of the few states that do not require a four-year degree as a prerequisite for licensure.) There are only two possible ways to rectify the situation, he said: either set out for an uninhabited country and re-create the United States or conquer an inhabited country, colonize, write a constitution and spend two hundred years refining the doctrine of free speech.
Of course, he added, that amount included compensatory damages for his lost earnings (which he estimated at $22,000), plus lost visibility and lost derivative revenue (which wasn’t clearly explained). When I asked whether he thought the absurd amount he asked for compromised his credibility, he reminded me that ability to pay is not a factor in such a lawsuit. The amount should be based on what a reasonable person would be willing to pay for the lost benefit (in this case, the First Amendment) if cost were not an issue.
U.S. District Judge Richard Kyle of St. Paul had dismissed all counts of Steele’s complex suit, but Steele appealed to the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. That court upheld the lower court’s dismissal of claims against 21 individuals and businesses, but remanded the case against the city back to district court. So more than five years after the first violation of Steele’s rights at the Paul Bunyan Mall, we are finally about to see justice done.
At this point in the trial, my son, Nik, is getting worked up. “Why hasn’t anybody mentioned $600 billion?!” He writes in his notebook. I have no answer except that perhaps everyone knows it’s not about that. But what is it really about?
The history of polite First Amendment activity in our town
I have some ideas, having arrived in this town just a few years before Steele. When I moved to town in June of 1987, Anita Carlson, a recent graduate of our mass communication department, had just been kidnapped from Pete’s Place convenience store on the west end of town. Her body was found halfway up the road to the Red Lake Reservation. She’d been raped and murdered. Her killer has never been charged. Rumor (as opposed to media coverage) has it that the perpetrator is known but crucial evidence was destroyed.
A few months later, a sad labor story went under-reported when 11 women, members of the Food and Commercial Workers, Local 1116, went on strike against American Linen in Bemidji. These women, some of whom had been working there for decades washing greasy rags laden with toxic chemicals and mending the crotches of heavy-duty work clothes, made barely more than minimum wage with few real benefits. There was a tiny blip in media coverage when Jesse Jackson actually came to town and held a rally for them. But after that, it trickled to a few letters to the editor. They “settled” after nine months, ending up with a 20-cent raise and no union.
Then in 1990, our 39-year-old, handsome, healthy lead county attorney, Tom Keyes, mysteriously died while jogging along Lake Bemidji near our campus. An autopsy revealed the cause of death as cardiac arrhythmia. Keyes was buried and publicly mourned. But then a local informant suggested to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in the Twin Cities that the cause of death may well have been cocaine. This did not go over well with local officials, especially when the BCA ordered the exhumation of Keyes’s body. When Monte Draper, the Pioneer’s award-winning, but underpaid photographer captured the moment on film and it was run on the front page, he received death threats and subscriptions were lost, despite the fact that a new autopsy supported the informant’s contention. The next story quoted the new county attorney, Tim Faver, as saying the county would vigorously pursue any and all leads to discover who supplied the cocaine to Keyes for the purpose of prosecuting for murder. Even before Keyes’s untimely death, rumors had circulated about a drug ring of public officials and prominent businessmen in the community, but none of this was reported by local media.
More than ten years later, public records about this case are not available to the public and the case has not been solved. It may or may not still be open. Adam Steele keeps picking at that scab and others in almost every story he writes about county issues. But his attacks are democratic and inclusive. “What makes Bemidji special,” he wrote in the May 4-May 31, 2002, issue, “is its demography.” He blames its corruption not only on those in the “shadows of the government halls,” but also on its “huge welfare population,” and last but not least, its “liberal educators at BSU, for whom any politics are OK as long as the money faucet keeps running.”
Then on a warm August night in 1993, a 14-year-old girl named Heather Lory was raped by three boys while at a girlfriend’s birthday party. Heather’s father shot and killed one of the alleged rapists and was charged with manslaughter. I first read about it in The Pioneer. County Attorney Tim Faver was quoted as saying the shooting victim, Bruce Bradach, Jr., was clearly not involved in the rape, even though no DNA testing had been done. His statement, it turned out, was based solely on the police statements given by members of Bruce Bradach Jr.’s family. Because of its sensational nature, the case garnered media attention from the Twin Cities, and eventually, nationally. By the time Heather Lory and her mother appeared on the Sally Jessy Raphael show, a national talk-show audience expressed outrage at the inability or refusal of our local media to investigate alleged wrongdoing and incompetence within the criminal justice system. Local media did cover this event, of course, but focused on Sally’s snottiest line during the broadcast: “Way to go, Bemidji!” she sneered in a close-up shot. Faver’s response was quoted in The Pioneer: “Those who have participated in the show have done a great disservice,” he stated solemnly.
Improprieties in jury deliberations resulted in a second trial for Richard Lory. An appearance on the Phil Donahue show by Heather and her mother resulted in even more intense media coverage. The second trial ended in a hung jury, but the third trial sent Rich Lory away for 8-12 years. When I reported on the media coverage of this case for the Columbia Journalism Review I stated that local media did not have the resources to do an adequate job of any type of investigative journalism. Adam Steele was the only media source telling the story from Heather Lory’s point of view, especially how she was being threatened in school by Bruce Bradach’s friends. He also pointed the finger at law enforcement and the courts.
