Why has the media become so unpopular? Depending who you talk, some will say it has to do with the way the media covers the immigration issue, their use of the labels “illegal immigrant” and “illegals,” and how they handle immigration status. A quick Google news search one can find numerous examples from news organizations using the term “illegal immigrant.”

According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s (PEJ) 2009 State of the News Media annual report, the numbers continue to look bleak for print media, which continues to be the main source of independent reporting. PEJ also found that the perception “journalists do not care about the people they report on” has not changed.

One can argue a journalist’s first obligation is to the truth and using the term “‘undocumented’ … is a euphemism that obscures an important fact — that they are in this country illegally,” according to Washington Post Ombudsman Deborah Howell. However, this view is not only narrow, but it does not take into account the negative connotation the term has nor how the produces a narrative that has conditions the public to associate immigration with criminality.

The fact is, the news media play an influential role in shaping what and how people think about an issue. One way in which the media influences people is the way in which the media organizes the facts and opinions presented in a given story.

Recently, the USA TODAY caused a stir when she ran a story about the actions by several pro-immigrant groups to halt the deportation of undocumented college students.

Written by immigration reporter Emily Bazar, the article looked at the effects and ramifications of a broken immigration system has on undocumented college students, yet, the article left the reader wondering why were these pro-immigrant groups fighting to halt the student’s deportation. There was no context to justify the groups actions.

The article not only overlooked the immigrant perspective, but reinforces the popular immigrant as a menace image when she mentioned his offense at the start of the article, an offense your typical student commits during college. Without any context, people are still misinformed about this controversial subject.

“Most journalists I have spoken to over the past year, are almost clueless on immigration issues,” explains Prerna Lal, immigration blogger for Change.org. “They seem to be assigned the story and go looking around for the finer details to fit an already-set narrative.”

A 2008 report by the Brookings Institution and the Norman Lear Center confirms Prerna’s view. The report found that the media played a direct role in producing a “narrative that conditions the public to associate immigration with illegality, crisis, controversy and government failure.”

When immigration is associated with crime, crisis or controversy, it makes news. Immigrants and political actors are the primary protagonists of these dramas, while the public is a passive bystander. And as the transformation of the media has taken hold, this pattern has been repeated over and over again for many years with increasing intensity. The breathless, on-and-off coverage—more opera than ooze—has mischaracterized a massive demographic event that has developed over decades and mostly through legal channels. And at the same time, it has helped create contours in public opinion that have rendered the enactment of new immigration policies ever more elusive.

Pro-immigrant activists were also upset at USA TODAY’s use of the pejorative term “illegal” when they originally entitled the article, “Groups try to delay deportations of illegal students.” Prerna called the reporter to re-consider using the word “illegal.” Prerna explained regardless how unflattering “illegal” is used to describe undocumented immigrants, attaching “illegal” to students is incorrect since federal courts have ruled immigrants are allowed to attend college regardless of status.

USA TODAY responded explaining that the newspaper’s style guide defines “illegal immigrants” as “foreign nationals who are in the country illegally.” To justify their position for using of the term “illegal immigrants,” USA TODAY deflected Prerna’s question to define “illegal students” by implying the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) condoned the use of “illegal immigrants.”

At USA TODAY, we use the term “illegal immigrants” to describe foreign nationals in the country illegally. If you’re interested in finding out more about our style, or would like to hear a broader discussion about the terminology that reporters use to describe illegal immigrants, please take a look at a webcast I hosted this summer about this issue. It involved 14 journalists from around the country, plus a representative from NumbersUSA and the National Council of La Raza (NCLR).

Lisa Navarrete, NCLR vice president, refutes USA TODAY’s claim. “My task was to provide an overview of how the issue is viewed by Latino organizations and the Latino community and I relied heavily on the invaluable work of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) and the legal analysis provided by MALDEF as well as my own 20 plus years of media advocacy work,” says Navarrete.

