Thread: Border volunteers basking in attention

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Border volunteers basking in attention
Susan Carroll
Republic Tucson Bureau
Apr. 2, 2005 12:00 AM

TOMBSTONE - Organizers of a monthlong civilian border patrol effort claimed victory on the first day, basking in national media attention even before the volunteers fan out to detect undocumented immigrants crossing the border.

"We have already accomplished our goal a hundredfold," Jim Gilchrist, a retired accountant and project organizer, said as more than 100 members of the media jostled and jockeyed for position outside a registration building on Friday morning. "We've got our message out to the American public."

Gilchrist estimated the number of media at 100 to 120. He claimed to have four times as many volunteers registering in Tombstone to participate in patrols to detect undocumented immigrants in the San Pedro Valley, a bustling smuggling corridor, and report them to the U.S. Border Patrol.

But there was no way to independently verify the number of volunteers, who were registered in two buildings.

The turnout fell far short of the 1,000 hyped before the event, although Gilchrist said more volunteers are expected throughout the month.

On the first day of the project, the media showed up en masse, with satellite trucks lining the streets of this historic town in Cochise County, an illegal-immigration epicenter that accounted for 1 in 5 of the 1.1 million arrests along the Southwestern border last year.

Law enforcement officers dressed in cowboy hats and boots kept a close watch on volunteers, and counterprotesters gathered outside the historic building across from City Hall. Some volunteers called the registration a "media circus," but others welcomed the publicity, waving flags and passing out commemorative patches.

"We have already succeeded," one of the project's main organizers, Chris Simcox, declared at a news conference with Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo.

The monthlong series of protests and patrols is billed as a push to pressure politicians for immigration reform and to draw attention to the Arizona-Mexico border, where ranchers have long complained the Border Patrol is understaffed. On Wednesday, top Border Patrol officials announced the addition of 534 agents but said it has nothing to do with the project and repeatedly denounced the project.

Marc Cooper, a senior fellow with the Institute for Justice and Journalism at the University of Southern California, said the project "caught a wave" of positive press, particularly with popular, conservative cable shows.

"The spectacle we're seeing today has been primarily driven by the media," he said, adding that it received an incredibly disproportionate amount of coverage, even from mainstream press. "There's a sexy story here, and the media bit the hook."

Paul Charlton, the U.S. attorney for Arizona, criticized the media for reporting the organizers' claims that more than 1,000 volunteers planned to turn out for the monthlong event, without substantiating the numbers. The organizers of the Minuteman Project repeatedly declined to provide a membership list to the media, citing privacy concerns.

Charlton said Simcox has a history of hyping events to the media, although it's too early to tell what will happen with the Minuteman Project.

When Simcox founded the organization Civil Homeland Defense in Tombstone in December 2002, he told the media he would have 600 volunteers inducted into a training exercise, but only a handful showed up, Charlton said. In January 2003, Simcox promoted a similar event but predicted a more modest turnout of 20 to 30 volunteers. Charlton said that on the day of the event the local media reported that two volunteers turned out, fewer than the number of journalists.

"If the past were a prologue, you could expect very few people," Charlton said. "The exception here is that this event has received such an extraordinary amount of media publicity that it could be a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Steve Rendall, a senior analyst with the Washington, D.C.-based Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, said radio talk shows have devoted a substantial amount of airtime to anti-illegal immigration advocates for more than a decade, but the movement is now making it into more mainstream media, driven by conservative cable shows. He said the hosts asked "softball questions" and basically had the project's spokesmen on unopposed.

"It was basically a frictionless public-relations outing for the Minuteman Project," he said.

Ben Pachano, who came down from Tucson to protest the project, said the media have been manipulated and allow spokesmen for the project to "frame the rhetoric" for the immigration debate.

"They're racists, using rhetoric designed to whip up fear," he said.

Jack Treese, a 59-year-old Minuteman volunteer from Simi Valley, Calif., said the media work toward the project's main goal, which is to pressure politicians to reform U.S. immigration policy and secure the border.

"And I'm glad they're here because what really bothers me is the idea of someone coming down here to shoot at us, and if the media's here, maybe that will prevent that."

"The spectacle we're seeing today has been primarily driven by the media," he said, adding that it received an incredibly disproportionate amount of coverage, even from mainstream press. "There's a sexy story here, and the media bit the hook

This comment boggled my mind! Consider, for instance, the media attention given to the Terri Schiavo case in the last two weeks..every media outlet yammering 24/7 about this 15 year old case. I'm not meaning to disparage the pitiful woman or what the family went through...but it was certainly a disproportionate amount of coverage. We could go on with this particular list for days and not cover all of it.

Scott Peterson, the baseball scandal, on and on.

RR