The day Richard Lory was sentenced to 12-1/2 years, he shared the front page of The Pioneer with Rep. Bob Johnson, who’d defeated Adam Steele in the 1992 primary. His alcoholism had been rumored for a long time, although never reported. He was apprehended just outside Bemidji while traveling back from the Twin Cities, reportedly drunk and in a suicidal state of mind. “Johnson arraigned for DWI,” read the top-of-the-fold headline. Shortly thereafter, Johnson resigned his position and entered in-patient treatment.
Perhaps the most bizarre of the under-reported stories in recent memory was that of Roy Martin, an enrolled member of the Coldwell First Nation in Ontario, who attended the local university. He was held in the Beltrami County Jail for more than six months, based on the county attorney’s contention that he was the prime suspect in a sexual assault case. The alleged victim saw Martin in the Paul Bunyan Mall and identified him as her attacker from the sound of his voice, even though her description didn’t fit that of Martin. She’d said the man was Caucasian, when Martin was clearly native, for example. She said he’d run away when Martin walked with a cane. When he was finally acquitted by a jury after 90 minutes of deliberation, the judge found him in contempt of court for failing to answer questions concerning his military background during the trial. He was sentenced to 30 days in jail, but given credit for time served.
Martin hightailed it out of town and said he’d never return. Steele, who was Martin’s neighbor, had advocated for Martin’s rights from the first day. The Pioneer reported on the case minimally and did not probe into the strange and suspect behavior of law enforcement and the courts. The case prompted demonstrations and a demand by local Ojibwe activists that a Native American grand jury hearing be developed and organized.
Shortly afterwards, scandals unfolded involving local law enforcement officers and a prostitution ring, the police chief and improper expense reports, another police chief implicated in an “alleged helicopter Ponzi,” and payoffs to city council members. Local citizens either surreptitiously or eagerly awaited each new issue to see what crazy stories would be served up to us, or, if they were on his hit list, dreaded what was to come. Curiously enough, nobody ever threatened to sue Steele for libel, except the survivors of the unfortunate “Mort” Morton. However, in Minnesota, the deceased generally cannot be libeled. The result of this strange silence was confusing to those of us not in the inner circle of provincial power. What were we to believe? Was Steele completely out to lunch or was he too close to the truth? What was clear was that local officials and businessmen wanted Steele gone, and they were willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on attorneys’ fees trying to make it happen.
Curbside crisis: going postal
Steele tells Judge Rosenbaum about the letter he received from city attorney Al Felix shortly after his announcement to the city council that he would be suing them. This, it will become evident, is the smoking gun at the heart of Steele’s case. He explains that the LETTER “effectively prohibits” him from distributing his newspaper in Bemidji. “How does it do that?” asks Judge Rosenbaum, with a detectable sneer.
Steele reads the LETTER aloud. In it, Felix reminds Steele that he has been using public property to “personally advertise and sell your alleged publication without first having obtained a Solicitation Permit.” He reminds Steele that he also needs a written permit from the City Council, and proof of “adequate insurance and bond to safeguard persons and property from injury.” He has no right to a “stationery (sic) location,” and the permit is subject to the “judgment” of law enforcement. Felix cites concerns about the health, safety and welfare of its citizens, about the problems with “distractions” and “obstructions” and “accidents and injury.” Felix goes on to express concern about Steele’s other “spurious lawsuits” and his recent bankruptcy. He concludes by suggesting Steele consider a “pay distribution box” to “dispense” his “product.” He ends with a flourish: “Of course, in light of this community’s apparent unwillingness to embrace your ideas, another option may be your consideration of relocation to another community within this State or elsewhere which may be less concerned about the safety of its citizens and more willing to embrace your way of thinking.”
The judge shows no obvious response as Steele tells him that he could not afford any of the mandates imposed upon his business. Then he completes the story of his entanglements with local law enforcement. A week after Felix’s letter, in August 1998, Steele started giving away his newspapers outside the Bemidji Post Office. This time, Steele has photographs of the area in question. He points out in excruciating detail how he did not step off the curb, how he stood along a no-parking zone, but it was not a no-stopping zone. “I made a contemporaneous note,” he says of the date and specifics.
“Move along,” suggests the judge. Steele tells him how Police Sgt. Mike Porter, who happened to drive by, threatened to arrest him for soliciting. Porter would later testify that he called Felix, who gave him the go-ahead. Steele did not argue, but left the scene. As Steele completes his story, his tagboard half-sandwich sign flops down to the floor and rests there like a dead fish. He concludes by doing an analysis of his damages: $5-6 per hour over a period of 2.2 years, plus approximately $5,000 in lost advertising. “All those things you lose with reduced visibility,” he points out.
John Iverson cross-examines Steele. Didn’t he stop traffic to “hawk” his papers? Didn’t he step off the median at the mall entrance? Did he ask permission of MNDOT to be on their property? Didn’t he, in fact, know that MNDOT does not give such permission? Didn’t he know that interfering with traffic is dangerous? Didn’t Sgt. Porter point out he was a traffic hazard and didn’t he agree with him? “I never stood in the street,” claims Steele. Why didn’t Al Felix’s letter stop you from handing out papers at the post office? Didn’t you sue Bemidji four times previously saying your rights were violated? Steele is “not sure” how many times he sued. He had, in fact, sued the city for demanding that he mow his lawn (which he seemed to be restoring to natural prairie) and for assessing him to hook up to city water. “What do I care about a water hookup,” snarls Judge Rosenbaum. Iverson is undeterred. Didn’t the court assign you a public defender, found you could pay and billed you, at which time you declared bankruptcy? The judge yawns.
