Tag Archives: Trump

Anti-Immigrant Blitz Burns

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Protester in cloud of chemical spray in Broadview — Chicago Tribune photo

By Casey Bukro

Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists

Immigrants in America, once a haven for such people, are now targets of federal crackdowns ordered by the Trump administration in sometime violent sweeps by masked and unidentified men.

The mass detention policy beginning on July 8 indiscriminately locked up immigrants who are contesting government attempts to deport them, which has been declared illegal by dozens of federal judges, according to Politico. Millions of immigrants are targeted.

In Los Angeles, Portland, Washington, D.C., Memphis and Chicago, federal troops and the National Guard were mobilized in the crackdown, which was highly controversial, unpopular, and in some cases challenged by shouting demonstrators.

How they look

“Dozens of federal agents took individuals into custody during a winding patrol Sunday through downtown Chicago,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported, “and a top U.S. Border Patrol official told WBEZ (broadcasting station) the agents were arresting people based on ‘how they look.’”

Passersby shouted at the agents, telling them to go home and “ICE sucks,” referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, one of the agencies in the deportation blitz. One person shouted “thank you!”, while another said sarcastically, “Real patriotic guys. Real patriotic.”

About two dozen protesters followed the agents, chanting “ICE go home!”

Illinois governor protests

On social media, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker noted the agents were carrying large weapons in downtown Chicago while wearing camouflage and masks.

“This is not making anybody safer – it’s a show of intimidation, instilling fear in our communities and hurting our businesses,” said the Democratic governor.

Newsweek reported that ICE arrested more than 2,200 undocumented migrants in a single day.

Faced with increasing hostility, the U.S. Department of Homeland issued a statement saying: “Despite ongoing attacks and villainization of our brave U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, ICE continues to arrest the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens across the country. Over the past two days, criminal Illegal aliens arrested by ICE have prior convictions for crimes including sexual conduct with a minor under 14, indecency with a child, criminally negligent DUI, homicide, drug charges, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, theft, burglary and battery.”

Opposing politicians are comparing ICE to the Nazi Gestapo, secret police and slave patrols, said an agency official.

Collateral damage

In the first 50 days of the Trump administration, immigration officials arrested more than 32,000 migrants living in the United States without legal status. But these included 8,718 persons who were considered “collateral damage” and not immigration violators.

One of the most heated clashes with ICE agents came in Broadview, a village of 7,998 residents 12 miles west of downtown Chicago, where a federal deportation center is located. ICE agents used chemical irritants to fend off protesters at the processing center.

“We are experiencing an immediate health safety crisis,” Broadview Police Chief Thomas Mills said at a news conference. “The deployment of tear gas, pepper spray, mace and rubber bullets by ICE near the processing center in the Village of Broadview is creating a dangerous situation for the community and all first responders.”

Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson said gas clouds released by the agents irritate people within 200 to 700 feet, but “the wind can carry it further.”

Three criminal investigations

Broadview officials asked ICE to stop using chemical sprays on protesters and said three criminal investigations were launched in the suburb against ICE agents.

Several federal officials, including two Illinois U.S. senators, sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security asking for information about the fatal shooting of an alleged undocumented immigrant, Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, by ICE officers during a Sept. 12 traffic stop in suburban Franklin Park.

This bulldozer approach to immigration management poses huge consequences for individual lives, torn families, the nation’s economy, labor force, health care, social services and housing.

It is still too early to fully assess the legal and ethical implications of the federal deportation blitz going on in the United States. It all boils down to deportation.

Individual lives

One of the most sensitive aspects is the impact on the lives of individuals, some fearful of what could become of them if they are identified as potential targets, rounded up legally or not, and deported to an uncertain fate in undisclosed places.

Years before the current vigilante-style manhunts for undocumented immigrants, one case came to the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists that forecast the kind of questions facing journalists and undocumented migrants.

It involved a Rhode Island man who was severely injured on the job, possibly because of faulty equipment.

Undocumented immigrant

“The man is an undocumented immigrant from somewhere in Central America,” wrote David Ozar, an AdviceLine advisor who wrote a report on the query. “The result of the accident is that he lost one leg and part of his rectum, and now has a colostomy. He lives in an assisted living facility and has received some help from workers’ compensation, but nothing from the company.”

Pro Bono lawyers offered to bring suit against the company on behalf of the injured man because of alleged safety violations. The unidentified man wants to pursue that, even at the risk that his identity would become a matter of public record and could result in his deportation.

“He believes that the company was at fault and that other workers at the company are still at risk, as well as other undocumented workers whose safety is taken lightly by their employers because they will not sue if they are injured because of the risk of deportation,” wrote Ozar. If he won the case, the injured man might gain funds for medical treatment.

Second reason

But that is not entirely the reason this case was brought to AdviceLine’s attention.

A journalist called, encouraged by an editor, to ask about the newspaper’s ethical responsibilities in this case.

“My first question to the reporter was whether she had discussed all these risks with the man, risks that are obviously multiplied significantly if the story is published, and was she sure he understood them?” wrote Ozar.

The reporter went back to the injured man to make sure he understood the risks he was taking if the story were published.

Increased risk

“He was firm in his desire to have the story published,” Ozar wrote, “in spite of the increased risk of deportation and loss of needed health care, in order to call the public’s attention to the safety issues and the exploitation of undocumented workers by U.S. businesses.”

