Austin American-Statesman
December 17, 1995

Some people send Christmas cards.

Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. sends threatening letters. This is unsettling.

When a large corporation trains its guns on three professors, a couple of environmentalists and a small weekly newspaper, something is not right.

If Freeport-McMoRan truly believes it has been libeled, which I don't think is the case, the company should seek legal redress and the clearing of its reputation.

However, I think the New Orleans-based firm's leaders have pushed out pretty far toward the edge in threatening Austin critics with legal action for unspecified "false and damaging" accusations.

Consider the environment created:

If you are a $60,000-a-year faculty member moved by conscience to speak out on important public issues, what could be more intimidating than to realize you may have to hire a lawyer, perhaps exhausting your life's savings, to defend yourself against a multi-billion-dollar corporation's assault?

If you are a small newspaper with profits of perhaps a few hundred thousand dollars a year, the defense of one libel suit could eliminate a large share of your profits -- and that's if you win.

Easy for the professor to keep silent. Easy for a weekly to give up aggressive journalism and to take refuge in puff pieces.

The professor's raised voice and the alternative weekly's heated commentary are valuable commodities in a democracy where the little guy is presumed under the Bill of Rights to have equal legal footing with the big guy.

Over the past few months, I have come to know Jim Bob Moffett, Freeport's president, and Thomas J. Egan, his senior vice president. Egan has visited our newspaper, and I have talked with Moffett by telephone.

I believe in being fair. I believe in keeping lines of communication open. The Freeport leaders and I have agreed on many things. Both men passionately believe their company has done nothing improper and has been unfairly impugned.

Corporate leaders today apparently are advised by public relations strategists and Wall Street analysts to strike back furiously, absolutely punishing critics, when drawn into controversy.

The results are not pretty. Just look at what's going on in Austin and in Washington:

*Professor Steven Feld, a distinguished anthropologist whose departure is a great loss to the University of Texas, speaks to a group of students and others on campus about Freeport. By admission of Freeport executives, the event is photographed and recorded by Freeport representatives.

Doesn't such surveillance chill academic freedom?

*Members of Congress from Texas and Louisiana, elected by the people but frequently rented by big corporations, raise unbridled hell in Washington -- blocking appointments and hassling the Overseas Private Investment Corp., which has pulled its insurance of Freeport's Indonesian mining operation.

Who represents the average citizen?

*A high university system official, whose voice should be firm and clear in support of his faculty's right to free speech, falls silent, caught in a conflict by the payments he receives by serving on the board of a corporation that now threatens those scholars who work for him. (Chancellor William Cunningham resigned from the Freeport board on Thursday, a day after reports of Freeport's threatening letters circulated in the community.)

Who stands for free speech?

There is a better way for Freeport in this mess. Don't be defensive. Jump into the fray in an open, responsive manner.

For example, Freeport could contribute $10,000 to pay for a community colloquium on the ethics of overseas operations of a U.S. multinational corporation. Or the challenge of financing public universities with private money.

If Freeport really wanted to surprise Austin folks, it might contribute $1 million to create a Steven Feld Chair in Anthropology.

I do not support or defend reckless defamatory journalism or speech, but, for the life of me, I can't understand what Freeport is so upset about. The debate I've read and heard seems relatively tame and reasonable, not unlike reading criticism of the American-Statesman in this paper's letters column.

As long as the discussion follows sane guidelines, we stand with The Austin Chronicle, the environmentalists and the professors who received the threatening letters.

I am reasonably confident that American newspapers, as well as the nation's universities, also will stand firmly with the Austin people who received the letters. Let the debate go on...

Sincerely,

Richard Oppel
Editor