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Thanks Daily News: How the media fosters ignorance of Asians and immigration
Submitted by HelenGym on Tue, 11/10/2009 - 11:25am.
I cringed when I saw the cover of this morning’s Philadelphia Daily News: the blurred back of an Asian man with the headline "The lonely, illegal world of ‘Mr. Cheng’."
After all, how many Daily News covers do you see with Asians on them? So now we get a full cover story devoted to an Asian resident of this city, and darn if it isn’t a surprise that:
- we’re anonymous;
- we’re illegal; and
- we’re a symbol of a horde of illegal immigrants secretly hiding in Philly (1 of 103,000!).
A few years back, I worked with the reporter, Julie Shaw, who was circumspect and responsible in covering a case I was working on about a deaf Indonesian boy seeking political asylum. I don’t think there’s any deliberate intent to do harm here on her behalf. But the problem with the story is that it takes an extremely inflammatory issue – illegal immigration – and presents it through an extremely narrow frame without any sort of context, commentary or perspective. It alone doesn’t exude ignorance but it fosters it.
It’s not like the Daily News regularly covers immigration issues so it’s hard to think that this story fits any broader purpose than something rather exploitive, no? Hey, got a lead on a random Asian undocumented worker. Let’s follow him and report on where he lives with other undocumented people, where he works with other undocumented laborers, how he gets paid with "illegal" wages, and quote him saying how grateful he is to be working while other "real Americans" are unemployed – then let’s see what our readers think about it!
Anyone else wonder how that will go?
The story becomes more problematic when paired with the accompanying sidebar that presents a "crackdown" on illegal immigration framed entirely from ICE's point of view. Here we get real specific about who ICE’s "illegal" targets are:
The office is aware of immigrant communities' use of temporary-employment agencies to find jobs for undocumented workers. It sees such agencies as a threat.
Such agencies serve immigrants not only from Indonesia, but have cropped up to serve Hispanics from Central and South America, Africans, Chinese and Vietnamese, according to ICE.
Then to really bring out the knee-jerk reactionary in you, there's the online poll that asks you to vote on, yes, who to blame!
Who do you blame for illegal immigration?
- The illegals
- The employers
- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
- No one. That’s how my family came to this country
Way to really get people informed on immigration guys!
This whole package is frankly appalling in its ignorance of why there are so many undocumented people in the U.S. It treats immigrants as little more than cheap labor, and overlooks the critical role of family in drawing and keeping immigrants here as well as the complicated mixed status of a significant portion of American families. It gives no sense of contributions immigrants make overall to the culture or economic revitalization of cities in general and Philadelphia in particular (Washington Avenue, Chinatown, West Philly, Olney, etc.). And it presents ICE as some sort of protective line between real Americans and "the illegals" (cue scary music here) when in fact ICE has made it into the headlines far too often for their human rights abuses, ranging from Texas’ T. Don Hutto facility which abusively imprisoned children and political asylees to horrible immigration raids to deaths of immigrants in ICE custody.
In 2007, I worked on a case involving a young Chinese mother, Jiang Zhen Xing, who miscarried twins following a violent deportation attempt where she was denied adequate food, water and medical attention. This happened during a scheduled visit with her immigration officer at 16th & Callowhill Streets. While her husband and two young sons waited outside, ICE officials dragged her through a back door and shoved her into a van, bruising her in the process. During the ride to JFK Airport, Philadelphia ICE officers mocked her cries of pain and told her “no more American babies for you.” Their plan? To dump her onto a plane to Beijing which would have been 2,000 miles away from any relatives, without clothes, ID, money, or any notification to any family member. When her husband asked anxiously about her whereabouts hours later, the ICE officer at 16th & Callowhill refused to answer his questions, instead smugly advising him to come back the next morning when they’d tell him where she was.
It’s hard for me to understand what kind of mentality it takes to deny a pregnant woman in obvious distress and severe pain any amount of basic care. But it was clear from the commentary stream on philly.com and messages at Asian Americans United that plenty of people operate on only one plane – if she was undocumented, for any reason, she had it coming.
Today, we’re looking at a City administration that appears to be breaking a decade-old understanding that police would not conflate immigration with community policing. At last report, a Pennsylvania prison is now taking the former political asylees of T. Don Hutto, including children, contributing to PA's ever increasing incarceration rates. The D.A.’s office now plays a key role in a relatively new system of information sharing that strengthens ties among the D.A.’s office, the courts, the police, the City Solicitor and ICE. Meanwhile, we have a rapidly growing population of immigrants hightailing it out of Philadelphia for the suburbs – losing Philadelphia residents, commerce, and economic and neighborhood revitalization opportunities.
