September 30, 1999
	Mr. John J. Curley Chairman/CEO Gannett Corporation

Dear Mr. Curley:

I am writing to you as the representative of the Saipan Garment Manufacturers Association, since there appears to be no available means of communication between our industry and your regional newspaper, the Pacific Daily News.

We do not question the First Amendment right of editors and reporters to describe factories operated by members of our organization as "sweatshops," as John Yaukey of the Gannett News Service and anonymous editorial writers at the PDN routinely do. We just want to point out that this is not based on any firsthand reporting, and our comments are not solicited for such reports. The PDN itself no longer has a Saipan correspondent and Mr. Yaukey is getting his information from sources at the U.S. Interior Department who are driven by the Clinton Administration agenda of imposing federal control on the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands' immigration and minimum wage controls.

As Mr. Yaukey points out, federal laws, excepting immigration and the U.S. minimum wage have applied in the CNMI since its beginning. How can agencies such as the U.S. Labor Department, OSHA and the FBI, who admittedly shirked their duty for years, be able to get away with admitting failure in the CNMI without some comment by the media? Why is the CNMI alone to be punished for their admitted failures?

If the foregoing sounds like conventional "blame the media for everything" paranoia, consider the current investigation of officials at Interior's Office of Insular Affairs, which has gone virtually unreported by GNS or the Pacific Daily News. Various documents authored by former OIA Public Affairs Director David North detail a covert campaign on government time to smear ranking members of Congress by linking them to the Saipan garment industry, at least as the media described it. Other documents have implicated former OIA Director Allen Stayman as an enthusiastic participant in the scheme to punish those with opposing views and the activities of Presidential advisor Jeffrey Farrow are also being investigated. Along the way, North and his compatriots at Interior waged a public relations campaign to pound exactly the point of view reflected in the GNS and PDN stories into the public consciousness.

This story has considerable implications for all the US insular areas and raises the issue of a seemingly out of control bureaucracy carrying out a political agenda by other means.

Reform efforts in the CNMI in recent years received virtually no coverage by the PDN, except in "pull quotes" from Interior officials questioning their sincerity and reality. Again, PDN doesn't have much credibility in this since it eliminated its one-person Saipan bureau.

Members of the Saipan Garment Manufacturers Association are legal, licensed businesses and fully inspected by a wide range of federal and local officials as well as manufacturers. I urge editors and reporters to become familiar with U.S. Department of Labor definitions of the term "sweatshop." DOL would certainly not use it when applied to our businesses, and we think that should be noted by the media.

Gannett has recently adopted and publicized new standards for its reporting and editing processes. We wonder how it applies here. Looking at the coverage of our industry, we see plenty of boiler plate copy lifted right of labor union press releases. To take just one example, GNS coverage always raises a big eyebrow about foreign ownership of some of the Saipan garment factories by Chinese and Korean investors. Since this is fully legal and common practice in the mainland U.S., what is the issue? Would it be better if they were British, Dutch or German?

There was an interesting exception to the rule recently, when Pacific Daily News editor-emeritus Joe Murphy visited Saipan. "I'm sorry, but it didn't look like slave labor to me," said Murphy, who also noted that local reform efforts are proceeding, contrary to federal statements that things are actually getting worse. More coverage by staff reporters, possessing open minds, would be appreciated.

Richard A. Pierce

Executive Director