Peabody Award winning journalist Marcia Franklin discussed her recent documentary "The Color of Conscience."
An Idaho Public Television producer and award-winning journalist spoke to NIC journalism students Sept. 22 about her documentary that outlines the human rights movement in Idaho.
Peabody Award-winner Marcia Franklin said “The Color of Conscience” took 10 years to film, three years longer than the average independent documentary.
“A lot of the job was sleuthing,” she said. “You gather all this stuff together and wait for it to speak with you.”
The “Color of Conscience” chronicles the rise and fall of the Aryan Nations, as well as modern human rights issues with the LGBT community and illegal immigrants.
“There are a number of reasons why the story should be told,” Franklin said. “I wanted to show how a few good people did extraordinary things in Idaho.”
The film documents Aryan Nations leader Richard Butler, who preached a doctrine of racial superiority to followers at his Hayden Lake compound. The group, which became popular in the ’70s, also had similar groups in the states of Washington, Oregon, Montana and Wyoming.
“Richard Butler was incredibly smart,” Franklin said. “A lot of his followers came out of the military; they weren’t dumb. We wanted to show and preserve that.”
Franklin said the event that inspired the documentary occurred two years before filming began. In 1998, security guards shot at Victoria and Jason Keenan when their car stopped near Butler’s compound. They were later chased, driven off the road and threatened by the guards.
This incident led to a civil court case, and the jury awarded a settlement of $6.3 million to the Keenans in September 2000. The verdict bankrupted the Aryan Nations in North Idaho. The compound was eventually destroyed and sold to North Idaho College, which built a peace park on the site.
Franklin said she followed the trial closely and noticed the efforts of a small, committed group of human rights activists who helped bring about the end of the “unlawful behavior” of the Aryan Nations.
Franklin later filmed several of these activists walking the grounds of the compound for the first time shorting after it was abandoned by the Aryan Nations. She said the footage was “very emotional,” and she decided not to run it on her regular news program “Dialogue.”
“I thought, ‘This is the kernel of something bigger,’” she said.
Franklin said finding relevant footage was challenging. She said she even had to venture into subbasements below television stations to collect footage and information for her documentary. She also located Spokane reporters who covered the story throughout the 1980s.
“Broadcast journalism is a lot like making a quilt,” she said. “You stitch, then tear apart, then put the pieces back together.”
She said it was imperative to show both sides of the conflict in her documentary.
“We question why people are drawn to that lifestyle, but also explain why whites feel they are losing their heritage and culture,” she said.
The documentary points out how the Aryan Nations has tarnished Idaho’s image for 30 years and left a stain that’s hard to remove. Still, that hasn’t stopped some people from trying.
“People are not born to hate,” said Tony Stewart, Kootenai County Human Rights Task Force member. “They learn to hate.”
He said he and other members formed the Task Force in 1981 in the basement of a Christian church. The city had already lost hundreds of millions of dollars with people not wanting to move their businesses here, he explained.
Franklin said even her own friends questioned her move to Idaho when they heard it housed the Aryan Nations.
“You can’t characterize the whole state,” she said. “It’s always important to recognize that some join movements others don’t understand.”
Even though the Aryan Nations lost their compound, Franklin said that does not mean that race relations have become “superfantabulous.”
“There are still hate crimes in our state,” she said. “Idaho in particular seems to still attract people who see this as a place where that kind of attitude is acceptable.”
Peter Morrill, general manager of Idaho Public Television, said the documentary has had good reception throughout Idaho, and PBS is trying to promote the program in the rest of the country as well.
Franklin grew up in Washington D.C. where she said she, herself, was a minority. After college, she became a secretary in San Francisco. She ran an intern program in which she watched those around her climb the ladder of success at a faster pace. She said she realized she needed a change.
She was offered a behind-the-scenes job at CNN but decided instead to interview at television stations across the nations. Ultimately, she landed a job in Idaho Falls, and has been a public television producer in Idaho since 1990.
Her 2000 documentary “Teens and Mental Illness” earned her the 60th annual George Foster Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting.
Franklin warned students that the field of journalism is rapidly losing objectivity, and this could result in serious consequences for the industry. Franklin said she personally doesn’t engage in fundraisers, opinion polls, politics and the like in order to remain as objective as possible.
“If you get too close to your sources, how can you be objective?” she asked.
Franklin said aspiring journalists should visit “uncomfortable” places and talk to the people they meet there. She also identified the “five C’s” all true journalists must possess: curiosity, critical thinking, contrarian attitudes, courage and compassion.
“You need to hope and want to make the world a better place through your journalism,” Franklin said. “Journalists are striving to find the truth as much as possible because the truth is different for everyone.”
