Media Corrections Come Too Late for Publicly Shamed Border Patrol Agents

Welcome back to “Forgotten Fact-Checks,” a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we return to the demonstrably false “whip” story, recap the ghoulish coverage of Gabby Petito’s death, and take aim at more media misses.

Whiplash

A week ago, there was already quite a bit of evidence to suggest that mounted Border Patrol agents were not in fact “whipping” Haitian migrants attempting to illegally cross into the United States. 

There was never any photographic or video proof of such a thing having occurred, and while President Biden, his surrogates, and other top Democrats poured gasoline on the controversy, his own Homeland Security secretary responded to the erroneous reports by noting that long reins are used by mounted agents to help keep control of their horses. 

Since then, it has become even more clear that the original reports of violence — amplified by activists — were not credible. First, the photographer who took supposedly incriminating pictures of the scene at the border explained that he’d “never seen them [Border Patrol agents] whip anyone,” and justified the seemingly aggressive posture of some agents by noting that “some of the Haitian men started running, trying to go around the horses.”

Moreover, experts such as George Syer, a retired horse patrol coordinator for the Rio Grande Valley in the Border Patrol, have explained that the swinging of the horse’s reins is a training technique to get the animal to go where its rider needs it to go. 

“If you need to apply additional pressure to that horse in order to make him go, you can spin the two-feet tail of your rein, and the horse is gonna go away from the sound of that spinning rein and also the visual of it, because he can see it on the one eye that you’re spinning, that same side. Remember, a horse’s eyes are on the sides of its head,” Syer told National Review. 

Still, the president has not recanted, much less apologized for, his promise that agents seen spinning their reins would “pay.” And publications such as Axios were still pushing the narrative as late as Sunday, reporting that Texas governor Greg Abbott was offering jobs to the “Border Patrol agents who whipped at migrants,” before deleting the original tweet promoting the story. 

Meanwhile, the New York Times added a correction to its initial coverage of the incident.

“An earlier version . . . overstated what is known about the behavior of some Border Patrol agents on horseback. While the agents waved their reins while pushing migrants back into the Rio Grande, The Times has not seen conclusive evidence that migrants were struck with the reins,” the correction reads.

Unfortunately, the reckoning comes too late for the Border Patrol agents who have been publicly shamed by the commander in chief and much of his party, and placed on desk duty.

Playing Politics with Missing Persons

The disappearance of 22-year-old Gabby Petito, and subsequent discovery of her remains, has prompted not only a search for her suspect fiance, but an endless bit of introspection from the media about its own coverage of Petito’s tragic plight.

It is understandable that her disappearance attracted as much attention as it did. Petito boasted a sizable social-media following, to which she was broadcasting the highlights of the cross-country trip on which she disappeared. Add that to the intrigue created by the fact that the aforementioned fiance is the primary suspect and appears to be on the run from authorities, and you have a simple enough explanation for the interest in the story.

And yet, instead of either covering the Petito story from a respectful distance or in tandem with other missing-persons cases, many outlets have chosen to both blanket the airwaves with speculation about Petito while also decrying the inequities in coverage allotted to minorities who have gone missing. 

Paul Farhi lamented that “it’s not just Missing White Women that gains the news media’s and public’s attention. It’s a certain kind of missing white women—young, attractive, thin, often blonde.” 

CNN went so far as to blast out a push notification about the disparity, reporting that “Families of missing Black and brown people say missing White women get more attention” and bring the discredited faux historian and racial arsonist Nikole Hannah-Jones onto its airwaves to discuss “missing white woman syndrome.”

At the same time as it has used Petito’s death and the pain of her family and friends to make a political point about how the attention is not justified, CNN has capitalized on the situation for views and clicks, running countless stories about her death and the search for her killer.

Headline Fail of the Week

We award this week’s dishonor to Scientific American for its article, “Why the Term ‘JEDI’ Is Problematic for Describing Programs That Promote Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.” In the piece, which set social media ablaze last week, the five co-authors explain that “JEDI,” which stands for “justice, equity, diversity and inclusion,” has become a shorthand for branding academic committees and labeling STEM initiatives focused on social-justice issues.

However, the authors argue that the term invokes “the superheroic protagonists of the science fiction Star Wars franchise, the ‘Jedi.’” They explain that while “to be a member of the Jedi is seemingly to be a paragon of goodness” within the series, the Jedi are “inappropriate mascots for social justice,” arguing that Star Wars displays “Orientalist” tropes, conflates alienness with nonwhiteness, affirms sexism, and reinforces ableism, among other offenses.

As NR’s Jack Butler writes, “This is the kind of content that should have never escaped the weed-soaked dorm rooms of gender-studies majors, much less have made it into what is theoretically supposed to be a respected scientific periodical.”

Media Misses

• Jeremy Barr, a media reporter for the Washington Post, complains that “many Fox News personalities have rightly criticized Chris Cuomo for interviewing his brother. Here is Steve Doocy interviewing his own son this morning.” If Barr doesn’t already see the difference between a journalist lobbing softballs at the governor of the fourth-most populous state in the country and two media personalities engaging on a panel together, I’m not sure there’s any way to help him.

• Outgoing New York Post opinion editor Sohrab Ahmari asserts that former Florida governor Jeb Bush, at 68 years old, is “flabby in a repulsive way.” The barb is beneath the dignity of a schoolyard bully, much less a self-styled Catholic intellectual. 

• PBS NewsHour’s Yamiche Alcindor helped bait President Biden into his slanderous statements about Border Patrol agents trying to do their jobs, asking White House press secretary Jen Psaki of the president: “Why is he not using that bully pulpit to speak out forcefully himself on the treatment of Haitians?”

• The New York Times Twitter account would have followers believe that gerrymandering is a concept that is unique to Republicans. In a tweet promoting an episode of its popular podcast The Daily, the paper writes that New York Democrats who are “facing high stakes in the next midterms” are considering the use of gerrymandering, which it called a “tactic long used by the Republican Party.”