Section A · Page 10
The University Daily Kansan
Friday, April 17, 1998
KKK hand delivers message
Klan fliers find lawns as wrap for local papers
The Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO — The most militant wing of the Ku Klux Klan has a new tactic to spread its racist message — wrapping leaflets around free local papers and delivering them door to door, to the dismay of publishers and customers.
There may be little either can do to stop the leaflets, which have been distributed in California, Pennsylvania, Texas and North Carolina.
The latest incident occurred this week in Santa Rosa, 50 miles north of San Francisco, where residents woke up to find the Classified Gazette on their doorsteps, sheathed in an epithet-laced KKK leaflet vowing to deport every
African back to Africa where they belong.
"We're just using our constitutional right to get our message out," Jeff Berry, national imperial wizard of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the group named in the leaflet, said from his Butler, Ind., headquarters. "They can tell us to stop, but until they show us a law, we're not."
The Classified Gazette which distributes 35,000 free papers in Sonoma County, said it had received 50 phone complaints. The KKK apparently took stacks of the paper from store racks, wrapped the leaflets around it and threw it into yards.
"One woman called and said her 8-year-old granddaughters picked this up and brought it in. She was very angry, "office manager Kathy Noble said. "Another man said, 'I'm Caucasian, but my son-in-law is black and my daughter-in-law is Asian, and they're livid, and I'm livid for them."
Santa Rosa police Cmdr. Scott Swanson said because of the nature of the material, the incident could be a hate crime.
"We are looking to see if the message in the fliers violates criminal law," he said.
San Francisco FBI spokesman George Grotz said there was no clear violation of the law, and unless one could be shown, the leaflets were covered by the First Amendment.
The American Knights of the KKK used the same tactic last November in Odessa, Texas, stuffing a recruitment flier into the local Dollar Saver. And the Tri-County News in Mercer County, Pa., was hit last month.
Mark Potok of Klanwatch, the anti-KKK arm of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., described the American Knights as the fastest-growing Klan organization in the country and the most aggressive.
"We're just using our constitutional right to get our message out."
Jeff Berry
virulent group out there.
national imperial wizard of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
The American Knights spurn the softer line espoused by some modern groups, Potok said, and openly call for violence against blacks, Jews and gays. The leaflet distributed in Santa Rosa follows that line, promising to solve the (epithet) problem by FORCE!
At the Classified Gazette, a saleswoman Josephine Shafer said she was revolted by the KKK literature.
"How people get this way really blows my mind," she said. "I thought people were better than that."
German police gather DNA en masse
Citizens volunteer to give saliva in search of killer
The Associated Press
BERLIN — Newspapers published the call: Police hunting a young girl's killer needed help from the 18,000 men aged 18-30 in rural, northwestern Germany where the victim lived.
Thousands of men arrived last week and opened their mouths. With cotton swabs, police took saliva samples to record the men's DNA — the genetic fingerprint that could identify who raped, stabbed and strangled 11-year-old Christina Nytsch.
Blanket DNA testing has been used only occasionally in Europe, mostly as a last resort after long investigations and usually in small communities.
German police in the city of Cloppenburg took the procedure further. They collected saliva within weeks of the killing. Their attempt to screen men from 12 towns and villages was the largest voluntary DNA test to date.
DNA testing is widely accepted. primarily because of Germany's increasing push to fight sexual crimes against children.
By next week, federal lawmakers are expected to approve a national database of DNA from convicted sex criminals. The information can be compared to biological evidence found at crime scenes, such as saliva, semen, blood or tissue. Police in Germany's 16 states could then cross-reference data, a tactic used in Austria, Britain, the Netherlands and the United States.
"Several recent cases, especially sexual crimes against children, showed that police in the German states needed to start working together," says Helga Schumacher, representative of the Federal Commission for Data Protection.
Voluntary DNA screening of innocent people is another matter, however. Police in Cloppenburg said they took the extraordinary measure immediately because they believe the killer remains in the region — and he has struck before.
Christina disappeared March 16 on her way home from an indoor swimming pool. Her body was discovered five days
later in woods near her hometown of Struecklingen, a village of 3,500, where strangers stick out, and crime is rare.
DNA from a knife at the scene matched DNA from semen taken from a girl who was raped two years ago.
