EDITORS' CORNER
ANALYSIS: What about informing — or at least reminding — readers of the main issue?
This past Monday I stumbled upon a UC Berkeley student paper article about a 300-strong student protest for a student who had been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, aka ICE.
I figured the report would at least give a brief mention about why the student was detained. Such was not the case. This is an ongoing problem with modern “journalism,” both mainstream and up-and-coming.
In over 700 words, The Daily Californian’s Elise Andrade writes that UC Berkeley business major Paula Albornoz Hernandez was arrested by ICE at the San Francisco airport on October 30.
Andrade’s report notes the following Wednesday, students had gathered at the campus Sproul Plaza to demand her release, which featured speeches by “her loved ones.”
“The demonstration featured an hour of speeches by her loved ones, her attorney and other community activists, as well as members of the East Bay Revolutionary Internationalist Youth, who organized the event,” she writes.
Andrade gives no political label — not even “progressive” — to the organizing group, the website of which notes it is a “transitional organization for radical youth eager to fight for socialist revolution in the process of becoming Marxist cadre” (emphasis added).
Albornoz Hernandez’s attorney Nikolas De Bremaeker said his client’s legal team had “filed a motion for emergency relief” and described the facility at which she’s being kept as “atrocious.”
“I’ve been there several times,” De Bremaeker said. “It’s not where human beings should be. It’s in the middle of the desert. The facilities are horrendous.” He warned students with an “uncertain immigration status” not to travel as ICE can “easily obtain flight records.”
Andrade further quotes California U.S. Representative Lateefah Simon (Albornoz Hernandez’s arrest was “wrongful,” and should be “immediately released”) and the student’s boyfriend (her arrest was “unjust,” and “she’s out there being treated like an animal”).
But again, no mention of why Albornoz Hernandez was detained.
Lo and behold (and only because I took the time to search) it turns out three days prior the paper had a story about her detention. But even that piece merely notes Albornoz Hernandez “overstayed [her] visa and was applying for asylum due to ‘gender-based violence’” in her native Colombia.
She was arrested for just that? Not quite. Unreported by the Daily Californian is that she had overstayed her visa by almost four years.
It’s unknown exactly when she applied for asylum, but legally it has to be within one year of her arrival, which was September of 2022. (Her visa granted “permission to remain” in the U.S. until March of 2023.)
A federal judge this week ended up ruling ICE violated Albornoz Hernandez’s due process rights and ordered her immediate release. Oddly enough, the Daily Californian didn’t note the judge is a 2024 Biden appointee.
Why didn’t Andrade at least link back to the Daily Californian’s original piece, however incomplete? Without such, it appears she wanted to portray Albornoz Hernandez in as sympathetic light as possible. (And again, note she doesn’t say just what the East Bay Revolutionary Internationalist Youth is all about — they’re Marxists!)
An recent analogous example from a mainstream paper comes from The Seattle Times, in which reporters Daniel Beekman and Ryan Nguyen assert — with no linked backup — that “there is no serious scientific evidence that trans girls or women are better athletes than cisgender girls or women.”
That “women” should be in quotes notwithstanding, yes, there is “no serious scientific evidence” … except for the fact that male athletic performance is superior at every level.
Here at The College Fix we do our very best to give readers the whole story, with links to original articles and studies. If one has questions about how we present an topic, our related links are there to help a person make up his/her own mind.
About the only thing we won’t link to is a professor’s faculty page. This is an in-house policy which hopefully dissuades people from engaging in any sort of harassment.
MORE: The History of Journalism: Has the media always been biased?
