The big Alaska news lighting up the internet over the Memorial Day holiday came from Denali National Park and Preserve, and it was arguably good news given that deaths in the wilderness are what usually turn attention north toward one of the 49th state’s most popular tourist attractions.
This news was about flags, and it put a spark to the outrage that fuels social media and sometimes boils out of that den of chattering squirrels into the bigger world of “news.”
The so-referenced politician was Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, who was spurred into action by a Thursday story published by the “Alaska Watchman,” a website run by publisher Jake Libbey, who bills himself as a “Christian, husband, father, amateur-apologist and lover of good communication,” and editor Joel Davidson, describes as a “writer of renown and horsepower…(who has) won numerous awards for journalism excellence.”
That story said a construction crew working on a new bridge in the park had been ordered to take down its American flags. The story went on to blame Superintendent Brooke Merrell who “prior to moving to Alaska…worked for the City of Portland and the Gulf Islands National Seashore, along with left-leaning environmentalist and social justice groups such as DNA People’s Legal Services (a legal aide group for American Indians) and Columbia Riverkeeper (an environmental group fighting to control development in and around that waterway).”
The story ended with a plea to readers to take action, which they did. The story was soon being shared all over social media by outraged fans of the American flag which led to the story “going viral,” as they say, and national and international media jumping in thanks to some encouragement from Sullivan.
He on Friday wrote a letter to Park Service Director Charles Samms III expressing his outrage at an order to restrict Old Glory in the park and requesting an investigation “to figure out what exactly transpired, including whether there was a requirement made by the National Park Service’s contract that prohibited the contractor’s employees from flying the American flag, and the circumstances in which the incident was handled and by whom.”
Deny, deny, deny
Some of what the Watchman reported appears to have been true and some not. But by Sunday, the Alaska Region of the park service was denying everything, or trying to, in a carefully worded statement that said that “at no time did an NPS official seek to ban the American flag from the project site or associated vehicles.
“The NPS neither administers the bridge project contract nor has the authority to enforce terms or policies related to the contract or contractors performing the work. The American flag can be seen at various locations within Denali National Park – at park facilities and campsites, on public and private vehicles, and at employee residences – and we welcome its display this Memorial Day weekend and every day.”
The denial was quickly echoed by the state’s legacy media sans any substantive reporting on how this brouhaha got started. The state’s largest news organization led its story with the official NPS denial and some wishy-washy comments from a park spokesman who was asked if the park could have played any role in starting this controversy.
In line with the park’s official statement, he stuck to the theme defined by the park’s claim that it “neither administers the bridge project contract nor has the authority to enforce terms or policies.”
The administrator would be a middleman who went unnamed when Davidson wrote that an unnamed contractor told him that “Denali National Park Superintendent Brooke Merrell contacted the man overseeing the federal highways project, claiming there had been complaints about the U.S. flags, and notifying him that bridge workers must stop flying the stars and strips from their vehicles because it detracts from the ‘park experience’ with summer tour buses now on the road.”
According to a contractor working in the area who was willing to go public in the first version of this story, but has since asked to be treated as an unnamed source due to the blowback from doing so, what the park service did was ask the project overseer to tell contractors to tell their employees “not to fly any flags, etc. on trucks driving the park road that is open to public or utilized by busses.”
In an earlier text, he had noted that everyone was sensitive to the park’s status as a tourist attraction, “and so it seems the (bridge) contractor was very swift to enforce the NPS request on its employees and subcontractor. It was first assumed that all display of flags was to stop, but NPS came back and clarified that they could be displayed in the areas closed to the public.”
Workers on the project were already bound by pretty strict guidelines that the park imposed from the start of the project to protect wildlife-viewing opportunities along the road.
“Any vehicle larger than a pickup can only be moved at night, and we have to follow many of the rules their own personnel are held to,” the source said “The park service is very sensitive to any effect we have on visitor experience. As far as any individual’s personal political views, etc., I can’t answer.
“I think there was some anger involved, and some personnel are still pretty upset about it. But it likely could have been handled in a more productive way.”
Still, he added, “all involved felt it was settled satisfactorily until media and politicians were contacted. The contact was by an anonymous employee of a contractor, not the contractor themselves.”
Crisis management
At that point, this explosive little public relations bomb landed in the lap of the park service, which did nothing to defuse it.
Davidson said in his story that he contacted the park service for comment, could get none, and asked the agency to have someone contact him, and then waited a day without hearing anything from the agency before posting the story, which duly noted the park service had been contacted but was not responding.
Should the Watchman have given the agency more time to respond? Who knows. The park service often responds quickly when it thinks it has something to gain from a story and sometimes seems to show a preference for ignoring questions it doesn’t like.
This website is still awaiting a park service response as to why it ignored previous park service reporting policies on fatalities and disguised the identity of a climber who died on Mount Denali on May 20. The Alaska Region said it was withholding the man’s first name and age “at the request of the family” and then kicked questions about this new policy to park service headquarters in Washington, D.C. which has remained silent since.
The Tribune had begun investigating accidents in and around Utah’s Lake Powell, part of the NPS-managed Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, when it was told no names would be released because of “privacy issues.”
Since 2006, park service policy has been to release the complete names and ages of those who die in parks, but for some reason, the Alaska region decided to change the rules with a legacy media seemingly happy to go along. After the park service asked why the dead climber’s identity was being obscured, the park service notified legacy media the man’s first name and exact age were not available because of the family request.