After reaching an impasse, Prerna started a petition to asking them to define the term “illegal student.” A week later, after receiving over 500 letters, USA TODAY conceded and inserted the word “immigrant” in the title, with an editors note, “USA TODAY adjusted the original wording of this story’s headline to add context.” However, the note doesn’t what was wrong with the original title and what context was added.

Not journalist are set in their traditional journalistic practices, Marisa Treviño at Latina Lista noted the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) have made attempts trying to educate their colleagues. Unfortunately, their attempts continue to be ignored.

Words with negative connotation injures the dignity and self-regard of the person. Using the term “illegal immigrant” to describe an undocumented individual is not only demeaning and dehumanizing, it has affected the Latino community as a whole. The perception is that if a person has a Spanish surname or their physical appearance appears to be of Latino descent they are likely to be illegally in the United States.

It has gotten to the point, journalist are becoming snitches for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) every time a Latino is arrested. Last year on Poynter Online “Diversity at Work,” Mizanur Rahman, immigration editor for the Houston Chronicle, reported the first question newsrooms are asking when someone with a Spanish surname is arrested: “Is he illegal?” and “calling Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to check the immigration status” has become the norm.

In political discourse, certain words remains one of the most pervasive channels through which discriminatory attitudes are imparted. Many of the pejoratives used by the media first appeared in comments made by pundits like former CNN veteran Lou Dobbs and Glen Beck and by anti-immigrant groups. The sense of alarm disseminated by them have worked their way into what should be objective reporting.

A recent study of more than 34,000 news stories by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) and Pew Hispanic Center (PHC) found severe under-reporting on matters of importance to Latinos and that most of the news coverage of Hispanics are “event-driven” news stories. From February to August of this year, the study examined news accounts on 55 U.S. news outlets – 13 newspapers, 15 cable programs, the 7 broadcast network evening and morning news programs, 12 prominent news websites and 9 news radio and talk programs.

The study found only 2.9 percent (645) of the thousands of news stories in the media dealt substantially with Latinos. “And,” according to the study, “only a tiny number, 57 stories, focused directly on the lives of Hispanics in the U.S.”

The most covered event was the nomination and confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, 39 percent of all accounts dealing with Latinos:

The Mexican drug war came second at 15%; the outbreak of H1NI flu (with its origin in Mexico City) was third, at 13%. . . . Immigration, the number four topic, accounted for just 8.4% of the coverage involving Hispanics during these six months. . . . Immigration, which from 2006 through 2008 had been heavily debated in Congress and on the political campaign trail, was the subject of fewer than one in ten stories involving Latinos, a reflection of the degree to which the issue largely fell off the radar during the early months of the Obama Administration.

It is time for the news media to stop hiding behind a stick to interpretation of the Constitution to justify using the term “illegal immigrants.” The winds are shifting. Going against their own style, the AP used the term undocumented immigrants in a Dec 24 article. Hopefully, they will continue.

The proper words are undocumented and unauthorized in reference to immigrants. In her first Supreme Court decision, Justice Sonia Sotomayor used the term “undocumented immigrant” in Mohawk Industries v. Carpenter instead of the usual term “illegal immigrant.”

When respondent Norman Carpenter informed the human resources department of his employer, petitioner Mohawk Industries, Inc., thatthe company employed undocumented immigrants, he was unaware that Mohawk stood accused in a pending class action—the Williams case—of conspiring to drive down its legal employees’ wages by know-ingly hiring undocumented workers.

Even though President Barack Obama has his slip ups, he even has used the term “undocumented” in his remarks after a meeting with Congressional members in June to discuss immigration.

Now that Justice Sotomayor has formally introduction the term into United States law, it is time for the news media to stop viewing the term as an “euphemism” and see it for what it really is, offensive.

“¡Basta!” Enough is enough. In the next few days, Prerna Lal, immigration blogger for Change.org and I will formally launch a campaign to get the media to start using the term “undocumented.”

For now, we are putting the news media on notice.

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Tags: Barack Obama, Immigration, NCLR, news media, Sonia Sotomayor, undocumented immigrants, USA TODAY |  Print This Post |
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