Journalist group to media: Be careful how you cover swine flu

Here's a press release sent out today by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists regarding recent coverage of the swine flu scare and its treatment of Mexican immigrants. For full disclosure, I must reveal that I am on the board of directors of NAHJ.

Here's the release:

The National Association of Hispanic Journalists called on the media on Wednesday to be fair and prudent when covering the spread of swine flu in the U.S. and around the world, and resist the portrayal of Mexican immigrants as scapegoats for the possible pandemic.

The following is a statement from the NAHJ Board of Directors:

“We have come to expect immigrant bashing from the usual suspects – commentators who use purposefully inflammatory rhetoric to seek attention and to suit their agenda. And they haven’t disappointed, now using the swine flu as cause to decry immigration and immigrants. Immigrants, of course, have long been favorite and convenient scapegoats for some for everything from high taxes to infectious diseases. Facts haven’t much mattered.

 But we trust that credible journalists will cover what is undeniably a big national story with more fairness and accuracy than we are hearing from these talking heads. We would ask that these stories be written as if facts did matter. Because they do.

The temptation even in more credible media, we know, will be to link Mexican immigrants with the spread of the disease to the United States. The consequence of too much of this will be even more anger – and perhaps even more violence – against a community no more responsible for the spread of this ailment than U.S. tourists returning from scenic, balmy vacations.

 There are more than 4,000 flights per week from the United States to Mexico. Mexicans are not the only people on those flights. About 80 percent of visitors to Mexico in 2008 came from the United States. 

 The Mexican immigrant community in the United States is a part of this story. But not in such narrow fashion as we’re hearing at the moment. This community is as fearful of the swine flu’s spread as anyone else. Viruses strike regardless of where you were born. And, please remember, the fear is not just for themselves but for family members and friends still in Mexico.

 The World Health Organization is raising its alert from Level 4 to Level 5, an action that will cause further temptation to overreact. If the swine flu becomes a true pandemic, we ask simply that the news industry do its job. That would be covering the story, not in the breathless fashion of the talking heads, but as a story as needful of truth, fairness, accuracy and balance as any other important story. In fact, the bigger the story, the more it needs these attributes.

 With such stories as this, the news media can be part of the solution or part of the problem.”

Comments

[unreal]

Are you kidding me? Since when are Journalists supposed to be activists? The NHJA has no business making political commentary which is what this is - fronting for immigration issues. Shut up and report the news; stop trying to make the news.

[blog head]

What they are saying is that they are well aware of all the SENSATIONALIZING that most TV news crews do today. 'WATCH US! WATCH US" sensational crap is all over the place. Sometimes their teasers have all the info they have - yet they run the teases over and over and when they FINALLY get to the story there is no story, just the same bit that was in a teaser.

[coldrockAmerica]

Journalists should be activists for journalism. It's about time that journalists stand up and defend standards and practices in their field. I think it may be too little, too late, since outfits like faux noise have been actively trying to hypnotize Americans for so long now, with no accountability. But there is most definitely a need to stand up. If you don't realize that, pull your head out and look again. This means you unreal- your snide comments speak for themselves-"shut up and report"?

[Mashuga]

Activists for journalism? What about being activists for the administration as NBC and MSNBC are? Where do you stand on that, coldrock?

[bourgeois]

Hey coldrock - isn't "faux noise" the same as saying it sounds good since faux means fake?

By the way, Keith "Countdown to No Ratings" olbermann doesn't pass for journalism either.

[coldrockAmerica]

Wow. You...(eyes well up, slightly)...you actually asked me a question. How do I stand?!
It's so nice, to be engaged. Much nicer than the blogs and radio shows. (d-e-e-p-s-i-g-h)

These other media outlets that you mention, put it to you this way, there is some philosophy, I forget which, that says that when something reaches it's zenith, it then becomes it's polar opposite. The right wing has had it in for the media, in a modern context, to me, since Vietnam. Then think about the incubation off the main stream, if you will, people like Wally George, then Morton Downey, then Reagan removed the fairness doctrine, giving rise to the strain cultivated on AM talk radio, culminating in the creation of FNC. Brit Hume used to be a real journalist, but he was never FNC's flagship guy; it was a tabloid journalist named O'Reilly. Hume was denigrated to a special report peppered with right wing one liners punctuated with that bitter hound dog scowl/smile- you remember, like Mr. Roper, when he would break the fourth wall and laugh WITH us? Sigh. and O'Reilly, even though he adorns himself in the raiments of the anchorman, his little desk, and pen, he makes no bones about the fact that he means to fiddle with the system. Meanwhile, journalism was following a discipline, a pedagogy, with standards and practices, the fruits of which were indeed the hand in stopping the Vietnam War, then Watergate, the galvanizing during the Iran Hostage Crisis.
So your titting for this tat, your very mention of the polar opposite of Fox (I guess, in your view), is proof that you are beckoning me to a whirlpool that doesn't justify Fox, because, two wrongs...
Can't you feel the hands sifting through your mind? In the very act of defending it, not to mention actually watching it?
That'll teach you to get me started...

[coldrockAmerica]

Could someone please tell me who in the holy halibut is the ombudsman at Fox News? DB Cooper? Amelia Earhart?

[gabe]

This group is incredible. Since the outbreak, I have not seen an article put blame to Mexican immigrants. I have not heard a news reporter blame Mexican immigrants. Talk about paranoid.

[Gustavo]

Gabe:

Here's one incident:

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/04/_jay_severin.html

[Gustavo]

Gabe, here's another:

http://mexicomonitor.blogspot.com/

[gabe]

Gustavo,

I stand corrected. I saw the story from Boston just before coming here and was going to make a correction to what I previously said.

I still stand by what I said about the group being paranoid, though.

[TV or Not TV]

Lou Romano has resigned from Channel 4.