Voluntary DNA testing has worked in small communities where peer pressure drove everyone to participate, including the killer.
Cloppenburg held its screening last week. The results are expected in several weeks. Negative data will be destroyed.
"It wasn't a question for me," 24-year-old machine repairman Ludger Wulf said after having his cheek swabbed. "I've got nothing to fear."
But of the 18,000 men sought, only 12,000 participated.
Critics said zealous police made their search too wide.
The Rev. Ulrich Bahlmann, a Catholic priest in the town's only church, said men wholeheartedly took part to prove their innocence.
"People don't trust each other here anymore, because one could be a murderer," he said. "Everyone agreed the test was a good idea."
Prime-time TV shows increase violent content
WASHINGTON — Prime-time television is getting more violent, a major new survey issued today says.
The Associated Press
About two-thirds of prime-time network and basic cable channel programs shown in June 1997 contained violent scenes, compared with about half of such programs in October 1994, researchers from four universities found.
"For those who think the TV violence problem is solved, it is not," Daniel Linz, one of the study's researchers, said. Linz is chairman of the law and society program at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
The prime-time figures cover the hours of 8 to 11 p.m. (Eastern and Pacific time) on
weekdays and 7 to 11 p.m. on Sundays (7-10 p.m. Central time weekdays).
Across the entire broadcast and cable schedules — days, nights and weekends — the share of programs containing violence stayed about the same, 61 percent, during the 32-month period.
The UCLA study, released in January, said networks had tempered the amount and nature of violence on their shows, except for the new "shockumentary" type shows featuring grisly content.
"The simple, undeniable fact is that the vast majority of violence on television is on pay cable."
"The simple, undeniable fact is that the vast majority of violence on television is on pay cable," Wharton said.
The NCTA-commissioned report also found most violence on television is glamorized and sanitized. Nearly 40 percent of the violent incidents on television are initiated by "good" characters likely to be perceived as attractive role models.
Pay cable networks televised the highest percentage of programs with violent content, averaging 92 percent since 1994, the study found.
Dennis Wharton Spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters
Researchers at UC Santa Barbara, the University of North Carolina, the University of Texas and the University of Wisconsin conducted the study. The researchers previously have issued two studies on TV violence commissioned by the NCTA. The total cost of the three studies: $3.5 million.
Violence is defined as any overt depiction of a credible threat of physical force or the actual use of such force intended to physically harm an animate being or group of beings. It does not include verbal or psychological abuse.
"These patterns teach children that violence is desirable necessary and painless."
The long-term negative consequences of violence, meanwhile, are shown in only 15 percent of the programs, the study found.
The study, the largest of its kind, was commissioned by the National Cable Television Association. It was based on a sample of 10,000 hours of programs on 23 channels — a mix of cable and broadcast — from October 1994 to June 1997.
Dennis Wharton, a spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters, said the findings contradict a network-financed study by UCLA researchers. Wharton said the study found violence on broadcast television had declined steadily during the last three years.
content in shows.
said Dale Kunkel, another of the researchers and an associate professor of communications at UC Santa Barbara. "We need to see more anti-violence messages in TV shows."
The study concluded that age-based TV ratings do not provide adequate information about the presence of violent
The TV industry began rating shows for age appropriateness in January 1997. But under pressure from parent groups, child advocates and politicians, most of the TV industry switched to more detailed ratings in October of last year.
ABC, CBS, Fox and most cable networks now use age-based ratings but also flag shows for violence, sex, bad language and suggestive dialogue with the letter notations V, S, L and D. NBC still uses the age-based ratings, including TV-PG, parental guidance suggested, and TV-MA, for mature audiences only.
NBC has said its viewers were satisfied with the ratings and the detailed advisories it runs and has no plans to change.
NCTA President Decker Anstrom said cable companies would remain committed to providing families with a wide range of quality programming and the tools to help parents make the right viewing choices.
Channels in the sample included affiliates of ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox, independent TV stations, basic cable networks A&E, AMC, BET, the Cartoon Network, Disney, the Family Channel, Lifetime, MTV, Nickelodeon, TNT, USA and VH-1, and pay cable channels Cinema, HBO and Showtime.
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