Steele tries to set the record straight. “I couldn’t pay it,” he says. “I was told I would go to jail if I couldn’t pay it, so I filed bankruptcy.” Iverson tries to imply that Steele perjured himself by not mentioning the value of this lawsuit on his bankruptcy filing. “It had no value at the time,” says Steele, puzzled. Iverson also wonders why Steele stated on his bankruptcy claim that he derived no income from the Northern Herald. “Can I see that?” asks Steele. Judge Rosenbaum orders a brief recess. Everyone gratefully leaves the courtroom except Steele. He sits at his petitioner’s table, a lonely figure poring over his bankruptcy documents, newspapers falling everywhere.
The “voluntary petition” to U.S. Bankruptcy Court for Chapter 7 relief reveals intriguing details about this odd man so disliked by our town fathers. On Feb. 26, 1998, Steele listed his total assets at $7,072.60 (including $172.79 cash on hand and in banks) and liabilities at $121,805.97. More than $12,000 of that is owed to the IRS, and the states of Colorado, Minnesota and California. He owes the City of Bemidji $930.57 due to a judgment against him when he sued them for libel in 1994, and $7,808.70 to Beltrami County to reimburse them for public defender fees, when that court determined he had the resources to pay. He also owed the Golden State Flying Club in El Cajon, California, for aircraft instruction in 1989 and an ambulance service in Georgetown, Colorado, in 1990.
But Steele’s largest debt -- $97,228.97, to be exact – is owed to a mysterious figure in Solana Beach, California, who keeps appearing in Steele’s biography. Howard Ruhm, who is suspected to be Steele’s father, disbursed that much to Steele in personal loans, rent, computer equipment and cars during the period 1991-1998. But, as will become apparent from Iverson’s cross-examination, Steele’s very identity is an issue.
Freedom’s bitter fruits
I had seen law enforcement documents regarding Steele’s aliases before the trial, and I hear reference to the mystery from Sgt. Mike Porter when Nik and I talk to him during the recess. During Steele’s earlier lawsuit, when he was being investigated on suspicion of sexual assault, the county asked the FBI to do a background check. Porter, at least, never received any definitive answers about the real Adam Steele. Porter is more interested in explaining to us why Minnesota’s newly enacted conceal and carry gun law is a good thing for us all. It’s hard to focus on what he says because I’m transfixed by the most amazing mustache I’ve ever seen on anyone who has a job. It has a span of at least six inches and curls up on each end. He looks like the villain in a silent movie. Where, I wonder, can one still buy mustache wax? He’s dressed in well-worn cowboy boots and tight jeans. Nik says he looks like Mr. Peanut. He’s now happily retired and works part-time for a local car dealership.
We return from the break to find Steele relaxing in his attorney’s seat, reading one of his own newspapers. Iverson forces Steele to admit he makes nothing from the Northern Herald, so he has suffered no loss of income. His website (www.northernherald.com) shows a circulation of 4,000, 3,500 of which are complimentary. He remembers selling one newspaper at the mall. The rest he gave away. Steele points out that he had not planned to “liquidate the claim” until Felix banned “us” from the entire city. “If the city would have acted pro-actively during that time. . .” he trails off. “The city had always acted as if they had done nothing wrong.” He decided to actively pursue the suit before the November election, he says, because he had important information to get out before citizens voted.
Iverson ignores him. “When the city asked you to cut your lawn, you immediately filed a federal lawsuit,” he accused Steele. Why, he demanded, did Steele never go talk to Felix about the letter? Why didn’t he ever inquire about ordinances? Why didn’t he ever ask the mall for permission to sell on their property? Why not MNDOT? Why won’t you provide us with your tax records?
At one point, Rosenbaum perks up and states loudly, “This is a trial!” Iverson and Steel argue about whether the Herald income from 2001 was $1,600 or $1,608. “Why did you change your name to Adam Steele?” says Iverson grimly. He’s throwing it all out there at this point. Steele objects for his client, himself. The fingerprints of Myer Ruhm match yours, says Iverson, triumphant. The judge begins looking up court rules. He’s not sure this is admissible. Iverson is dogged. Were you charged with procuring amphetamines under false pretenses in 1970 in Oklahoma City? Rosenbaum shakes his head threateningly. Iverson explains he’s trying to show a pattern of “fraud and deceit.” Did you, he asks Steele, flee unlawfully to avoid prosecution? Steele pleads the Fifth Amendment five times. Rosenbaum weighs in. “It’s stale,” he says of Iverson’s meticulously crafted attack.
But Iverson isn’t done. He calls a MNDOT employee who confirms that his agency does not allow soliciting on its public property. He does admit that someone used to hand out religious tracts near the area in question while wearing a sandwich board with such messages as “Jesus loves you” and “The end is near.” However, the witness points out, that man did not hinder the flow of traffic and was not selling anything.
Iverson calls another witness – Jon Hunt, an 18-year veteran of the Bemidji Police Department, who had received a call from the manager of the Paul Bunyan Mall asking to have Steele removed from the property. Hunt says he parked at the Taco John lot and viewed Steele from about 40-50 feet away. He says he observed Steele holding his papers in the air and trying to “get rid of them.” His only concern, he says, was Steele’s “danger to himself and others.” The road was icy and people were watching him and not paying attention to their driving. Was it anything about the content of the Northern Herald that made you stop Steele? asks Iverson slyly. No, answers Hunt.
