More audio coming from reporter who taped Oklahoma leaders talking about killing reporters and lynching Black people – By Corky Siemaszko (NBC News) / Apr 18 2023
“It is an accurate recording,” says a lawyer for Bruce Willingham of the McCurtain County Gazette-News responding to the sheriff’s office’s claim the recording appeared altered.
The small-town Oklahoma newspaper that made national news by secretly recording local leaders in rural McCurtain County talking about killing reporters and lynching Black residents will be releasing more of that audio on Thursday, the publication’s lawyer confirmed.
The announcement came a day after the McCurtain County Sheriff’s Office claimed that the recording was “illegally obtained,” appears to have been altered and may have violated a state law prohibiting secret recordings by third parties.
Sheriff Kevin Clardy is one of four officials whose remarks were taped by the McCurtain County Gazette-News, which published its first article about the March 6 recording over the weekend. Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and others have called for the officials’ resignations.
Christin Jones, of the Kilpatrick Townsend law firm, which represents the newspaper, gave no hint about what else was on the recording but said that it had not been tampered with and that reporter Bruce Willingham, whose family has owned the newspaper for 40 years, did not break the law in making it.
