An upstate New York newspaper shows how to cover ICE abuses

I grew up in a small town in the Finger Lakes region of New York, reading the Syracuse Post-Standard, Auburn Citizen, and Ithaca Journal. They were small newspapers and most of their coverage understandably focused on local news that interested me less than national affairs, so I was eager to leave them behind. Whenever I could get my hands on the New York Times or Washington Post, I savored the opportunity, and longed for a day when they would be my regular newspapers. It didn’t take long after I moved to Washington, DC for college that I began to be disillusioned with the Post and the Times, and by early in my career in politics I viewed both as actively harmful to America and democracy. But I still loved the Post and the Times for what they could be, and for what I thought they should be. And, to be fair, for what they often are: As massively-resourced and prestigious news companies they attract talented journalists and produce essential journalism, alongside the corrosive garbage that draws most of my attention. That love and belief in their potential, in the role they could play in a functioning democracy, has animated much of my criticism of their actual output.

Last week a remarkable article in the Syracuse Post-Standard brought me full-circle. It’s the kind of journalism so many people are frustrated big news companies like the New York Times fail to consistently deliver: A clear, deeply-reported article that centers the harm an abusive and out-of-control government does to real people, and that states in simple, unequivocal words that the regime is violating the rights of the people it harasses.

Under the headline “Videos show questionable tactics Oswego sheriff’s deputies used to aid Trump’s migrant hunt,” reporter Michelle Breidenbach writes:

Hours of newly released body camera videos show the tactics Oswego County sheriff’s deputies used to help federal immigration agents carry out President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement last year.

The videos show sheriff’s deputies stopping Hispanic drivers on country roads for accusations like wide turns or failing to signal a turn early enough – minor traffic violations they would find difficult to prove.

Then, deputies handed drivers and their passengers over to U.S. Border Patrol agents who were on a new, quota-driven mission to collect and deport non-citizens. [Emphasis added]

Just two sentences into her article, Breidenbach did something notable. Typical practice is for journalists to grant law enforcement the presumption of legitimacy: Their statements taken as truth, their intent assumed to be good and their actions justified. Breidenbach didn’t do that. Notice the use of the word “accusations” where another reporter might use “actions.” Breidenbach doesn’t assume the wide turns or late signals actually happened; she instead notes they are “accusations” made by sheriff’s deputies — and that the accusations would be difficult to prove. That’s a subtle difference, but an important one. To some, it may read like Breidenbach is editorializing, but that’s because pro-police bias is so common in journalism many readers mistake it for objectivity. In fact, Breidenbach’s wording is the objective version: She isn’t making assumptions about what happened, she’s simply reporting what she knows (that sheriff’s deputies say the people they stopped made wide turns) and while avoiding phrasing that would suggest something she doesn’t know (that the people did in fact make wide turns.)

The sentence that really caught my attention came soon after:

Sometimes, federal agents rode in the sheriff deputies’ cars. Sometimes they were just moments away. Other times, sheriff’s deputies called agents and stalled while they drove to the scene.

That is a violation of civil rights available to everyone in the United States, regardless of citizenship, according to a 2018 case won by the New York Civil Liberties Union. [Emphasis added]

That’s a clear, direct statement that government agents are violating the civil rights of upstate New York residents. The Post-Standard doesn’t water it down with a hedge like “might be” or undermine the plain truth of the statement with “critics say” attribution. It just comes right out and says it: “That is a violation of civil rights.”

Here’s a passage about a sheriff’s deputy’s conduct after stopping a driver for, according to the deputy, having snow on his license plate:

The deputy took the driver’s phone back to his patrol car and called the Border Patrol. The closest Border Patrol agent was 35 minutes away, they said.

So, the deputy waited.

…

“You got some customers for us?” Border Patrol agents asked the deputy when they arrived.

Holding people for immigration agents beyond the usual time it takes to write a ticket is a violation of state law, according to the 2018 ruling. [Emphasis added]

Again: No “critics say” or “might be” hedges, just a clear statement that the deputy’s actions violated state law.

Through it all, Breidenbach centers the human cost of these rights violations:

Telmo Labato, of Mexico, was riding in the backseat of a van to his job at an apple packing plant when sheriff’s deputies and Border Patrol agents stopped the driver.

Border Patrol agents detained Labato and four others. Labato was raising his son, Perdon, alone in Fulton. The teen is a U.S. citizen.

Teachers gathered around Perdon at school that day to tell him that his father had been detained.

“He was left alone there,” Labato told Syracuse.com earlier this month in an interview from Mexico. “Can you imagine the emotional damage?”

Direct, clear journalism like this Syracuse Post-Standard article does sometimes get published by big national news companies. But it’s so much the exception that it’s striking when we encounter it. It should be the norm. “That is a violation of civil rights available to everyone in the United States, regardless of citizenship, according to a 2018 case won by the New York Civil Liberties Union” is not a difficult to sentence to write; it just requires understand that journalism is supposed to serve the public, not the powerful interests who prefer the truth be obscured. We should expect that kind of clarity from the journalists we rely on – and make our subscription decisions accordingly.

It’s been decades since I’ve read the Post-Standard regularly, so I can’t claim detailed knowledge of the paper’s output, but Breidenbach’s article does not seem to be an anomaly. From June 24 to June 26 the Post-Standard published five articles about the Trump administration harassing and threatening people for posting political commentary it dislikes.

“Federal agents track down Syracuse woman, demand she remove Instagram post about ICE”

“Civil rights experts: ICE warning to Syracuse woman was scare tactic against citizen critic”

“Mannion: Why did ICE threaten Syracuse woman about her social media post?”

“Homeland Security defends its warning visit to Syracuse woman over social media post”

“Another ICE threat visit: How did agents track down this critic on his vacation?”

That’s what it looks like when a news company takes seriously the threats the authoritarian MAGA movement poses to American freedom and behaves accordingly. By contrast, the nation’s elite media spent years pretending the greatest threat to free speech in America came in the form of Ivy League students protesting guest speakers with views they found abhorrent.

Again and again, Breidenbach’s Syracuse.com/Post-Standard articles focus on the abuses of a lawless federal government and the harm it causes central New Yorkers and their communities:

This is what journalism is supposed to do. This is the kind of journalism that deserves our support. This is the kind of journalism I hoped to find when I left the Syracuse Post-Standard behind for the Washington Post.

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