Much discussion follows about just how icy the road was, how he observed accidents and “near accidents,” whether Steele was wearing a sandwich board sign or just an apron-style sign. Steele is shifting in his seat. His shirt has come untucked and hangs in bunches between his belt and his worn black leather vest. He stands up and sits down several times, unsure of himself. He sweats and wipes his brow with a crumpled cloth handkerchief. He carries exhibits back and forth between his table and the witness stand. He holds them out at arm’s length to read them because he’s farsighted but has no glasses. Iverson asks Hunt the same question he’d asked Sgt. Porter – if his stopping Steele from “peddling” his newspapers had anything to do with the content. No, says Hunt with certainty.
Steele cross-examines Hunt and keeps referring to himself as “Steele” and “him.” Hunt aggressively calls him “you,” but eventually gives in and refers to Steele as Steele to Steele, while Steele gives in and refers to himself as “I.” It’s unclear to everyone else exactly what has been accomplished. It’s also unclear who anyone is anymore. And then comes the last witness, the author of the smoking gun. Al Felix seems like an unassuming guy, slim, hawkish and slightly bent, with a reasonable mustache. He tells why he wrote the LETTER in response to Steele’s lawsuit: “It seemed to be an aggressive, unreasonable claim. I responded in an equally aggressive manner.” He cites Steele’s “tendency to litigate” when Iverson obligingly asks how many lawsuits he’s been involved in with Steele. He says he reads every edition of Steele’s paper because the City allows them to be left at city hall for distribution. Steele did not come and speak to him about a permit after the LETTER, which, he says, did not take him very long to write. Nobody, he says, had ever challenged the relevant city ordinance before. His only concern, he concludes, is to eliminate any “activity that jeopardizes the traveling public.” Iverson asks if anyone had ever complained about such traffic obstructions. No, says Felix, except Steele himself complaining about teenagers stepping into the street to hawk fund-raising car washes. Nobody was cited in that incident, Felix says.
Steele has only one major point to make in his cross-examination. His newspapers have been at city hall only since November 1999, he says, when Felix indicated at a previous court hearing that he had no objection. “We writers communicate ideas,” he says passionately. “ We were prevented from doing this for two years. We did suffer damage.” He concludes with a quote from a “famous American statesman,” although he doesn’t remember who it was: “You cannot be free if I’m not free.” The judge retires to deliberate. Steele puts on his suit coat for the first time since the trial began. He strokes his beard and turns to Nik and me. “Well, we can’t give you ‘The Practice,’” he says, “but we can give you ‘Mattlock.’”
“Good day to you and carry on with vigor”
Is this really just a television drama to Steele, I wonder. And who’s the hero? Where’s the truth? For starters, just who is Adam Steele? An Internet search reveals that Adam Steele is the hero of an old series of western novels by George Gilman, a pseudonym for Terry Hacknett. The fiction Steele is a bounty hunter who “hunts men for pay” and “extracts revenge” for the death of his father. When I sat down with the real-life Steele at the Cabin Coffeehouse, a local café, a week before this trial, he got slit-eyed when I brought up the subject of the aliases uncovered by the FBI. Is he Myer Aaron Ruhm, son of the man who lives in a stupendously wealthy California coastal community? Or is he William Powell Jefferson or William Edward Snead, Jr.? All are names surfacing in the FBI report. None of that is relevant, he’d said simply. He said he was born in Richmond, Virginia, as he offered me “a spot of snuff.” He did not offer any to my husband, who sat protectively nearby. Steele was upset when he discovered this was a no-smoking establishment. “I like to patronize places that allow smoking,” he said, clearly irritated with me for having chosen this venue. As he told his version of his life story, he held his tiny cup of espresso, paid for in carefully counted small coins, in his ink-stained hands.
It’s not even clear when he was born, although if he truly is Myer Ruhm, it was November 23, 1945. He placed himself in Houston after college in Atlanta, and in Minneapolis from 1978-86 (or “Minne-no-place” as he called it), where he opened the Fed Tax Center, an accounting business near Don’s Trading on E. Lake Street. In 1986 he began his political career in earnest by running for state treasurer. In an ambitious campaign strategy, Steele walked from the Iowa border northwest to East Grand Forks at a slow, but determined, 42-day pace. A Pioneer photo shows a younger and more fit Steele in khaki shorts and high-top tennis shoes, but already with his signature Fuller Brush beard.
The AP also wrote an upbeat, amusing story that noted his “battered” tennis shoes and his red campaign t-shirt, which read “Adam Steele for treasurer” on the front and “If you criticize farmers, don’t talk with your mouth full” on the back. Another story noted his “deep, resonant voice.” (He said he once had a radio show in L.A.) His platform was specific and so eclectic that The Pioneer reported his campaign would continue “despite his cool reception as an oddball among the Independent-Republican establishment.” One Republican state representative stated laconically, “His perseverance is his best attribute. . .but other than that, I’m not impressed with him.”
Steele believed at the time that the state treasurer should “evaluate the impact of legislation” and “do more than just balance the cash books.” He believed beleaguered farmers needed an incentive to reduce production and guaranteed financing or refinancing of farm indebtedness, that small businesses needed relief from burdensome regulation, that state tax assistance programs needed enhancement, and that his job would be to “ride herd” on state agencies and eliminate widespread waste. Steele lost his bid in the primary election, but it was just the beginning of his political aspirations, which continued in Bemidji.
