The National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the nation’s largest organization of Latino journalists, issued a scathing statement Tuesday condemning a two-part story produced for “The Daily,” the podcast produced by the New York Times.
The story, “Dispatches from the Border,” was reported by Annie Brown, a producer for “The Daily;” Azam Ahmed, the New York Times bureau chief for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean; and Meridith Kohut, a photojournalist who covers Latin America.
The NAHJ’s principal objection is to the opening segment in which the reporters swam from the American side to the Mexican side of the border and back at a narrow point in the Rio Grande, in what the NAHJ and other critics have called a “manufactured border crossing.”
“The story … carries an uneasy amount of privilege conveying the long and laborious journey of immigrants to the border as a short 30-second swim,” the NAHJ statement reads in part. “Throughout the podcast, the report takes a joking and apathetic tone. In an ignorant attempt to understand border crossings, the clip excludes immigrant voices and any further context about the journey for those immigrants before and after crossing the river.”
Really hard to listen to @nytimes The Daily today where @azamsahmed and Daily producer Annie Brown cross the Río Grande from Texas to Mexico and then swim back. This type of reporting serves no purpose on this topic. Extremely disappointed that NYTimes would allow for this.
— Latino Rebels (@latinorebels) January 14, 2019
The website Latino Rebels posted its own response, reading in part, “We will be really clear on this one: crossing the border is not a reporting game. Why didn’t ‘The Daily’ use its array of resources to actually lead and feature REAL stories from the border? Why start with their own people? What message was it trying to send its listeners?”
Other portions of the podcast do feature conversations with asylum seekers as well as those who have crossed or attempted to cross without documents. But in another segment, the reporters joke about recently-deported men all getting the same haircut at a migrant service center in a manner some critics found distasteful.
“Especially within the current political climate and in midst of a government shutdown, NAHJ applauds border coverage done with conscious integrity and understanding,” the NAHJ statement concludes.
Neither Barbaro, Ahmed nor Brown responded to messages sent via Twitter Tuesday night.
