My New Year's wish: Reporters and editors stop advocating for illegal aliens
January 6, 7:21 AM
Dave Gorak
6 comments


Here is my wish for the New Year: that the nation’s mainstream media, when covering the immigration issue, resolve in 2010 to take seriously their awesome responsibility and conduct themselves in accordance with the journalistic ethics and standards created by members of their profession.

Many newspapers post their commitment to fair and balanced journalism on their web sites, as do media watchdog groups like the Society of Professional Journalists. However, had the media been abiding by their own rules when reporting on this very volatile issue, there would have been no need for me, someone who spent 30 years as a Chicago print journalist, to write this column. The rules of good journalism that I grew up with are not in play today in terms of immigration coverage, and readers of what’s left of this country’s newspapers are the poorer for it.

The media are largely responsible for today’s immigration crisis. Why? Because they have ignored the other side of the story that includes holding responsible those politicians in Congress who pander to special interest groups and ignore the very immigration laws they created.

For too long reporters – with the blessing of their editors - have been churning out boilerplate sob stories about illegal aliens and their apologists who are given free rein to label as “racist,â€