Steele said he lived in Los Angeles from 1987-1991, and they appear to be troubled years. His occupation, he said, was as the owner and operator of Great Northwest Publishing, which dealt in “consumer novelties.” But according to Steele’s bankruptcy filing, that’s when he went so deeply into debt to the IRS and to the states of Minnesota, Colorado and California. His last debt before arriving in our town was an ambulance charge in Georgetown, Colorado, in December 1990. He knocked on the door of The Pioneer looking for a job in August 1991, with a glowing letter of recommendation from his former supervisor in Colorado. Steele was a “tax professional of the highest caliber,” the letter to all prospective employers stated. “His technical knowledge, research abilities and attention to detail are outstanding. . .Furthermore, Mr. Steele is a gentleman, whose good nature, good manners, enthusiastic attitude and excellent social skills make it a pleasure to work with him.” Even so, Steele wasn’t eager to talk about the period. And it would be that period of time that provided ammunition to a weekly tabloid during his 1992 campaign for state representative.
A political career cut short
Steele ran as an unendorsed Republican against incumbent Bob Johnson, who, it was noted earlier, ended his career in 1995 when his alcoholism got the best of him. But in ’92, he was the favorite son, and Steele, once again, filled the role of the provocateur. Steele’s platform was eclectic. He championed a motley collection of seemingly contradictory causes: civil rights of the accused, welfare reform, prayer in school (even though he’s a Jew and recognizes the need to be more tolerant of other people’s religious beliefs), the right to stop the practice of condom distribution in public schools, and rights of non-custodial fathers.
Meanwhile, one of my former students had become the first editor of a free weekly tabloid called The NewsLine, which was published by George Williams. Williams’s father had once published The Pioneer, so he had made the decision to challenge their monopoly on the area’s news. He believed in doing more original, community-based stories instead of wire service articles, and his young, eager editor, Tom Robertson, fresh from the Northern Student’s expose of the dorm rapist, was ready to do investigative reporting.
Robertson thought that something about Steele just didn’t smell right. Then he was informed by Police Chief Bob Tell that Steele was “under investigation” for sexual assault. According to the complaint, dated Oct. 19, 1992, Steele took a 19-year-old woman into the Bottoms Up bar and bought Windsor cokes with no ice for her and himself. The bartender called law enforcement and Steele was arrested. It was further alleged by law enforcement investigators that Steele took this same woman home with him and had forcible sex with her. That led Robertson to call Steele’s most recent reference on his candidacy application in Colorado. From sources there, he learned of other accusations of sexual assault.
His front-page story appeared shortly before the election, which Steele lost. He promptly sued the NewsLine, editor Tom Robertson, and the chief of police for “defamation of character with malice.” He submitted a nine-page statement to the court. He claimed the woman in question concocted the story of the assault and that they actually had consensual sex. In fact, he attempted to have her charged with false accusation. The woman was being treated for mental illness, and, despite encouragement from law enforcement, refused to testify against Steele. The charges were dropped.
Madam, I’m Adam
According to reliable sources within Bemidji law enforcement, this became a pattern for Steele: picking up vulnerable women, getting them drunk and forcing them to have sex, usually in his home and sometimes while the victims were asleep or passed out. One of my young female students answered his ad for a part-time assistant, worked a day, and then filed a restraining order against him. One woman stated in a court document that he slept with her and a loaded rifle. He told her he was going to give her an orgasm with said rifle that she would never forget. He raped her while she was asleep, she said. Another woman, who also asked for a restraining order, said he held her down on the couch while asking her mother for permission to marry her.
In fact, Steele’s experiences with women only got worse as the years went by. By 2002, his then-girlfriend filed a restraining order against him. In a fascinating 6-page handwritten statement, she described a strange and frightening relationship. She and Steele met in January 2000 at the Eagles Club in Park Rapids, a small resort town about 60 miles south of Bemidji. Karen (not her real name) was there to confront the woman who was having an affair with her husband.
Once she and Steele became involved, she said he treated her “like a queen.” However, he began to exhibit a few quirks. For example, several times when she accidentally woke him in the middle of the night he would “go crazy,” although sometimes she would wake up and he’d be on top of her. Sometimes it seemed that his eyes would “bug out of their sockets” when he got “really mad.” He wanted her to stay at his cramped, disorderly house all the time. He wanted her to give up her family, including her daughter, whose graduation picture he hung on the wall after drawing horns and a tail to her figure and drawing a pitchfork in her hand. He once nailed the door shut so she couldn’t leave the house. He insisted she “obey” him in all things. He wouldn’t let her tell people her real name; she was only to be known as the Lady Steele.
Steele insisted she attend to what he called her “wifely duties” – sewing, cooking, and pleasing a man. She could shop only at stores that sold the Northern Herald, which, of course, became fewer and fewer as the months went by. Steele often referred to the “Lady Steele” in his newspaper. She finally extricated herself from the situation, but he would still come by and take pictures of her working in her yard and claim he was sending them to the proper authorities to prove she shouldn’t be collecting worker’s compensation. She claimed he carried a gun. “I am truly afraid of him,” she wrote in her schoolgirl hand. She was also suing him for the return of her side-by-side Kenmore refrigerator.
