Thursday, November 17th, 2005...1:06 pm
Pity those Poor Minutemen
I never watch local television news anymore. In case you are wondering why, last night’s ten o’clock edition of KVOA’s Eyewitness News is exhibit one.
The program featured a story that demonstrates two unfortunate trends in local programming. One is the need that they seem to have to use their news outlets to plug network programs. The other is the alarmist immigrant bashing that all three (three and a half, really) local television news outlets have been engaging in.
Last night’s episode of Law and Order featured a Minuteman-style group that ordered a hit on a coyote, and also killed several immigrants. I won’t go into the whole story, but it suffered the same problems that the “ripped from the headlines” episodes often do: they had to go through some silly plot contrivances to make sure that the story actually took place in Manhattan. That way, they wouldn’t have had to call Barbara LaWall to make a guest appearance.
The Minutemen were furious at the ad campaign that used the name of their organization. They are the only people ever to call themselves Minutemen, I guess. They were convinced that they would be shown in a poor light. These complaints only fed into NBC’s publicity campaign: now the show would be “contraversial” and “edgy.”
The Minutemen don’t like it when you characterize their movement as “violent” or “racist.” As soon as they demonstrate a willingness to cut ties to white supremacist organizations and excise the sadists from their group, I’ll stop calling them “violent racists.”
So, Eyewitness News last night teased a story during the episode to show us how the Minutemen reacted. They could hype their news cast, and also, give these kooks in the Minutemen and their cause more airtime.
I have been disturbed for some time by the local TV news outlets’ love for this movement. I can’t even remember which station did it, but there was a story last year about a supposed “islamic prayer rug” that was found with some migrants. The thing looked like, well, an ordinary rug. Maybe it was used for prayer, maybe not, so what? Of course, this “fact” got run by all the local news outlets as if to say that Osama bin Ladin himself was hiding out in Double Adobe helping terrorists cross. Pure hateful bunk.
If someone has seen similar genuflection from one of our local TV reporters towards anyone advocating for a more liberal, or even reasonable border policy, please tell me.
This is one place where I have to thank our dailies; you all know this is difficult for me. They actually deserve some props on this issue. The Tucson Citizen in particular has done a decent job of documenting the suffering of the migrants while also talking about the broader issues at stake.
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