http://www.sbsun.com/ci_4308466

Media miss the boat on some stories

Conor Friedersdorf, Staff Writer
San Bernardino County Sun

On an average day I read a couple dozen newspaper stories about immigration. It's a routine I've kept up for a year.
Subtracting two weeks' vacation, I'm afforded a sample size of more than 8,000 stories to ground my observations about the state of immigration coverage in the United States.

Breaking news stories are the most common.

Immigration legislation is passed or voted down. Upset citizens stage a protest or hold a march. Authorities carry out an immigration raid. Census data is released that sheds light on demographic trends.

Often these stories are reported adequately enough, occasional instances of factual inaccuracy and bias aside.

Next most common is the news feature that begins with an anecdote about a particular illegal immigrant. Sometimes he is sneaking across the desert. Other times she is working illegally at a factory, or engaging in politics, or buying a first home.

It is appropriate for newspapers to offer readers insights into the lives of immigrants, and individual stories frame those insights into narrative bits easier to process than they'd otherwise be.

Many of these stories are perfectly defensible pieces of journalism, and I disagree with those media critics who object every time an illegal immigrant is portrayed sympathetically. The fact is that many here illegally have sympathetic stories.

At the same time, it is problematic when nearly every single anecdotal lead and news feature about illegal immigrants focuses on the deportee who works three jobs and once saved a man from drowning while almost always ignoring the deportee who collects welfare under an assumed identity and has two drunken driving arrests.

Illegal immigrants have loafs and scoundrels in their midst like every other subgroup in society. Insofar as immigration coverage systematically ignores that fact, its effect is to mislead readers.

A preference among journalists for liberal immigration policies isn't always behind this systematic bias. As a reporter I much preferred writing about sympathetic people to writing about unsympathetic people.

Whatever the topic, it's no fun to hang around deadbeats. They're usually unwilling to regale reporters with their ill deeds. And it seems far more worthwhile to draw attention to ordinary people doing remarkable things than to unremarkable things done by uninspiring people.

But understandable biases still demand corrective action, and the bias in anecdotal leads and news features can't be entirely explained by the reasons I've mentioned.

I say that because immigration stories often highlight those hurt by a crackdown on illegal immigration. We've all read stories about married couples separated or parents and children torn apart. But immigration stories typically don't afford the same individualized portrayals of workers who lose their jobs to illegal immigrants, or see their wages fall, or endure longer commutes on more crowded freeways.

I hope newspapers will continue to inform us about the unnoticed good deeds and quietly admirable lives led by some illegal immigrants.

At the same time, readers are owed more balanced coverage that reports more often on things like illegal immigrant gang members and children whose education suffers because their teacher is less efficient in a classroom where half her pupils speak one language and the remainder another.

People are hurt by illegal immigration, and we need to hear their stories, too.

In a future column I'll propose some story ideas that would complement the coverage already offered by newspapers.

Conor Friedersdorf manages The Sun's blog on immigration issues. The blog, designed to provide a forum for opinions and information on immigration, is at www.beyondbordersblog.com.