More than ever, as the city debates serious issues around immigration and specifically deportation, community policing and a new District Attorney, we need a sense of responsibility and rigor in the debate around immigration. Instead what we get from the Daily News is the "illegal world of ‘Mr. Cheng’."
It’s yet another example of a historic cycle of scapegoating immigrants in difficult economic times. It promotes and fosters ignorance on a critical issue of concern impacting the region. It paints Asians in particular and the broader immigrant community in broad strokes and feeds into anti-immigrant sentiment with "blame polls" that themselves reflect appalling ignorance.
I’d like to think that stories like this just end up lining my kids’ guinea pig cage, but the fact of the matter is that many of us will be working to combat the ignorance and fallout for a long time to come.
This is really distressing
There's really not much more you can do reading something like this than to think in moral or evolutionary or spiritual terms.
Like are human beings inherently selfish and mean people? Or are the folks who call AAU to tell "illegals" they had it coming the victims of a screwed up society?
Does it even matter?
I had a similar set of big picture thoughts about the really obnoxious responses to the SEPTA strike. Like it's all just a race to the bottom.
I found "Mr. Cheng's" story gripping
the description of how he lives. His dogged perserverance. The collection of pieces of paper with positive aphorisms around his tiny drab room was a striking image. The story of the persecution he faced as ethnically Chinese in Indonesia. I think most folks who read that story will take away that "Mr. Cheng" was dealt a tough hand long before he came to the US and that his life here has been anyhing but a walk in the park. For a lot of readers I think despite problems in how the story is framed by sidebars, etc., that the core of the story humanizes the "Mr. Cheng's" of the world and lets the rest of us at least take peek into how the world looks to his eyes. To the reporter's credit I feel like I got a real view onto "Mr. Cheng's" daily struggles and thats a perspective rarely represented in mainstream press coverage.
Bigots will rage against "illegals" regardless whether we meet humanized "Mr. Cheng's" or not. I fear that the quest for constantly Cosby-esque portrayals of immigrant's experience here in Philadelphia also has perils. Some folks do come here without documentation because ethnic violence and discrimination make life in their home country unsustainable. Its rarely easy once they get here. Thats a message that has its own value.
I'm a big fan of a little place called Hardena on Hicks and Moore and next time I pick up food to go I can't imagine I will not be thinking about "Mr. Cheng" and his little pieces of paper. Maybe thats just me. Perhaps we should be careful about throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Only part of the story
sent via email from Judi Bernstein-Baker, executive director, HIAS:
The article in today's Daily News, while it attempts to be sympathetic, really tells only part of the story.
The person in the article is an ethnic Chinese Christian. At one point we had several thousand Chinese Indonesians in Philadelphia who fled anti-Chinese and anti-Christian violence in Indonesia. This community has been devastated by deportations of failed asylum seekers. The U.S. immhave sent back many families who have U.S. citizen children. In contrast to Philadelphia Immigration Court, a Chinese Christian who applies for asylum in New York or California has a much better chance of being granted asylum. There is a lack of awareness and willingness to understand the situation of Chinese Christian Indonesians.
Many Chinese Indonesians were traumatized by the 1998 riots in Indonesia when over 1,200 people were killed, businesses torched and women raped. It should be noted that in 1968, over 100,000 ethnic Chinese were murdered in Indonesia in another explosion of anti-Chinese violence. In this instance, Suharto used the Chinese as a scapegoat to gain power and strengthen military rule. Suharto's excuse was that the ethnic Chinese were aligned with communist China, even though many Chinese Indonesians had fled China and others had lived in Indonesia before the communists took power in China.
Moreover, in 1996 our asylum laws changed. Individuals must apply for asylum within one year of entry. But many Indonesians were so traumatized by what happened in Indonesia, they feared that if they applied for asylum and lost, they would be sent back to a place they fled. After 2001, the U.S. government required all Indonesians to register. Many Indonesians complied, after which they were placed in deportation; many had been here for more than one year, thereby undermining their claim to asylum.