After further deliberation, the newspaper decided that the issues raised by the story and the human interest slant of a man willing to take risks to help others, a public benefit, “strongly supported a decision to publish if the harm to this man did not clearly outweigh it,” and the man approved.

Not discussed, said Ozar, but worth considering in such cases, was whether the newspaper’s editors should ethically decline to publish such a story because they believed the risks to the victim were too great, even if the injured man wanted it published.

Ethics is a balancing act, where the facts in each case have more or less weight that tips a decision one way or another.

The Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics encourages journalists to “minimize harm.”

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The Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists was founded in 2001 by the Chicago Headline Club (Chicago professional chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists) and Loyola University Chicago Center for Ethics and Social Justice. It partnered with the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 2013. It is a free service.

Professional journalists are invited to contact the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists for guidance on ethics. Call 866-DILEMMA or ethicsadvicelineforjournalists.org.

Coronavirus Mixed Messages

Accountability, Accuracy, Broadcast news, Case Study, Media, Minimizing Harm, newspapers, radio, Television news, Weighing Benefits and Harm, , , , , , , , ,

 

By Casey Bukro

Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists

At a time of extreme urgency, public trust in all credible sources of information is vital to public safety.

As the global coronavirus death toll rises, it’s clearly time to set aside petty disputes that divide or confuse us. Yet in the United States, we get coronavirus mixed messages from the Trump administration, beginning a few weeks ago when President Trump called the coronavirus threat a hoax by Democrats and the news media.

That appears to be taking a toll on the president’s credibility.

“Americans have little trust in the information they are hearing from President Trump about the novel coronavirus, and their confidence in the federal government’s response to it is declining sharply,” according to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll.

Just 46 percent of Americans now say the federal government is doing enough to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, down from 61 percent in February, writes Domenico Montanaro. According the poll, he writes, just 37 percent of Americans now say they had a good amount or a great deal of trust in what they’re hearing from the president, while 60 percent say they had not very much or no trust at all in what he’s saying.

The president rates worst of all groups tested, according to the poll, and that includes public health officials, state and local leaders or the news media. When it comes to the news media, two-thirds of Democrats trust news media information, independents were split and Republicans overwhelmingly said they do not trust media information. Republicans think the coronavirus is blown out of proportion.

Public health officials got the highest level of trust at 84 percent, followed by state and local leaders at 72 percent. Americans were split 50 percent to 47 percent on whether they trust news media information or not.

“Having significant chunks of the country either not believing their president (who controls the fedral government’s response), the press (which is a gate-keeper for information), or both, could be dangerous in a pandemic,” writes Montanaro.

These divisions rooted in political squabbles does nobody any good, and it’s a good time for President Trump to stop demonizing the media because it does not help his reputation as a credible source of information, and tarnishes the nation’s only real reliable network of information. They should work together against the coronavirus scourge.

The president should quit using  coronavirus briefings as a platform for attacks on the media, as he did recently, when he said: “It amazes me when I read the things that I read. It amazes me when I read the Wall Street Journal which is always so negative, it amazes me when I read the New York Times, it’s not even – I barely read it. You know, we don’t distribute it in the White House anymore, and the same thing with the Washington Post. Because, you see, I know the truth. And people out there in the world, they really don’t know the truth, really don’t know what it is.”

How do remarks like that fit into a briefing on the coronavirus, an existential threat to people across the world? It’s pandering to his political base, who can’t seem to let go of their political haggling as though that is more important than life itself.

Erik Wemple, the Washington Post media critic, writes: “Nearly five years into Trump’s nonstop attacks on the media, it’s bewildering to consider the proper way to rebut them, or whether to rebut them. They come in torrents, based on thoughtless, factless presidential eructations. They serve their political purpose: Solidifying a population of supporters who believe Trump over the media even when presented with evidence upending their inclinations.” He quotes a Trump supporter who says you have to live in New York to understand what Trump is saying.

This comes at a time when New York State moved to join California in confining nearly all residents to their homes, as reported by the Associated Press. Governors undertook their most sweeping efforts yet to contain the coronavirus and “fend off the kind of onslaught of patients that has caused southern Europe to buckle.”

“We’re going to close the valve, because the rate of increase in the number of cases portends a total overwhelming of our hospital system,” New York Gov Andrew Cuomo said, as cases in the state climbed to more than 7,000 and the death toll reached at least 38.

The World Health Organization took note of the epidemic’s dramatic speed, the Associated Press reported.

“It took over three months to reach the first 10,000 confirmed cases and only 12 days to reach the next 100,000,” the U.N. health agency said. Across the U.S., governors and public health officials watched the European crisis from afar with mounting alarm and warned of critical shortages of ventilators, masks and other protective gear.

Worldwide, the number of infections exceeded 244,000, according to a Johns Hopkins University tally. More than 86,000 people have recovered, mostly in China.

By comparison, the Spanish flu, also known as the 1918 influenza epidemic, infected 500 million people — about a quarter of the world’s population – from January 1918 through December 1920. The death toll is estimated at anywhere from 17 million to 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million, making it one of the deadliest epidemics in human history.

Michael Wolff’s Access Journalism

Accountability, Accuracy, Independence, , ,

Assessing Michael Wolff’s brand of access journalism: Nausicaa Renner and Pete Vernon say Wolff could not have written his book “without the hard work of journalists over the past year; the fire he catalogs was often fueled by stories from mainstream reporters.”

Wolff bluffed his way into the good graces of the Trump administration and produced “a thoroughly readable portrait of the Trump administration’s chaos and lack of preparedness.”