By Tracy Dingmann

I couldn’t help but notice some shockingly selective editing in two nationally-generated stories the Journal ran recently on immigration.

The first example came on Monday, in the Associated Press story the Journal headlined “Symbol of Immigration Anger.” The version I’m referring to here is the heavily-edited one that ran in the Journal’s print edition. (The paper ran a full version of the original AP story on its website.)

The story, by Associated Press writers Jacques Billeaud and Amanda Lee Myers, wasn’t called a commentary, but it read like one. The premise of the story was that the new immigration law that will take effect Thursday in Arizona is a “monument to the anger over illegal immigration that is present in so many places.”

The story went on for many paragraphs, summarizing incidents and events that the writers used to make unchallenged statements about the supposed rising crimes and costs associated with illegal immigration. It was light on quotes – the only guy quoted was Russell Pearce, the Arizona state senator who wrote the law and is, of course, in favor of it.

The Journal’s chopped up print version of the AP story ends right after it serves up cost estimates taken directly from Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and the Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne. Brewer signed the law and has made some wildly inaccurate statements about illegal immigration in Arizona since; Horne is the guy behind the state’s new ban of ethnic studies classes in schools.

What You Didn’t Read in the Journal

Turns out the original version of that Associated Press story goes on for much, much longer.

Here’s some of what the Journal edited out:

Opponents of the law say illegal immigrants are being scapegoated and wrongly characterized as freeloaders, pointing out that they pay sales taxes and put money into Social Security that they will never be able to take out.

They say the state’s rapid growth over the last decade couldn’t have happened without immigrant labor, that housing prices have been kept reasonable by those who did work that U.S. citizens wouldn’t – like roofing a new subdivision in Arizona’s 110-degree summer heat.

As Joy Williams of Tucson sees it, immigrants add to the melting pot that is Arizona and are doing jobs Americans don’t want.

Williams, who works as a research clerk in the Pima County Legal Defender’s Office, is also angry – but about what she says is the open racism she’s seen and heard in recent months.

“What is so shocking is people can be so openly verbal about it now and not even flinch,” she says.

Since Arizona passed its new immigration law, immigrant rights groups say Hispanics are seeing more open hostility.

Lydia Guzman, president of the Phoenix-based Hispanic civil rights group Somos America, says community members are reporting racial slurs like never before. She says she experienced it herself in May while waiting in line at a grocery store, when one woman looked at Guzman’s cart and whispered to another, “I wonder how much this is going to cost us?’”

Another group, Puente, said its calls complaining of racial incidents have jumped from about two calls a week to five to six a week.

Just One Side

In other words – in a news story about the coming immigration law and how it supposedly symbolizes nationwide anger against illegal immigration – the Journal eliminated all the parts of the story that tell the other side.

Part of the problem comes with the highly unorthodox way the story was written. A check of the original story shows it was top-loaded with negativity about immigration.

In contrast to everything I’ve ever heard about writing a good news story, it was completely one-sided until about three-fourths of the way through.

Whatever happened to writing a balanced news lead? Most editors worth their salt would hand a supposed news story like that right back to the writer and tell them to balance it out – to at least give a HINT up near the top that there is another side to the story.

A Story Chopped in Half

Compounding the problems is the fact that, when the Journal edited the story to fit its news hole, it essentially just lopped it in half.

That’s not the way most copyeditors are encouraged to edit stories for publication. They are supposed to read the whole thing and make sure, if they don’t have room to run the whole story, at least the whole story is represented in some way.

Shame on the Associated Press for writing the story that way, and shame on the Journal for chopping it in half!

Sanctuary Cities?

The second example of highly-selective editing comes in a story the Journal ran on July 27 called “Critics Focus on Sanctuary Cities.” It was written by David G. Savage of the Tribune Washington Bureau and ran on the Journal’s front page, as well as in many other newspapers across the nation.

However, in the Journal’s version, editors chose to remove two sections of the original story that give the flip side of the “critics” argument against sanctuary cities.

Journal readers didn’t see this:

The Justice Department lawyers say the government wants to catch and deport criminal immigrants, but it does not wish to take custody of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who are otherwise abiding by the law.
Cities with sanctuary policies deny they shield known criminals from immigration agents.

Or this:

The Los Angeles Police Department has had a policy for more than 30 years that prohibits officers from initiating contact with someone just to determine whether they are in the U.S. legally. LAPD officials have said the policy encourages illegal immigrants who witness crimes to assist police without fear of being deported.

Why Is This Wrong?

It’s hot…and I’m tired.

Do I really have to explain why its wrong for newspapers to just whack out the parts of news stories they don’t like?