Journalistic Objectivity

The Washington Post published an piece by their ombudsman refuting complaints about a WaPo piece on supposed ICE mistreatment of detainees. I wrote this in response:

True journalistic objectivity requires not just true facts but true context. The most common failing of journalists comes from turning their focus on something that's true but unrepresentative, or which obscures a deeper, more important truth.

This is just another example of the relentless parade of stories that focus on the sufferings of illegal immigrants, promulgated by the Washington Post, the New York Times, the LA Times, and most other mainstream news outlets, along with our local public TV station.

The defense is invariably the same: "What we said is true."

Well, say I follow you around taking photos of you. I get a thousand shots. 999 show you looking fine. The thousandth shows you picking you nose. I publish that.

OK, you did pick your nose; the photo wasn't doctored. But the CONTEXT was doctored, because that shot wasn't representative of you (hopefully).

Likewise, if the WaPo and other mainstream outlets also did articles on illegal immigrant crime, disease transmission, driving down blue collar wages substantially, drowning our schools in the Southwest with peasant children who know little and don't learn much; if the human interest stories also covered the victims of illegal alien identity thieves and drunk drivers and rapists and murderers; if the mainstream press covered the ethnic cleansing going on in LA neighborhoods by Mexican gangbangers driving out blacks; if the human interest stories about illegal immigrants covered anyone but the saintliest, most hardworking ones...then I'd be fine with series like this.

But the coverage is 95% in favor of illegal immigrants. So you're lying with the truth, pointing the reader's attention to stuff that supports only one side of the debate.

The irony is that this isn't really a liberal bias. It's supporting Mexican citizens whose efforts to help themselves are harming American citizens. But the Americans hurt most by this invasion aren't Washington Post readers. They're blue-collar workers, especially in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.

And they aren't just being economically assaulted. They're being culturally displaced as well. I'm not knocking Mexican culture. Actually I've studied Mexican culture at the University of Mexico in Mexico City. But why should it be allowed to supplant American culture?

And by "American culture" I don't mean only EuroAmerican culture. Our culture has become multiracial, multiethnic--one of the richest melanges in human history. But in the Southwest this is being displaced by ethnically homogeneous Mexican communities. For example, in LA today the most-watched TV station is Telemundo, which broadcasts only in Spanish.

The academic left dismisses such complaints as "nativism" --a term which, as far as I can tell, means "liking one's own culture." Horrors.

Dismissing one's adversaries with namecalling...hmmm...I thought only Republicans were supposed to do that.