The Beltrami County court documents file on Steele is about two feet thick. “I pulled the confidential stuff,” sniffed the courthouse clerk as she dumped them on the counter for me to view. The file includes so many cases filed by Steele and against Steele that it’s easy to understand why he didn’t remember how many times he’d sued the city. He once reported his 5-year-old neighbor for swinging a leash at his “no trespassing” sign. The young girl’s father then reported Steele for the way he’d talked to his daughter. He sued the city when it was determined that a small house on his block would be torn down because, he said, it was historically significant. The photos of the house, including the interior, revealed a property that should, at the very least, have been condemned. Someone sued Steele for non-payment of services rendered by his band. The list goes on and on.
It’s unclear whether the unfavorable publicity about his suspected sexual crimes lost Steele the ’92 election; however, he lost his libel case, since, as a public figure, he was close to what’s known as “libel-proof.” That didn’t stop him from appealing and losing again. In the meantime, however, the NewsLine, local law enforcement and the county attorney’s office all spent hefty sums on attorneys’ fees.
He ain’t goin’ nowhere
Perhaps that inspired him to found the Northern Herald in 1996. In any event, it was in that context that his (and the city’s) troubles intensified in 1997, which eventually led to Steele’s day in U.S. District Federal Court. He became fixated on the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, which, as the attorney for the 21 businesses enjoined in the lawsuit pointed out, is entirely irrelevant in such a case. “Mr. Steele’s argument would appear to be just another attempt to throw mud in an attempt to have something stick,” wrote Carl C. Drahos, Esq., in a letter dated June 26, 2000, to Judy Black, the owner of the local Maid-Rite Café, one of the defendants, whose personal bill for defending against the suit was in the range of $3000. In another letter, Drahos noted that Steele’s “mind set is not normal. . .” Steele did indeed seem to be flailing in all directions in an attempt to find someone to blame for what he saw as the loss of his constitutional right to speak to the broader community. As Judge Rosenbaum put it, the “plaintiff perceived great injustice.” That’s why we’re in the courtroom today awaiting to see if he’s vindicated.
The six-hundred-billion-dollar man prevails
A half-hour later, the judge returns. He adjusts his glasses. He describes Steele’s claims as “prolix.” Nonetheless, he says, this case “devolves into a single claim which is of concern to the court.” He chides the city for bringing up Steele’s drug charges in the 70s. It is “not relevant,” it’s an “attack” and “not useful,” he says. Whether Steele stepped off the curb at the mall or the post office, whether he wore a sandwich board or a sign over his chest only is of “no interest” to the court. What is of intense concern is the “long recognized” right to “publicize his ideas.” He scolds Officer Hunt for his assessment of Steele’s threat to public safety at the mall. “Remarkably,” he says, “his report did not mention icy conditions.”
As for Steele’s right to distribute the Herald near the post office, Judge Rosenbaum notes sarcastically that “even in Bemidji ice and snow are not a problem in August.” He says that Steele “may well have stepped off the curb, but that’s not why he was apprehended. You need a bond of one to one-and-a-half million dollars to step off a curb?!” This was, he concluded, an “obvious and clearly directed effort to suppress his expression and his views,” which are protected by the First Amendment, “however odious they may be to the community.” The judge saved his harshest criticism for Felix’s LETTER, which he called a “remarkable document,” in which the “last sentence says more than I can comment on.”
It does not matter, he adds, that Steele showed no income from the Herald. He may not be eligible for compensatory damages, but that does not preclude his right to punitive damages, despite a case precedent cited by the defense, which, he says, “was not read right.” He awards Adam Steele $3,001 in punitive damages, plus court costs.
Al Felix sits on a hard bench against the wall in the hallway. I can’t tell if he’s stunned or reflective. He’s surrounded by the upholders of the status quo, like friends supporting a nervous expectant father in the hospital waiting room. Once in the elevator, someone asks me if it turned out the way I expected. “Yes, it did,” I reply, surprised that I’m even asked. If they had asked me three years earlier, I would have said the same thing and perhaps our city wouldn’t have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on such a doomed enterprise.
This isn’t rocket science. It’s basic First Amendment law principles that I, a non-lawyer, teach to my undergraduate media students. Usually the first day of the semester, they learn about the “preferred position balancing theory” of the First Amendment, which is favored by today’s courts. It’s simple, but elegant: freedom of expression is so fundamental to the functioning of a free society that First Amendment rights are entitled to more protection than other rights. The second day of class we usually discuss the types of expression and which of these are most protected. Political speech, broadly defined, receives the most protection, and commercial speech (including advertising) receives the least protection. The Northern Herald clearly qualifies as an organ of political speech. And, as Judge Rosenbaum said, Steele is one more in a long line of those whose right to express and circulate their opinions have been “long recognized” by the courts, despite the best attempts of established authority to silence them.
The official and unofficial leaders of our small community tried to silence Steele by placing what’s called “time, place and manner restrictions” on his speech. They made fundamental, garden-variety errors when they applied rules about bonds, licensing, stepping off curbs, etc., differently to Steele than to others. To this day, I can drive up Paul Bunyan Drive towards the Paul Bunyan Mall while high school girls in bikini bra-tops step into the traffic with huge hand-lettered signs advertising car washes to raise money for the dance line. And then there’s Joe Gain, the sandwich board religious tract distributor, who stood in many spots at the mall entrance for about five years, and who law enforcement officers just smiled at. I doubt that high school students or Gain were licensed or bonded.
