We have a poll on NewspaperTree.com. Right now, the majority of our readers think Lou Dobbs is "extremely idiotic." That leads "somewhat idiotic" 68 percent to 32 percent.
I can't get away from it.
I'm in the car heading home at about 10 p.m. last night, and some Cammie or Cassie McKenzie or McKinney is at the top of the hour on CBS news, finishing off a piece about the El Paso ATF efforts to slow the south flow of guns. She says something about helping Mexico "win the Drug War."
C'mon, this has got to stop. I mean, do you people even know what you're saying? Not even the most optimistic U.S. or Mexican official thinks anyone can "win the Drug War." Unless by win you mean smash the cartels into smaller bits and diminish the organizational power of the drug lords. Everyone knows that smuggling will continue as long as there is a product, a black market, and a profit. The best case scenario is that in Mexico, as in Colombia, the violence dies down. But the business, as in Colombia, continues. Eventually it will flare up again, somewhere.
It's growing clear that we have a fundamental problem here, a real failure to communicate. The media's job is to inform well, so the public can be involved through the democratic process in making good public policy decisions. As the major media failed the nation in the run-up to the Iraq War, so too is it failing the nation when it comes to understanding Mexico and covering the issues arising in Mexico, along the border, and, for that matter, throughout Latin America as a result of the Drug War. No major news organizations -- aside from the LA Times, NPR and some occasional happy exceptions -- have consistent coverage of the border, the meeting place between two populous and naturally rich trading partners who have shared land, culture and history since Europeans set foot on the continent.
CNN star Anderson Cooper was in El Paso last night, and he's going to be here again tonight. I had a chance to chat with him for a few minutes yesterday, before he went on the air. He was very kind and patient as I failed to interview him and instead gave him an earful along the lines of this story from yesterday.
I really wanted to say something nice about him, but ... there was no real insight given. In the end, reporting on the river levee a few hundred yards from my neighborhood, all Cooper achieved was to stir up the same old fears. Dare I say the coverage sucked?
The worst part was a piece on the U.S. couple from San Diego carjacked at gunpoint on a Mexican highway not far from the border. What was the point of that? To scare the hell out of people? If so, it was a brilliant piece. If it was to help people sort through the issues and really assess the dangers and what's happening, it was a hack piece of junk. Where was the perspective, the context?
It was a horrible and compelling story, well-told but ultimately meaningless. It took place in a vacuum. Well, it wasn't really a vacuum. There was again the unfortunate frame of the Drug War. Because that was the context set up by the show, someone needed to make sure viewers understood how it fit into the framework. Because it didn't, it instead left the impression that U.S. citizens are being carjacked right and left, and worse, possibly tracked to their home in the U.S.! As my younger, text-happy friends might say, WTF?
The show featured a few other reports, and interviews with Sheriff Arvin West of Hudspeth County and the director of "Drug Wars," Rusty Fleming.
All in all, it was a classic parachute job, complete with a screaming headline about "The War Next Door."
I think Cooper and the large media organizations owe us, and the nation, some thought, time, effort and context.
Not a parachute job, and not a screaming headline about "The War Next Door."
I guess it could have been much, much worse. CNN might have sent Lou Dobbs.
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PS: Cooper did take some time to speak with ABC-7's Celina Avila, who did this interview with Cooper. And, to their credit, CNN did bring on ABC-7 reporter Martin Bartlett a couple of days ago. It's a bit of a start. Hopefully, El Pasoans will populate CNN over the next few days -- and, more importantly, not let them frame the story for us!