Yesterday the Washington Post published an article predicting that a border fence would be an ecological disaster. See it at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/19/AR2008041900942_Comments.html#

I wrote this comment:

There are valid ecological concerns about a border fence. Those concerns should be taken into account.

There are also valid ecological concerns about not having a border fence. Those concerns should be taken into account.

There are also other concerns--for example, what would be the ecological implications of Arab terrorists smuggling a dirty bomb over the border and setting it off in, say, Houston?

A good article could be written about the intersection of illegal immigration and ecology, weighing the different aspects and interviewing the appropriate experts.

Instead we get lazy, partisan journalism.
You'd expect more from one of the nation's leading newspapers.

For example, the article keeps mentioning how a border fence would harm birds and bats. Um, can't birds and bats...fly?

And the article even disses watchtowers for disturbing sensitive critters. But if that's so, surely hordes of illegals coming through on foot and in vehicles every night would disturb the local fauna and flora more.

And the quotes are weighted 90% in favor of, well, fence-o-phobia.

It's fair for an article to come down on one side of an issue--after all, there is such a thing as truth, and it's dishonest just to quote opposing sides without coming to a conclusion about who's telling the truth.

But it's also dishonest to get there by cherrypicking the evidence, throwing in red herrings, and suppressing valid opposing facts and arguments.

Unfortunately, that's what we've got here.

For example, the article pays lip service to the problem of illegal immigrant trash, but so briefly as to make it seem like a red herring, not a real ecological concern. And of course when we say "trash" we don't mean just water bottles and backpacks. We also mean enough biological waste to pollute streams and other areas.

And the numbers are staggering, with around a MILLION illegal immigrants are coming across the border every year drop a nontrivial amount of trash and human waste. Also, as scientists have discovered from studying the impact of human travel in desert regions, just walking across an area in huge numbers can impact the environment.

I conclude that the writer of this article started with a conclusion--illegal immigration good, fences bad--then proceeded backwards towards the facts, presenting what's needed to support the foregone conclusion, with only enough coverage of opposing--or simply complicating--considerations to give the writer "plausible deniability" when accused of bias.

Unlike many of the commentators on this piece, I don't think this sort of bias is limited to one side of the political spectrum. It's the way partisans of the right and left operate, treating truth as instrumental rather than having intrinsic merit.

I'd hoped for better from the Post.