Additionally, the courts have ruled unequivocally that ordinances attempting to curb litter, defend privacy, keep traffic flowing, protect aesthetics and a number of other legitimate concerns must all be “narrowly tailored” so as not to interfere with the free flow of everyone’s ideas, even those abhorred by the powerful, who, of course, are more likely to be the targets of such free expression. Some of the most suspicious ordinances to the courts are those in which officials (in Bemidji’s case, the city attorney) have broad latitude in granting permits and licenses. And case precedent is quite clear that what one court decision called the “liberty of circulation” is just as important as the liberty of expression. “Without the circulation,” wrote Chief Justice Evans Hughes in Lovel v. Griffin, a 1938 S. Ct. case, “the publication would be of little value.”
Lastly, chapter one of most First Amendment law textbooks usually delineates the categories of public forums and historic precedent for legal speech in each. Highest on the list are “traditional public forums,” e.g., street corners, public parks, plazas in front of city hall, etc. The courts have had a difficult time, however, deciding on whether shopping malls are public forums. Decisions have been contradictory until a 1976 S. Ct. decision (Hudgens v. NLRB), which ruled that privately owned shopping malls cannot be considered traditional public forums until they have “taken on all the attributes of a town.” In Steele’s case, however, he was never attempting to distribute his newspaper inside the mall, only from the meridian at the entrance to the parking area.
Steele also falls right square in the tradition of unlovable messengers of unwanted messages. Minnesota has a rich history of such cases well-known to students of the First Amendment. In a delightfully astonishing book by the late pioneering newsman Fred W. Friendly called Minnesota Rag: Corruption, Yellow Journalism, and the Case That Saved Freedom of the Press (originally published in 1983, reissued in 2003 by University of Minnesota Press), he opens with a scene from 1924 in Duluth. A newsboy hawked copies of the Rip-saw, an irreverent tabloid published by moralist John L. Morrison. A banker comes out to the sidewalk, snatches all the copies of the Rip-saw, and tells the boy to get lost. Morrison was an ardent prohibitionist and, according to Friendly, went after “two-bit political hacks and corrupt policemen” in a “relentless” manner. The city fathers attempted to get rid of Morrison and the Rip-saw by drafting and implementing a statewide public nuisance law. This was generally upheld until the famous Near v. Minnesota case of 1931, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that such an overbroad limitation on free speech was, according to Justice Hughes, “the essence of censorship.”
The meaning of victory
Life goes on. The unconstitutional city soliciting code sec. 6.39 is still on the books. Several weeks after the verdict, the Northern Herald proclaimed victory in its headline: “NH Editor Wins $600 Billion Lawsuit.” My university campus is one of the few places left in town where the tabloid is still available, so it’s not likely that many people saw it. However, the Pioneer printed a news story I wrote the next day, and a follow-up story, detailing the reaction of city officials. “We’ll move forward from here,” said Mayor Richard Lehmann vaguely. The city’s lawyer, John Iverson, thought it “unfortunate that the court believed the evidence showed an unconstitutional violation,” but added, “The economic award is certainly not the issue.” It was the issue for Steele, however. “There is little question in my mind that this is a fair evaluation of the claim,” he said. When my son Nik read the story, he snorted. “I thought he wanted $600 billion? I wouldn’t think that’s fair if I was him.” I have not seen Steele hawking his papers anywhere in town, nor have they been available in the City Hall lobby since the verdict. He does have several vending machines in town now – one in front of WalMart and one chained to a tree on the boulevard in front of the post office. I saw him on election day, when the only thing on our ballot was a school referendum. He stood on the side of a busy downtown street in a snowstorm holding a tagboard sign that read, “Rollie Morud (our school superintendent) makes $100,000 per year. Do you? Vote ‘no, no, no’ on the referendum.” Even so, freedom of speech does not appear to be any more rampant than before Steele vs. City of Bemidji. There’s been no dancing in the streets. In fact, it feels almost as though it took a hit.
Perhaps it’s because Steele isn’t the kind of guy anyone wants to dance with. His track record with women is spotty at best, he sues others too often for his own personal interests and, like Jay Near and John Morrison, he’s too moralistic and judgmental for most people’s taste. And his morals are inconsistently conceived and applied. He’s not an ideal poster child for the cause. That probably wouldn’t deter the ACLU, whose membership, comprising a significant number of Jews, fought for the right of the Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois, in 1977. However, most of us have a difficult time, at best, granting free speech rights to “thee” as well as “me.”
Although I’ve never seen it discussed in my student’s law textbooks, I’ve come to think that, like objectivity, free speech for all is only an ideal that we strive for, knowing we’ll never get close enough to be concerned about getting what we wished for. It’s not because we forget, or aren’t enlightened, but because it’s counterintuitive and, I suspect, not instinctive. In times of stress, or war, or national crisis, history has shown that those in power assume the right and necessity of curbing our liberties, especially free speech. As many high-ranking administration officials admitted in public speeches in the days and months following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, they actually believe speech should be free only up to the point at which the issues really matter. The public initially tolerates these curbs on free expression, because most of us don’t have the imagination to think we could be next.