Chinese were very repressed in Indonesia; they could not speak their language or celebrate any Chinese holidays. Although this type of overt prohibition was lifted in 2001, Chinese Christians remain a disfavored minority in Indonesia and, when there is a economic downturn or other problems, they are the first group attacked. Added to the ethnic factor, is the religious marginalization and persecution felt by observant Christians.
No asylum seeker or forced migrant comes to a new and strange country unless they fear harm or seek survival. I am not sure the article conveyed how very difficult a decision to leave one's country is, or the pain in not being believed or accepted as a person who seeks sanctuary and stability. Our harsh asylum policies have not only hurt those who need its protection; our Philadelphia community has lost many committed immigrants who naively hoped that the U.S. would welcome their quest for freedom.
As I said above, I think the
As I said above, I think the reporter wrote the story with no ill intent. I think she wrote it as a straight shooting story and I don't dismiss the story that's presented.
The problem is with the surrounding context of the story - the fact that the paper doesn't cover immigration issues, has almost never had an Asian on its cover, uses an idiotic poll asking people to figure out who to "blame" for illegal immigration, promoted the story on the philly.com homepage by calling it the "illegal world of Mr. Cheng", had a sidebar with ICE recommending who to blame, employed liberal use of the term "illegal" in prominent places, etc. It's the paper who said 'Mr. Cheng' was one of 100,000 "illegals" in the Philadelphia area, hyping up his role as a symbol.
I don't discount 'Mr. Cheng's' story (and Sean's typical habit of misrepresenting statements rears its head with the "Cosby" reference and lands him yet again in bizarro world), but the paper - its editors - created something that was much bigger than the story at hand, and as such, was both ignorant and, frankly, divisive.
Thanks for the expanded historical context
The name calling, not so thankful for. You know as well as anyone that stories with first hand accounts of immigrants and asylum seekers are few and far between. I appreciate the criticism of the editorial framing. At most I was suggesting the all-out bash on the DN might in the era diminishing long-form local journalism might lead an editor to conclude "Well anything other than dry recitations of the numbers draws criticism so why cover it at all?"
You make excellent points about the framing in terms of title and sidebars, poll. But if one only criticizes with both barrels, it runs the risk that for many readers (and newspaper editors) it comes off as "these stories should not be told" rather than the probably intended "these stories are worthy of being delivered with better context - context like this and this". Your subsequent posts did a better job of pointing in that direction.
Sorry to upset you with my "bizarro" need to suggest the story itself is worth telling even if the framing was problematic.
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Out of curiosity, Sean
who do you know in the real world who this describes?
Who is on such a quest, Sean?
I think DN story in question both gives and takes
If you look at the title of this thread it says boldly the Daily News is fostering ignorance. I am not a fan of anything that even remotely smells of censorship, that undervalues the value of reading against the grain of sometimes awkwardly framed media coverage. Something really has to be absolutely patently hateful for me to say "this stories editorial framing is so offensive the story should not be told at all". Also I assume the average readership of the DN is lot less sympathetic to "illegals" than you or I whether or not this story gets published and overall the story does more to break that down than make it worse, despite the awful framing. Being snide or dismissive or too controlling of the message those folks recieve does not in my estimation always further the cause of more informed discussion.
You seem to want to stir up a bigger fight here as usual, Josh. Sorry if I can't give you any more red meat than that.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Once again, Sean
Don't duck the question, Sean. Who do you know, in the real world, that is on your "Cosby-esque" quest?
You created a straw man, and when called on it, slip into your persecution complex and mount your steed to fight the good fight in your inexhaustible crusade against YPP liberal dogma.
You responded to Helen's post. It follows logically that you are saying your characterization about people on a quest applies to Helen. She called you on your mis-characterization, and you claimed it was a matter of her being "upset" at your "suggesting" that Mr. Cheng's story was worth telling?
Essentially, you reduce her point - that in a context devoid of a comprehensive look at immigration issues, a front-page article that highlights the "illegal" attribute fosters ignorance - to Helen desiring a uniformly TV sitcom portrayal of an important issue.
So once again, Sean. Who do you know that is on such a quest? And why did you direct your comment towards them in a post that Helen made (without clarifying that you were responding to people who exist outside in the universe, somewhere, but not to Helen)?
