Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights

October 13, 2011

Romanticizing the Border Patrol: Why Big Media Flops

Border Patrol Calexico, Calif.
Indymedia
Romanticizing the Border Patrol: Why Big Media Flops

By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

The big media CNN, New York Times and the others, fail at covering the US/Mexico border because they have no reporters who live here, and have lived here year after year.
The reporters fly in for a few days, let everyone know what an honor it is to be interviewed by them, and after folding up their makeup trays, they fly away.
They do spot interviews on a subject, romanticize the Border Patrol arresting some of the most desperate people on earth, or make racist Maricopa Co. Sheriff Joe Arpaio into a folk hero, rather than urging his prosecution.
Reporters arrive with a preconceived idea of the truth, based on the spin.
There are also television series romanticizing the Border Patrol, cheerleading for more oppression, more seizures of border land by the US government and more dollars to militarize the borderlands.
The truth is Border Patrol agents routinely beat and assault people of color on the border. Border Patrol agents are repeatedly convicted of smuggling drugs. Border Patrol agents are repeatedly convicted of corruption, of spying for drug cartels or providing maps or other sensitive data to drug runners.
Big news doesn't want you to see the real story, because it is too difficult for them to obtain. It would mean big news would have to have real reporters here, doing real news.
How much space has big news given to the women reporters being murdered in Mexico? When a US reporter is decapitated, it is a major global news story.
How much news coverage was given to Maria Elizabeth Macias, the editor of Primera Hora newspaper, found decapitated in September near the Texas border?
The inequality of this news reporting reveals one clear fact: The racism of the US news media toward the people of Mexico and people of color.
How much news coverage is being given today for the conviction of a Border Patrol agent busted on duty with a load of drugs near Yuma, Arizona?
Don't let them get away with it.

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