So is my community better off for Adam Steele’s victory? Are we all benefiting from his continued muckraking? I’m not sure. But about a year ago, a left-wing grassroots newspaper has emerged. Common Ground is published intermittently by a few members of the local Green Party, one of whom is a student of mine. They have tackled a number of local issues, particularly lakeshore development within the city. They seem to have been instrumental in temporarily halting the development of the site of the abandoned wood-processing plant, because of their environmental and corruption concerns. Thus far, they have focused on systemic change, rather than the morals and illegalities of individual public officials, which is Steele’s forte. Interestingly enough, Common Ground has convinced The Pioneer to insert their tabloid in the daily. It remains to be seen whether this amiable arrangement will continue. If the right (or wrong) feathers become ruffled, and the aggrieved party complains to The Pioneer, it may well end the arrangement.
Adam Steele may be the sacrificial lamb (or goat) for the cause of free speech in my town, much like Jay Near and John Morrison, who both died unloved and unwanted. He has rammed open the door to let in the shockingly cold air of free speech about heretofore invulnerable people. So the discussion begins, but he’s shoved out into the cold permanently, because he’s not a well-liked messenger. However, he’s improved the air quality for those who come after him, especially if our public officials have learned anything from this lawsuit, which cannot be assumed.
What’s at the heart of this case, and, presumably, scores of others in this country, is a double failure of the public trust: by those in power and by the Fifth Estate that should be monitoring those in power. They both made themselves vulnerable to someone like Steele, and we, the citizens, are the losers. To this day, we don’t know who’s telling the truth. If Steele’s serious charges against elected officials were all lies, why didn’t even one person sue him for libel? The standard, set by the famous New York Times v. Sullivan case of 1964, which struck down the crime of seditious libel – that is, criticism of the government – forever, is very high. Public figures must prove actual malice, which means a reckless disregard for the truth and malicious intent. However, Steele does seem vulnerable in that regard.
If the powerful men of this community had put their resources into bringing forth one solid libel case against Steele as they did toward stopping him from handing out his newspapers, they would have been vindicated. If The Pioneer had investigated some of Steele’s claims, instead of ignoring them, they could have won journalism awards and set the public straight. Instead, we are all left scratching our heads, and the cat-and-mouse game continues. Since the best defense against libel is the truth, it’s difficult not to assume that one or more of Steele’s bizarre stories contain at least kernels of truth.
If, as Alexis de Tocqueville, claimed, newspapers serve not just to “protect freedom,” but to “maintain civilization,” our mainstream local news media are missing an opportunity to engage, to educate, to question both those attacked by Steele, and the attacker himself. Steele rather generously excuses The Pioneer by noting they are busy and have few resources, but if that’s the case, it’s curious how much Steele has been able to bring to light with almost no resources, and how little Forum Communications, a corporation comprising 23 newspapers (including the Bemidji Pioneer), 3 television stations, a radio station, and six printing companies has been able or willing to do. The local reporters at The Pioneer are overworked, contributing members of our community and they don’t have much wiggle room with the tight control of Forum Communications management. However, the public may not understand that ignoring a scandalous tabloid and its claims is taking the high road. It can also be viewed as taking a detour to avoid afflicting the more comfortable in our town. It’s not hard to understand their reluctance to give him credence because ultimately, Steele thinks he owns the First Amendment. But neither do local officials nor the mainstream media. We citizens do. But we’re the ones left silent and confused. And small business owners like Judy Black at the Maid-Rite Café are collateral damage in the First Amendment wars.
Because Steele thinks free speech is only for him, few people in this community are even willing to go on record saying anything about Steele for fear of being sued by him. But Journalism Professor Roy Blackwood, chairman of my department at Bemidji State University, is an exception. He asked that I reprint his statement from the Jan. 30, 1998, edition of The Pioneer, during the time of outrage after the infamous obituary story. “I have defended Adam a lot,” he’d said, “and the reason I have is certainly not because I agree with a lot of what he has to say. I really admire his guts to put that newspaper out – that is not a popular newspaper, in a lot of quarters, and it’s an uphill battle . . .Adam’s paper makes people think and makes them talk. . .Adam brings topics to life that bear discussing. . .I’m glad that newspaper exists.” For understandable reasons, Steele latched onto Blackwood’s theoretical defense with vigor and speaks fondly of him and of Brad Swenson, political editor at The Pioneer, who has always written with fairness about the Steele stories that are impossible to ignore.
It’s not always pleasant to be labeled a “card-carrying” member of the ACLU. I must admit I am sporadic in renewing my membership, simply because I find it off-putting to align myself with people I know in my state who operate on the edge of free expression, i.e., pornography, racist speech, or other unpleasant realities of democratic openness. I don’t want them to think that because I believe in the principle of free speech that I believe in their message. The continuing challenge for us all is to separate the unpleasant, but often needed, message from the unpleasant messenger. Adam Steele offers our community that challenge. “Fear is the breeding ground of censorship,” according to First Amendment scholars Robert Trager and Donna L. Dickerson. The unanswered question is this: What has made the city of Bemidji so afraid of Adam Steele that they would go to such lengths to try squelching his low-budget tabloid? We can only assume that some of the charges he makes against our public officials are true. As a result, we citizens are three-time losers: our tax dollars have paid for this circus, we have no idea which charges are true and which aren’t, and our children are seeing what happens to anyone who speaks their mind in our town. And that’s not the right lesson for my students to learn.
Louise Mengelkoch is an associate professor of journalism at Bemidji State University in Minnesota. She is a former community newspaper editor and has written about social issues for a variety of publications.