And once again
you are on quest to make this a game of "who's one of the cool kids" more than trying to prove a point. I respect what Helen has to say if not always agree 100% with the way she frames the debate. A significant proportion of undocumented aliens in the U.S. are folks who under different circumstances might qualify as asylum seekers. Some of them are Asian. The sketchy, often abusive world of fly-by-night sub-contracted employment agencies is often where undocumented workers in the Philly region actually work, recieving sub-minimum wages, as portrayed in the story. "Mr. Cheng's" working conditions in the story is a more accurate description of the reality of many of these folk's lives than the Lou Dobb's of the world often portray it. There is some positive value even from a "pro-immigrant" perspective of a depiction of the reality of "Mr Cheng's" far from easy life.
If that means I'm on an "an inexhaustable quest against liberal dogma" in your eyes rather than mission of constructive criticism, so be it. You really are a little skewed in your perspective if I am your definition of the epitome of a no-good right-winger. But if thats your conclusion, so be it.
Also I don't think this enriches the discussion at hand. Perhaps out of consideration we should not turn this once again about me and you bickering.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Accountability, Sean
Yet another straw man? Where do you get these ridiculous notions? I don't think you're anything like a "no-good right winger."
So, again, Sean. For the third time, to whom were you referring when you responded to Helen's post with a comment about "the quest for constantly Cosby-esque portrayals of immigrant's experience here in Philadelphia also has perils. "
No one objected to you having an opinion. Helen focused on calling you out for the mischaracterization - not the opinion you expressed. The objection on my part is to how you frame an opinion by mischaracterizing what other people say. My "quest" such as is, is to get you to stop doing that. It's really pretty simple.
Exhibit 437
This discussion is exhibit 437 of what I hardly ever blog anymore.
It probably has to do a general lack of traffic also
which in turn leads to a general lack of relavence to policy. Its easier to ignore a forum where the message is always monotonously in total agreement. If you know what will be said, you know there will be no debate, you know that an ever narrower slice of the electorate will be represented. Why pay attention to what good ideas or issues might be raised there?
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
That and the general tone of
That and the general tone of blog debate I find ugly, as well as the "persecution" of folks who, while progressive, may be more middle of the road than not.
I'm a big boy
and for the record its a very rare circumstance outside YPP-land when I'm considered anything other than a screaming lefty. If the American political spectrum is a rainbow the differences between me and some folks here is probably the difference between similar shades of Indigo and Violet but for progressive Dems to win elections they have to capture a share including all of the millions of shades in the whole GBIV portion of the ROYGBIV spectrum. Its all about perspective.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
I'll agree to the general idea but add
that your sense and need to articulate your own personal heightened self-awareness is strikingly and boyishly un-self aware. I aso suspect that given the gusto with which Sean takes on the clueless lefty hordes here, that there is a question as to who actually is being persecuted - readers perhaps?
Stop reading and responding then
If you don't want a discussion, you don't need to build up a dispute with any voice that innevitably starts with just a slightly different gradation of analysis. I'm not un-self aware, I'm deliberate and exactly that freakin' obstinate about being "corrected". Your aim was to prove that the Daily News flatly "fosters ignorance". Thats a bold statement designed to ruffle feathers. Why the need to "correct" any attempt at a subtler shading on that bold proclamation? Feel free to "talk past" me to all the folks agree just how awful they are for publishing that story. Please.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
And an observation
about the number of times you've recommended me to keep silent. In addition to the above, here and here and there was one involving Frank DiCicco someplace else.
So a reminder: from an Asian female speaking from ONE perspective of some disenfrancished and not often heard from communities in the city: You can always disagree with me. But never tell me to shut.up.
By the way, the post says "fosters ignorance about Asians and immigration." It helps to have that last part included. As a former newspaper reporter, I kind of like the media.
I didn't suggest you keep silent
I suggested you stick on your point and ignore my input if you feel the need - in efffect to "silence" me by tuning me out. After all the point is to convince the wide internet of the Daily News' cultural prejudice, not me.
Your accusation here is a low blow and emotionally manipulative. I do not think it reflects well on your overall point but again perhaps you should write more about the Daily News and less about me since that was your mission here.
P.S. a suggestion to "take a deep breath", that a more subtle take on your complaint on the coverage might get a better response is not telling someone to shut up, no matter how you slice it. Your first link does not work. If you want to continue to decry Chris Brennan and the Daily News for their biased coverage, I think you should.
Also I want to appologize for being extra snappish here in partial response to D.E.II's need to focus on me here and elsewhere.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Thank you Helen
for critically highlighting this. My brain is too shot right now due to personal problems to add much, but this is a crucially important conversation for all of us to be having.