Fear and Loathing in Prime Time: Immigration Myths and Cable News

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

There are many problems facing the United States today: a faltering economy, a health-care crisis, and the continuing war in Iraq, to name a few. But viewers of some of the most prominent cable news programs are presented a different reality, one in which one issue stands above all others: illegal immigration.

Media Matters Action Network undertook this study in order to document the rhetoric surrounding immigration that is heard on cable news. When it comes to this issue, cable news overflows not just with vitriol, but also with a series of myths that feed viewers’ resentment and fears, seemingly geared toward creating anti-immigrant hysteria.

There are two types of myths we discuss in this report. The first type is the large and most common myths, about crime and undocumented immigrants, and the costs of illegal immigration in social services and taxes. These topics are complex, and there are sometimes legitimate points buried within the arguments immigration opponents make. The second type of myth is the urban legend: that there is a conspiracy to take back the Southwest United States for Mexico; that there is a secret plan to construct a “NAFTA Superhighway” running from Canada to Mexico; that the U.S. is well on its way to surrendering its sovereignty to a “North American Union” (NAU); that Mexican immigrants are infecting Americans with leprosy; and that undocumented immigrants are responsible for a wave of election fraud. These myths are discussed less often, but are notable for their sheer ludicrousness. The North American Union and NAFTA Superhighway are closely related, and indeed are often discussed in tandem (the building of the Superhighway being posited as a step on the road to the creation of the NAU), but since each is also often discussed alone, we examine these two myths separately.”*

• TLN en Español, Canada’s first nationally available 24-hour all-Spanish channel, has launched on Shaw Digital TV, in the Vancouver, Victoria, Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg markets.
• In Mexico, fears of a ‘lost generation’ – Violence among young soars as drug cartels recruit more minors
• A former Memphis police officer has been sentenced to more than two years in prison for stealing money from Hispanic motorists while on duty.
• The Prevention Research Center (PRC) in St. Louis is launching a multinational research project focused on preventing the leading causes of death in Hispanics in the United States and Latin America. – will conduct a four-year, $2.8 million effort to apply and adapt evidence-based strategies for preventing heart disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity in the United States, Mexico and Brazil
• 3 doctors and a nurse have been arrested for allegedly selling newborns after telling mothers their babies had died at a private hospital in Mexico City
• Pain Of Global Downturn Persists In Mexico
• U.S. Woes Cut Cash Flow From Mexican Migrants
• Quepasa and Mexico’s Tourism Board Announce Social Media Marketing Initiative
• Flooding after days of heavy rain along Mexico’s Gulf Coast has forced more than 44,000 people from their homes
• A news reporter who wrote about violent drug crimes has been strangled in the northern Mexican state of Durango – El Tiempo de Durango journalist Jose Bladimir Antuna
• Reeling Mexico hopes travel deals bring back the tourists
• Grasshoppers? Eew! But chocolate? Yum! – The youngsters get a taste of multicultural Mexico in Oaxaca.
• A little more than 1 million people work in the illegal drug trade including “around 200,000” women, according to the COCyP association of peasant organizations, based on police estimates.
• The leader of a Mexican farmworkers’ organization and 14 other people were killed in a mass shooting in the northern Mexico state of Sonora
• Mexico’s death museum lives up to morbid name in Aguascalientes, Mexico
• Rights activists in the northern Mexican border city of Tijuana have hung 5,100 small white crosses on the fence straddling the U.S. frontier to commemorate migrants who have died trying to cross.
• Mexico reaches record 100 extraditions to US
• Ten Thousand Dives Under the Sea – Spotlight on Scuba-Mex Dive Shop in Paamul, Q.R. Mexico
• Mexican Political Prisoner Gloria Arenas Released
• Mexican golfer Lorena Ochoa will tie the knot on Dec. 4 with airline executive Andres Conesa in a family ceremony in her native Guadalajara