An Alabama newspaper editor is under fire for a racist op-ed that addressed the Klu Klux Klan, and alluded to lynching. This student reporter helped break the story.
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00:00There was this editorial that called for the Klan to rise again, and we're like, what is that?
00:04That's crazy and should not be in the newspaper.
00:17The paper does have a pretty long track record of publishing things that are racist and offensive.
00:30I don't think people have noticed up to this point just because the paper is not online and there hasn't been a lot of opportunity for people to see exactly what's being printed in the paper until we decided to tweet about it.
00:42It's caused a lot of a lot of uproar and backlash and calls for his resignation.
01:12It's caused a lot of uproar and backlash and calls for his resignation.
01:22It's caused a lot of uproar and backlash and calls for his resignation.
01:32Goodloe Sutton and his wife, Jean Sutton, were really famous for being a husband and wife team running a small town newspaper and keeping a small town community newspaper alive.
01:44They exposed a lot of corruption in the Maringo County Sheriff's Office, a local sheriff's office, where they uncovered a lot of wrongdoing that got them praised by The New York Times.
01:54They were considered for a Pulitzer.
01:56It just seems that the paper has maybe declined in quality.
02:00And the editor and publisher now at least appears to devote a lot of his time to writing these very racist and homophobic and sexist editorials.
02:09I think this editorial coming out and being part of a national and international conversation is really sad because it reminds people a lot of the racist past and segregation past of Alabama.
02:21And that's a lot what it's like.
02:23But that's not what Alabama is anymore.
02:25I would say that the vast majority of people here are good people.
02:28They do not identify with the things that Goodloe Sutton published in this editorial.
02:33But it does make people wonder how this went on for so long without anybody saying anything about it.