Trial of anti-illegal immigration activist accused in killings spotlights tense climate along border
Here’s a lousy, but corrected, story from the Washington Post:
After Arizona rancher Robert Krentz was killed on his land last year by a man police believe was an illegal immigrant, television networks and more than 300 newspapers wrote about his death as an example of the dangers on the border.
Nine months before Krentz was killed, 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father, Raul, were shot to death in their home, 150 miles from Krentz’s ranch. Their attackers were allegedly affiliated with an militia group opposed to illegal immigration that was conducting raids to steal money.
[…]
Now let’s see how that looked before they made some of corrections:
Trial of immigration activist accused in killings spotlights tense climate along borderAfter Arizona rancher Robert Krentz was killed on his land last year by a man police believe was an illegal immigrant, television networks and more than 300 newspapers wrote about his death as an example of the dangers on the border.
Two months after Krentz was killed, 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father, Raul, were shot to death in their home, 150 miles from Krentz’s ranch. Their attackers were allegedly affiliated with an militia group opposed to illegal immigration that was conducting raids to steal money.
[…]
The corrected version includes this notice:
Correction to This Articlebut does not mention the change to the headline. I found the original at Molly Molloy’s Frontera List. She was quite annoyed by it:An earlier version of this story misstated the date of the Flores killing. Raul and Brisenia Flores were slain in May, 2009.
The Washington Post today reports on the Shawna Forde trial. If youYou may need to sign up for that Google Group to see what’s at the link. That’s a good idea if you are interested in what’s happening in Mexico and the US border area, particularly Juarez.can call it reporting. The very first paragraph of the story mentions
the killing of Robert Krentz and then says that Brisenia Flores was
killed TWO MONTHS AFTER Krentz. In truth, the home invasion and
murders of Brisenia Flores and her father took place 9 months BEFORE
the Krentz killing, at the end of May 2009. Krentz was killed in
March 2010. I browsed thru the 110+ comments posted so far this
morning and I see none of them that mention this egregious error of
fact. Maybe someone else noticed, but so far I don’t see it.
If a national newspaper cannot get this most basic fact right, I think
it speaks volumes about the lack of press attention to the real issues
on the border. Fact-checking is not hard. I assure you the editors and
others at the Washington Post have better access to news databases
than the NMSU Library does. BUT, my search in the ALL ENGLISH-LANGUAGE
NEWS section of Lexis Nexis on “Brisenia Flores Arizona” yields 48
stories, mostly from the wires, and including today’s Washington Post
story. A search in the same database on “Robert Krentz Arizona” yields
489 articles. More than 10 times the coverage… factually correct and
otherwise… I will post a comment to the WP website and encourage
others to do so. Below is the Washington Post story and also above
it, an original wire story on the Arivaca killings from May 31, 2009.
Shawna Forde was arrested for the killing about a week later in June
2009. To call her an “immigration activist” in the HEADLINE of the
Washington Post shows (IMO) even more ignorance of basic facts, not to
mention an editor that doesn’t know the meanings of words… molly