May, 28 2009, 05:53pm EDT
Hearing From Sheriff Arpaio, Not Those He Targets
NEW YORK, New York
With immigration reform once
again on the national agenda, cable news audiences can expect to hear more from
Joe Arpaio--the Arizona sheriff who has recently come
under federal investigation for using racial profiling in raids targeting
undocumented immigrants. Yet as a new report published by the national media
watch group FAIR shows, if the past year of coverage is any indication, they
will be hard pressed to find the perspectives of the people targeted by the
controversial sheriff.
The new report, "Arpaio vs. Immigrants: Those most affected left out of
debate," found that Arpaio had appeared on 21 cable news programs about
immigration over the past year, while those targeted by his policies appeared
in only two of those stories. The report found that CNN offered Arpaio a
platform far more often than any other cable outlet, accounting for 17 of his
21 appearances.
The report, which is published in the June issue of FAIR's magazine Extra! and
written by Aura Bogado, analyzed all cable news stories that mentioned Arpaio
in the Nexis database between May 1, 2008 and April
26, 2009.
The report is available online at:
https://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3790
FAIR, the national media watch group, has been offering well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986. We work to invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity in the press and by scrutinizing media practices that marginalize public interest, minority and dissenting viewpoints.
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