A flood. A wave. A surge.
What’s happening at the U.S.-Mexico border is none of those things, but you wouldn’t know it from watching or reading some of the coverage in U.S. media. In recent weeks, the phrases “surge of migrants,” “migrant surge,” “the surge,” “surge at border” and other variations have all appeared in articles in The Wall Street Journal, NPR, CBS News, ABC News, NBC News, The Associated Press, The New York Times, CNN, Reuters, the Los Angeles Times and yes, even The Washington Post.
The descriptions are not just factually inaccurate and divorced from important context but also closely linked to images of war and natural disasters. Individuals fleeing violence and poverty have been reduced to an amorphous threat. Such dehumanization is dangerous and serves only to sensationalize the moment — an issue that has been addressed by organizations such as the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
One of the most egregious examples appeared in an article by The Associated Press on March 19 about the passing of two immigration bills by the House. In the middle of the article, reporter Alan Fram wrote: “Both bills largely hit a wall of opposition from Republicans insistent that any immigration legislation bolster security at the Mexican border, which waves of migrants have tried breaching in recent weeks. The GOP has accused congressional Democrats of ignoring that problem and [President] Biden of fueling it by erasing former President Donald Trump’s restrictive policies, even though that surge began while Trump was still in office.” Later in the story, Fram included the word “sneak” to report on what Republicans think migrants do at the border.
A humanitarian crisis that has gone on for years with no end in sight — and made worse in part by years of failed U.S. policy in Central America — is now being described by one of the most respected journalism organizations in the world as a furtive invasion, when anyone with a basic knowledge of the current situation knows that the vast majority of individuals fleeing violence and persecution surrender themselves to U.S. Border Patrol agents when they reach the border.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
The Associated Press is a far-reaching news agency. The work of its reporters is syndicated to newspapers and websites around the world. I edit a site, Latino Rebels, that focuses on news for the U.S. Latino community — and I actually pay a monthly fee for the privilege of publishing AP stories. The dehumanizing language led me to make some editorial decisions: words such as “surge” and its variations to describe individuals will never be published in any article we publish, even if it is written by the AP.
In response to Fram’s article and as a paying AP subscriber, I alerted the AP about our decision. On Tuesday, John Daniszewski, vice president and editor at large for standards at the AP, acknowledged during an interview that the organization had indeed made some mistakes during its recent coverage from the border, citing “an element of human error” and adding that words such as “surge” or “breaching” are terms AP journalists should not be using in this context. Better alternatives to those words include “entering,” “crossing the border” and “increase.”
“We don’t want to use military analogies, weather analogies or flood analogies,” Daniszewski said. “We would rather use neutral, unemotional language around this issue.”
Daniszewski told me that AP editors had been discussing word choices internally and he shared with me an internal memo on Wednesday with guidance about immigration coverage. “Because migration is such a hot-button issue, we also should try to avoid imagery conjuring war or natural disaster, which could portray migrants as a negative, harmful influence,” the memo says.
This latest memo echoes what happened in 2013, when the AP Stylebook, one of journalism’s most widely referenced guides for editorial standards, no longer approved the term “illegal immigrant” or “the use of ‘illegal’ to describe a person” and began to use “illegal” to “describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally.”
That decision raised the bar for the AP’s immigration coverage — it eliminated the use of a dehumanizing term. “No human being is illegal,” as advocates often like to remind us.
“We just feel that for such an emotional issue, we would try and find descriptions that are accurate but are not appealing to emotions or fear,” Daniszewski told me on Tuesday, adding that it is also important to cover this story from a wide array of perspectives, including ones that include migrant voices and the organizations that advocate for them on the ground.
The AP deserves recognition for moving in the right direction. I urge all reporters, TV producers and editors in newsrooms all over the United States to pay close attention to the words they use in their coverage. The people at the center of this current humanitarian crisis deserve better.
Julio Ricardo Varela is the editorial director of Futuro Media.