Mining executive Richard Ness addresses the media after his trial
How do you feel when irresponsible journalism lands your father in jail, and then in court? Eric Ness knows all too well. In September 2004, Indonesian police arrested his father and five other executives of the Newmont Mining Corporation, tossed them in jail alongside terrorists who had attacked the country's Australian embassy, and detained them for 32 days without arraignment. The authorities eventually released five of the men, but charged Richard Ness, president director of Newmont's Indonesian division, with knowingly polluting Buyat Bay near the company's mine in North Sulwawesi.
The arrests and charges followed a New York Times exposé by journalist Jane Perlez, who documented instances of skin tumors, rashes, headaches, breathing difficulties, and birth defects among Buyat Bay villagers, contending that these symptoms stemmed from the mercury- and arsenic-laden mine tailings Newmont had dumped off the coast. As the New York Times ran a scorching series of articles by Perlez, international environmental organizations rallied to condemn Newmont and demand that Ness serve a prison sentence of at least 10 years.
While Ness underwent his 21-month trial, one of the longest criminal proceedings in Indonesian legal history, Perlez received the Overseas Press Club of America's 2004 Whitman Bassow Award for the year's best reporting on international environmental issues. The organization's award website credits her with exposing the "environmental hell created in Indonesia by the world's largest gold mining company," and proudly declares that her articles on the issue "forced the government to take legal action against Newmont."
Perlez's reporting may have garnered her acclaim and stature in her profession, but legal scrutiny exposed umpteen distortions and fabrications in her award-winning articles. As Ness's trial unfolded, many of the prosecution's key witnesses recanted their statements. Doctors testified that local villagers' ailments, caused largely by poor sanitation and malnutrition, were no different from those found elsewhere in Indonesia. Scientific analyses by the World Health Organization and other groups showed that Buyat Bay's waters were cleaner and safer than those of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Ness, who stated in his opening testimony that "I am seated before this court defending myself of a crime that never occurred," was finally vindicated in April 2007 when a judge dismissed all charges against him.
Eric Ness has meticulously tracked his father's needless ordeal on his blog. Now, he has excoriated the Overseas Press Club of America for lauding the fraudulent reporting that caused his family two and a half years of unconscionable stress and pain. He wonders why the group has made no move to rescind Perlez's prestigious award. And he asks why the New York Times has not retracted the specious claims that put six innocent men behind bars for 32 days.
MPI fellows Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney are no strangers to this conflicted nexus among mining companies, environmental organizations, and the media. Former journalists themselves, they know well the dangers of biased, agenda-driven reporting, and they have made an eye-opening documentary film, Mine Your Own Business, to redress the balance. See the post below for details of forthcoming screenings in Washington, D.C. If you can't attend any of the screenings, contact MPI to purchase a copy on DVD.