South L.A. teacher Jose Lara versus Fox News
Emily Henry | 6-17-2010 | Comments |
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Jose Lara is a contributor to the South Los Angeles Report through his video blog series, which is available on YouTube.It began with an article posted on the Fox News website — With Revolutionaries 'Looking On,' Teachers Take Kids on a Protest Trip to Arizona — implying that Jose Lara had led students on a "field trip" to Arizona to protest the SB 1070 law. Lara was not directly quoted in the article, but both his Facebook and YouTube accounts were used as sources:
"Lara posted on his Facebook wall a link to an article titled, "LAUSD board condemns Arizona Immigration law," along with the comment, "I know what I am teaching tomorrow in class!!!!"
Following the piece, the South Los Angeles Report was emailed by producers with the Bill O'Reilly show seeking Lara's contact information. With his permission, it was passed on, and Lara was asked to appear on Thursday's O'Reilly show. The show aired at 8pm PST. But before it could even hit screens on the west coast, Fox watchers began responding. One called him an "idiot" adding that it's "no wonder California has some of the worst schools in the nation" and another emailed the South LA Report directly to say that "homeland security should put [Lara] on the terrorist list."
Before the show, Lara composed a response to the original Fox news article and the questions it raised for him about "fair and balanced" journalism:
Fox News does it again
By Jose Lara
In a recent article, Fox took another swing at immigrant rights activists, teachers, and our public school system by misreporting and misleading the public. So much for being “fair and balanced.”
According to Fox, three teachers took a Los Angeles School District sponsored field trip to Arizona to protest the new law, SB 1070. However, nothing can be further from the truth. Instead of fact checking and conducting authentic journalism, Fox decided to look to YouTube and Facebook for their "fair and balanced" news report, and without establishing actual contact with the subjects of the story, published it anyway.
Here is the truth: Firstly, teachers did not take any students on a field trip. The Los Angeles Unified School District would not have approved of such a trip. Secondly, the high school student quoted in the Fox article went on the Arizona protest trip with her mother, who is also a teacher. All of Fox’s sources appear to come from Facebook, YouTube and online discussion groups.
I have a few questions for Fox:
Is a journalist who gets all their information from YouTube and Facebook without fact checking really a journalist at all?
Shouldn't Fox retract this story if they know it to be false?
Who benefits from stories like this?
Perhaps Fox News does not intend to produce authentic journalism, but yellow journalism instead. That is to say that Fox uses eye-catching headlines and over-sensationalized stories with little to no authentic research in order to gain ratings.
And, unfortunately, it is a successful method of attracting eyeballs. It also increases hate and division among people. The Fox News message board is filled with hateful rants - comments such as “Deport them all now”, “Bring it on beano”, and “America is being invaded!!!!” Fox fuels the fire and attempts to pass off opinion pieces as authentic journalism.
What do you think about the Fox article on Lara? What was your response to the O'Reilly show? Join the conversation below.
Tags: arizona bill o'reilly fox fox news immigration jose lara journalism sb 1070
