Check out the sympathy that the AP offers Mexicans living near the border...
The Border Patrol says its agents were attacked nearly 1,000 times during a one-year period along the Mexican border, typically by assailants hurling rocks, bottles and bricks. Now the agency is responding with tear gas and powerful, pepper-spray weapons, including firing into Mexico.
The counteroffensive has drawn complaints that innocent families are being caught in the crossfire.
"A neighbor shouted, 'Stop it! There are children living here," said Esther Arias Medina, 41, who on Wednesday fled her Tijuana, Mexico, shanty with her 3-week-old grandson after the infant began coughing from smoke that seeped through the walls.
First of all, AP quotes someone who claims they saw a "neighbor" who "fled" with her child, but does not interview the actual woman herself. AP broke the very first rule in reporting: verification. After that, the following sentence AP gives us is this one...
A helmeted agent on the U.S. side said nothing as he stood with a rifle on top of a 10-foot border fence next to the three-room home that Arias shares with six others.
This line falsely presents the American officer as some jack-booted, faceless, uncaring stormtrooper who thoughtlessly attacks poor women and children and who stays menacingly silent when confronted. But, in truth, these agents were attacked before the incident. A reply with non-lethal force to an attack does not deserve to be treated as somehow worse than or equal to what elicited this response. Not that AP lets that get in the way of a good over dramatization of a story.
AP goes on to repeatedly plead the Mexican's case against our beleaguered border patrol.
"We don't deserve this," Arias said. "The people who live here don't throw rocks. Those are people who come from the outside, but we're paying the price."
I have an idea Esther, have YOUR people band together and stop those "people who come from outside" from getting there in the first place. It's called community, Mrs. Arias. Or, vote the crooks who are allowing this out of office. You DO have a democracy, after all.
In any case, AP then goes on to flavor what has been happening there with more misleading wording.
Witnesses in Arias' neighborhood described eight attacks since August that involved tear gas or pepper spray, some that forced residents to evacuate.
This sentence reads as if these "attacks" were all perpetrated by American forces on poor, innocent Mexicans, but these are not "attacks" but RESPONSES to attacks on our guards.
The AP does give our side a small chance to try to explain the situation.
The Border Patrol's top official in San Diego, Mike Fisher, said his agents are taking action because Mexican authorities have been slow to respond. When an attack happens, he said, American authorities often wait hours for them to come, and help usually never arrives.
"We have been taking steps to ensure that our agents are safe," Fisher said.
Still, AP doesn't let the fact that our agents are being attacked on a weekly basis and that their lives are daily put in danger deter their desire to blame the USA. AP gives us more complaints from Mexicans about the non-lethal responses to attacks on US border patrol agents.
Robis Guadalupe Argumedo, a seamstress in Tijuana, said she has been startled by tear gas on four nights since Aug. 7, when her 12-year-old son suffered a nose bleed. That attack also shattered a window of her neighbor's car.
And did these "attacks" cause the nose bleed? No claim is made that they did, but the nose bleed is coupled with the tale of the "attack" to lead readers to relate the two together.
Argumedo, 31, said she shouted in protest across the border at a helmeted agent on Dec. 8 after opening her front door to a cloud of tear gas. "He said: 'I'm the policeman of the world and I can do what I want.'"
It is amazing how the AP reports this claim of what the "policeman" supposedly said! AP reports the words of this carping aMexican woman as if it is fact. There were no words on AP's part mitigating the factual nature of the claims with AP simply letting her words stand as gospel. Then they follow up with more unproven claims.
Benito Arias said his 19-year-old sister-in-law fainted during an apparent tear gas attack about two weeks ago. The woman, five months pregnant, was given oxygen at the hospital.
As I said, this report does give the US side of the story, but all sympathy is with the Mexicans and no attempt is made by the AP to remind readers that all the claims made are still unproven claims and not facts. The AP also made no attempt to prove that hospital visits by border Mexicans are up because of actions by our border agents, for instance and no other sources are presented to prove any particulars of harm to any innocents. AP repeatedly used the word "attacks" in describing US agent's actions when the truth is our border agents were RESPONDING to being attacked, not doing the attacking.
All in all, this report elicits sympathy for the Mexicans and causes scorn on our border agents. Worse, little effort is made to place the blame where it really belongs: on the drug traffickers and illegal entrants who are increasing their violence.
But, who could doubt that the AP wants to blame the USA, anyway?