The agency is unfortunately in the habit of dealing with a legacy media that almost always prints what it says without question, and that habit did not serve it well in dealing with the Watchman, which published NPS names, phone, numbers and emails along with its call for the public to take action on the reported flag ban.
Request answered
A retired U.S. Air Force pilot now living in North Pole, AK – Steve Sirrine – picked up the Watchman post along with the phone number, posted it on his Facebook page, and quickly attracted more than 1,000 comments with many people reporting they had called the park service to demand Merrell be fired and a few hinting at violence.
In these times, in a world where much journalism – left, right, legacy, mainstream, fringe, whatever – caters more to internet-click-driving outrage than to substance, such responses might be considered something of a journalistic “success” for the fledgling Watchman
There are unconfirmed reports Merrell even received death threats over this issue. All of this caused enough of a stir that in a Monday commentary, Davidson sought to put a little distance between the Watchman and some blowback from its original story.
“The story has generated unprecedented views and comments on the Watchman website, as well as criticism about my reporting. For these reasons, I’d like to explain how this story developed over the past week,” he wrote.
“Before publishing the story, the Watchman reached out to Denali National Park’s media contact on May 22 to get their side of the story. We were told that Superintendent Merrell was not around, and that it was not likely she would respond to our questions before the end of the day on May 22.
“After failing to receive any answers to our questions, we finally published the story on May 23, around 4 p.m., with a note that we had not received a response from park officials.”
In that commentary, he also revealed that his original information came from a “crewman who…ask(ed) to remain anonymous because he is actively working on a project for Granite Construction” and criticized the park service’s “carefully worded statement (that) seems intended to discredit our reporting; it fails to answer any of the key questions surrounding the controversy while contradicting the actual construction worker’s direct experience on the ground, and diverting the issue away from the construction vehicles by focusing on other flags posted at park facilities.”
The Palmer-based Davidson is a former reporter for the Matanuska-Susitna Valley newspaper the “Frontiersmen,” which he left in the early 2000s to edit the Catholic Anchor, a newspaper published by the Archdiocese of Anchorage-Juneau, before it like so many other newspapers ceased to print.
What appears happened here is that whatever Merrell told “the man overseeing the federal highways project” began what is known as “the Telephone Game” with the end result being some angry construction workers who decided to make a federal case out of their anger.
The park worrying about visitor experiences in the park is nothing new. It has long restricted access to the park road, which traverses what the Alaska Department of Fish and Game calls “one of Alaska’s premiere sites for wildlife viewing.” Generally, only buses and the few motor vehicles driven by people with reservations at campsites deep in the park or at lodges beyond the west end of the park are allowed on the road.
The traffic is limited in part to ensure the volume of use remains low enough that wildlife will continue to hang out near the road.
Davidson’s original story did not get into these details of the road’s use or exceptions that might have been made for workers traveling to an from the bridge project, but highlighted the unnamed contractor placing blame on Merrell, who in 2022 became the first woman put in charge of Denali management.
Here status as an Alaska “Outsider” – Outside being what Alaskans consider the rest of the U.S. – was then targeted.
“Additionally,” the story added, “the National Park Service actively promotes the flying of other flags, which many would consider controversial. In fact, the official website of the National Park Service has an entire page dedicated to honoring a whole host of LGBTQ+ flags, including pictures of them on display at national parks in the Lower 48.”
The story did not say if any of those flags were being flown at construction sites in Denali or lashed to trucks driving through the park.
This is an updated version of a story that first appeared on May 28, 2024. It was edited to remove the name of a source publicly identified in the original story, and some additional information was added as to why the request was made to remove flapping flags from trucks on the park road.
Categories: Commentary, News, Outdoors
Most flags I see on trucks are torn and tattered and that is is very disrespectful to our American flags. If you don’t like the way things are going step up and help out.
Denali, “one of Alaska’s premiere sites for wildlife viewing.”
Haven’t been there in decades, however in the 1970’s I used to frequently drive through the park on my way to Kantishna to hunt. My recollection was it resembled more of a vast area mostly devoid of wildlife.
Largely true. But the wildlife there are often easy to see….
Since USMC veteran Sullivan has demanded an explanaton from the Supt I am confident he will share that witb Alsskans
We have a greater percentage of milittary veterans than any otber state and are proud to see the stars and stripes flown tbruout the Greatland
I trust Sullivan will get to the bottom of this matter and not simply accept the NPS denial or a biased NPS investigation into the matter.
Dan Sullivan is outraged by this but not by a Supreme Court Justice flying the Stars and Stripes upside down? That’s rich.
If I recall correctly, it was not the Justice that hung a flag upside down. It was his spouse. Why do you infer that he did it? Or do you believe that what ever the spouse does the husband is responsible for? How outdated your thinking is!
Flying the flag upside down, just like flying it from a staff attached to a private vehicle, is legal. Moreover, the flag code in the U.S. Code is unenforcable on private citizens. This is why reprehensible people burn the flag or exhibit disrespect towards it. Throw them in jail for such behavior, and it might not be so prevalent. But the flag code for federal officials is most definitely enforcable, and policy within an agency is malleable without a direct vote of citizens. Senator Sullivan knows all this, and it isn’t difficult to track down the players in a Telephone Game. He might not be able to prove a crime, but he is likely to identify the players and heat their chairs a bit. You might not approve, but many others will.