Media as chumps
Last week, a report came out showing that ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) was not deporting the most serious criminal immigrants. Instead, ICE has been taking only the easiest “targets of opportunity.”What's an agency with bad press to do? Go to the rubes in the hinterlands to spin some good news, of course.
It's too easy.
ICE sent out some press releases and held a "media availability" yesterday at at the Utah County Jail to give local reporters "a rare glimpse" of its relentless efforts to track down criminal immigrants and deport them. In the parlance of reporters, it was a classic "media cluster f#%&."
Apparently, none of the suckers asked about the recent "targets-of-opportunity" report. Instead ICE got sweet headlines like this:
Crimes sending illegals home (Deseret News).Like the man says, you can't buy publicity like that. And ICE got it all free. A public information officer somewhere has a bonus coming.
ICE officials focusing on immigrants who've been arrested (KSL).
ICE Agents Show Interviews of Suspected Illegals (KUTV 2News).
3 Comments:
This is similar to the massive drug seizures trumpeted by UHP. What wasn't so widely publicized was how many warrantless searches of motorists, often minorities, found nothing. My guess, 90%.
Cops of all sorts usually look for the easiest target, the arrest with the least paperwork, and an opportunity to return to the doughnut shop.
Anyone who knew Warchol back when he was a "reporter" knows that he was the laziest guy in the newsroom, who never met a press release he didn't like because it meant he didn't have to get off of his spotted behind...so this from him is simply priceless
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