Diane Sawyer: Talk to Ashley Judd, Don't Overlook the 800-LB Gorilla on 20/20

Last Friday, nearly 11 million viewers watched Diane Sawyer's ABC-TV special report, "A Hidden America: Children of the Mountains." While touching on the extreme conditions of poverty in eastern Kentucky, replete with toothless enthusiasm, Sawyer failed to notice the 800-pound gorilla in the room: Mountaintop removal strip mining that has devastated eastern Kentucky's communities and economy.

This Friday, Sawyer and her 20/20 crew will apparently air a follow up to their special.

Sawyer and her producers have no excuse to gloss over the huge issue of strip mining in eastern Kentucky this time. She needs to talk to eastern Kentucky actress Ashley Judd, for starters, to get beyond the shallow talk about poverty.

Judd actually spoke about Sawyer's first program this week. Here's a clip.

She also needs to interview community organizers in the trenches who are not merely handing out charity, but bringing the affected eastern Kentucky communities together to address their problems of unemployment, drug abuse and hopelessness.

Sawyer should start with Robert Gipe, an actor and theater producer in Harlan County, who has used the theater at the Appalachian Center at the Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College as an arena for action on poverty and drug abuse. Gipe and his community have put together an amazing play, Finding Higher Ground, which should be featured on ABC-TV.

Funny enough, this week, while Sawyer's film crew roamed the region and looked for "concrete ideas" about solving poverty in Appalachia, hundreds of eastern Kentuckians were marching on the state capitol in Frankfort, including actress Ashley Judd and bestselling author Silas House, to demand an end to mountaintop removal, and to call for a sustainable green economy that would effectively address the deeper issues of poverty in Appalachia.

Ashley Judd was smashing, as ever, and pulled no punches in her speech on the state capitol steps about the coal industry's impact on ruining the eastern Kentucky economy.

"Make no mistake about it: The coal companies are thriving. Even in this bleak economy, they are thriving. What is dying is our mountains. And they are dying so fast, my friends, so shockingly fast."

A clip of her speech can be seen here.

Silas House wrote a beautiful account of the events this week on his blog, The God of Bird's Nest.

Sawyer and her producers also should interview organizers from the Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, whose Canary Project deals with the underlining issue of entrenched poverty in the coalfields. See here.

Finally, as a story of hope, Sawyer needs to spend some time at the historic Pine Mountain Settlement School, which has worked with mountain people for decades. Pine Mountain works to:

• Teach others about the natural environment and promote protection of ecosystems

• Incorporate into our operation energy conservation, renewable energy sources, local materials and healthy food, and share this knowledge with others

• Provide supplemental educational experiences for local students which
strengthen, enrich, and extend their academic education

• Protect and maintain natural lands and historic structures at the Settlement School

• Celebrate, interpret, and promote the cultural heritage of central and southern Appalachia

• Serve as a center for recreation, fellowship, and lifelong learning, welcoming all who come

Comments

[Riaz]

I hope that the growing interest in Mumbai slums goes beyond a temporary fad and a fleeting voyeuristic exercise. This extraordinary interest should translate into action to help the people of the slums escape the abject poverty and squalor that define them and their daily existence. Jeff Greenwald, executive director of EthicalTraveler.org, put it well when he spoke with USA Today. "If one takes such a tour out of a genuine desire to learn and a passion for social justice, the experience can be valuable, eye-opening, even life-changing. If one goes as a spectator, it's little different than a visit to the zoo," he said.

This opportunity of global interest in child poverty should not be wasted. Instead, it should spur the Slumdog director to set up a foundation with some of the proceeds from the film to champion the cause of poor children with UNICEF in South Asia and the rest of the world.

Please visit http://www.riazhaq.com/2009/02/can-slumdogs-success-improve-lives-of.html for more on this.

[WorldGriot]

Perhaps there should be a segment on the redux special called "biting the hand most able to feed you". In this, Diane should discuss in depth the penchant of the Appalachians to always vote against their own best interests. These people are fiercely "independent" and don't understand why this is prolonging their agony. It is going to be painful for them to admit that they are "Cling-ons" just as Obama said and in the same spirit in which he said it. They are not mean, evil, hateful or throw-a-way people. They are Americans of magnificence like the rest of us who deserve our greatest effort to help them into a new way of life. Yet they disdain our efforts and strive to "Cling on" to a cultural way of life that is , in fact, obsolete. The palpable ignorance rampant among these hills makes any effort to bring this culture into the necessary post modern economy suspect at the very best. So while it is time for Diane and the media to be more substantive in their examination, the climb for this group is going to be monumental. How can we get them to see that new industry and new technology DEMANDS a new way of life? That's what the report should be about.

[booker52]

I see ads on our local TV for clean coal. Then I see ads that mock those very same ad from a group called reality.com whom I agree with. There is no such thing as clean coal. Hello?? Every hear of such a thing, yeah thought not, neither have I.

[1differentdrummer]

Rape the land. Bush nearly did in some spectacular places by approving drilling there. I'm glad Obama stopped that. Earth matters.

[jennyjen]

Clearly the interest is there. I hope that Diane and co. will see this and act accordingly.

[OrganOfThought]

I am so in love with Ashley Judd. She is an impressive person.

[michyh]

Diane sawyer is a joke. The show was sad and lots of good things on it. You are right, that issue should have been adressed but we ain't going anywhere like that on big network. that show was very pro coal.
She and her husband could solve all those poverty problems by sharing some wealth.
Sick.

[HeevenSteven]

You expect ABC news to do anymore than a superficial report that ignores important realities?

[meede]

If it had been on her morning show GMA, it would have got a two minute, 3 minutes tops story.