Here's another Montgomery Advertiser story from Sunday, April 21, 2002:
UPI LED CHARGE ON CIVIL RIGHTS COVERAGE
BY TODD KLEFFMAN Montgomery Advertiser
In the world of journalism wire services, United Press International has long been the poor relative of the better-staffed and more prestigious Associated Press.
But underdog and independent UPI played an especially crucial role during the civil rights struggle, often reporting stories that other news organizations couldn't or wouldn't.
"Alabama media underreported civil rights; UPI did not," said Anthony Heffernan, who managed UPI's Birmingham bureau in 1964-65. Former UPI state manager Donald Martin "made it crystal-clear that we were going to report this story to the world," Heffernan said.
Fourteen UPI correspondents from the civil rights era returned to their old stomping grounds Saturday for a symposium sponsored by Troy State University Montgomery, the Montgomery Advertiser and the Gannett Foundation. One purpose of the gathering was to record the journalists' memories of those times for posterity.
"I'm thankful for this," said John Herbers, a UPI reporter who went on to write for The New York Times. "I was worried that UPI's role in all this would be lost in history."
Clarke Stallworth, longtime Birmingham newspaperman and author, said UPI's efforts deserve to be remembered.
"The stories UPI carried out of the South was important stuff," Stallworth said. "It would not have come out if UPI had not been there."
During that era, many Southern newspapers chose to downplay the struggles of blacks to gain rights and the often violent state-sponsored resistance they faced. Stories out of Montgomery, Birmingham, Selma and elsewhere that ran on front pages in New York and Chicago would usually be buried deep inside the local papers.
The AP, a nonprofit news cooperative, also was sometimes handcuffed in its coverage because of its dependence on member newspapers for stories to fill its wires. UPI, on the other hand, was an independent agency that sold its stories to client news operations and had a freer hand in developing its own stories.
"Southern editors blacked out news of civil rights," said Robert Gordon, a UPI correspondent who later won a Pulitzer Prize as managing editor of the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss. "They thought they could put the quietus on AP because AP needed their stories. They realized they couldn't control UPI."
Birmingham lawyer Walter Braswell, a former U.S. attorney, said UPI's coverage was crucial in bringing news from Alabama to the world.
"I think it's inspiring to see these guys who were there. If they hadn't covered some of these stories, it would have been like they didn't happen,² Braswell said. "The conscience of the nation was awakened by these reports. It changed all of us."