An Open Letter to Chicago Tribune Columnist Clarence Page

Dear Mr. Page:

In your March 4 column “Breitbart’s culture war ends," you ask that the “new age journalists” should respect “old-school media values like accuracy and accountability . . . Our first mission, whether in old or new media, is to help clear up the public’s confusion, not add to it.”

These are inspiring - but empty - words because the “old school” isn’t practicing what it preaches when reporting on the nation’s immigration crisis, a problem  created in large part by a mainstream media that have failed to abide by their own code of ethics and standards.

I wish I had a dollar for the thousands upon thousands of words and column inches that have given credibility to illegal aliens and their advocates while failing to hold accountable a federal government that has deliberately sought ways to circumvent immigration laws created primarily to protect American workers.

Rarely a day goes by when at least a handful of the nation’s newspapers do not crank out boilerplate sob stories about illegals and their struggles to “search for a better life,” including those about “Dreamers” who no longer “live in the shadows” but now arrogantly proclaim to be “undocumented and unafraid” while sitting in the middle of intersection blocking traffic.

When was the last time the Tribune gave the same amount of ink to American high-tech workers who have been pushed out of their jobs by foreigners and those native-born construction workers who were replaced by illegal workers from Mexico?

You and I are old enough to remember when the media went out of their way to expose the injustices done to black Americans and how reporters and their editors fell over themselves covering a civil rights movement that was totally genuine.  There was plenty of anger then, but where is the anger today when illegal alien advocates mock that crusade by declaring that rights for the “undocumented” is the “civil rights struggle of the 21^st century"?  Where were the black voices condemning those illegal aliens who climbed aboard buses several years ago and called themselves “Freedom Riders”?

Your “old-school” colleagues have allowed these people to go unchallenged when they label as racist, nativist or xenophobic those who demand enforcement of our immigration laws.  These same journalists, even after being provided the facts, continue to write distortions, half-truths and blatant falsehoods like the one about how the federal E-Verify workplace verification program can lead to “discrimination” against certain racial and ethnic groups.  How can E-Verify do this when the program is used only after a person is hired?  

But of far greater significance is the lack of anger among the nation’s editorial writers at our political leaders who are permitting 7 million illegal aliens to keep their non-farming jobs while 20 million Americans are unable to find full-time employment.  Why isn’t anybody in the media demanding to know why the man who calls himself president, the man who says jobs for Americans are a “top priority,” has given his blessing to the bastardization of our immigration laws? 

It bears repeating, Mr. Page, that before  you start advising these "citizen journalists" about the importance of accuracy, accountability and not creating confusion about a public policy issue that affects every aspect of our daily lives,  you and your colleagues desperately need to get your own house in order.