Like vampires, much of the media fails to reflect

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project

Like vampires, many in the media fail to reflect.

Somehow or another I ended up on the mailing list for the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). I guess I should take it as a compliment. Thing is, I’m not a pro. This is more avocation than vocation.

I got an email recently outlining a program the group intends to undertake to try and improve trust in the media. It’s a collaboration between the Colorado SPJ, the Colorado Broadcasters Association, and the Colorado Press Association which they’re calling their “Journalism Awareness Curriculum”.

I’ll let them explain it in their own words by quoting from the email.

“The goal is to train Colorado journalists to deliver presentations to non-journalists about what we do and how we operate. Essentially, we hope to increase trust and understanding of the news media by enabling journalists to speak to groups in their community — professional associations, schools, faith communities, elected officials and webinar audiences — about what ethical journalism looks like.”

A worthy goal. I think them taking their case to the public is a smart idea.

Thing is, I am not sure that it will increase trust in the media, at least not in any giant way. Understanding yes, trust I’m not so sure.

The reason I say that is that, while people may not be aware of the media’s process, they have the end product! “And by their fruit shall ye know them.”

I’m not so sure that the media telling us about ethical journalism is going to fix what people see every day in what they produce. What they note doesn’t get covered. Who they see the media uses as a source, who they don’t. Who they see the media talking to, and who they don’t, etc.

To flesh this out a little more, I thought a look at the outlines of the group’s proposed curriculum would be instructive. I took a screenshot of my email and attached it as screenshot 1.

The email asked for feedback on their proposed curriculum, so I took the survey, and I will share with you the same thoughts I gave the SPJ.

This list carries the flavor of a group that assumes it has no role whatsoever in the lack of trust with the public. Unless and until that elephant sitting squarely in the middle of the room is addressed, I don’t think their efforts will be successful.

I’m not recommending a public struggle session**, but I am saying (based on years of teaching and based on repairing lots of relationships with students that were starting to sour) that you cannot rebuild trust talking about every factor except the ones you own.

If I hear of an event, I’ll let you know. If some sort of written materials are made, I’ll share. If you hear of an event near you (or better yet, attend one) let me know your impressions.

If the talks/curriculum do actually include some frank and honest dialog about the media’s role, I’d love to share and show you how wrong I was (and how decent they were to take honest but critical feedback).

**See the link below if a reference on this term is needed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session

Related:

An earlier newsletter with similar themes based off a discussion between Jon Caldara and the Denver Post’s Jon Murray.

As above, notable for any lack of reflection on the media’s own choices.

https://open.substack.com/pub/coloradoaccountabilityproject/p/correcting-an-earlier-state-law-on?r=15ij6n&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

---

The important context Denver Post’s Tabachnik left out

I’ve debated and shelved this post a few times. More than once, I’ve considered dropping it, but in the end felt like setting the record straight, that telling you what the Post’s Tabchnik didn’t or wouldn’t, was too important to drop.

His article, headlined “Wage Theft, Abuse, and Control: How Colorado Farms Take Advantage of Migrant Workers” is linked first below. It was part of a series the Post ran in 2024 cataloging abuses of agricultural workers, specifically those here on H-2A Visa programs.

The article, and the series, are not pure propaganda, though you can see Tabachnik’s ideological bent show through. To his credit–amid the claims of abuse, the horror stories, the ample space given to advocates and their views–Tabachnik gives those against whom allegations the space to offer their side of the story (or notes attempts to contact them) and he offers industry groups a chance to weigh in. It’s also to his credit that he includes positive stories of H-2A Visa holders in the States.

There are at least a couple things Tabchnik does not tell you about this story that are important to know.

Let’s put aside one of my usual criticisms–the flawed nature of the reports and how those flaws are not included in the reporting**–and focus things which help, I believe, properly categorize the problem and also attempts at the solution.

The first is the simplest: numbers. There is no shortage of bad stories and allegations, but there is a shortage of statistics. Stories of people being mistreated are compelling. They catch the eye and sell the reporters narrative. They drive clicks on webpages.

Stories on their own, however, can mislead. If I found 10 bad stories from H-2A Visa holders and shared them, you would be inclined to think the program was awful. If I told you that those 10 stories came from 10 growers out of a list of 100, your opinion of the program would be moderated from before. This would be all the more so if a few of those bad outcomes were the result of an error later corrected. This would be all the more so if you put those numbers Tabachnik tosses out from the Post’s investigation in the larger context of employment in this state.

A couple of non-contiguous quotes illustrate:

“Nearly one in 10 Colorado employers who have used the H-2A program since 2015 have stolen wages or illegally charged their workers outside the bounds of the visa, a Post analysis of federal labor data found.”

“One in six Colorado farmers who brought H-2A workers to the state since 2015, have broken labor laws, the Post found, the majority of which concern wage theft and illegal cost-shifting onto workers.”

This paints a pretty dire picture for the H-2A visa situation. What I want to share with you below is not so much a way of trying to minimize what can be a bad situation, as a way to help you see how Ag fits into the larger picture of Colorado employment.

In the article below Tabachnik references a report on wage theft authored by the left/progressive Colorado Fiscal Institute. I link to that report third below for convenience. Under the heading of “More susceptible to wage theft”, Tabachnik offers top line statistics, but, curiously, leaves out any comparison across industry.

A graph showing the comparison across industries in Colorado (though not necessarily specific to H-2A visa workers is right there on page 2. I attached it as screenshot 2.

The graph is pretty busy, so let me help orient you. The clear bars represent the share of total workers in that industry in Colorado. The grey bars represent the share of total back pay due in that industry. The blue bars represent the share of total cases in that industry.

I highlighted a few for your consideration. Starting at the bottom with the Ag, Forestry, Fishing, and Hunting industry, you can clearly see that this is not a big statewide employer, but has a proportionately large amount of wage theft cases (compared to the share of employment).

This sector is pales in comparison to construction, accommodations and food services, retail trade, etc. Those may be a larger share of the state’s economic activity, but even in a relative sense they outpace the cases of wage theft, and wages stolen (this latter perhaps as much a remark on Ag wages as on wage theft).

I’m not any more sure of Fiscal Institute’s method here, but the main point was to note that wage theft seems to be a problem across various industries, it seems to happen to people of all races and citizenship-classes, and it is not an outsized problem for Ag.

It also should be noted that claims made about a group with relatively few members are shakier to make when compared with larger groups. If the number of workers in Ag is relatively small compared with, say, the restaurant industry, it’s more reliable to make claims about patterns in the restaurant industry compared with Ag.

The second (and final) bit I wanted to touch on relates to two links out of Tabachnik’s article. I found those reports and link to them fourth and fifth below. The fourth link is to a US Department of Justice report on their sting against those exploiting H-2A Visa holders in the South, Operation Blooming Onion. The fifth is a Southern Poverty Law Center report on the program titled “Close to Slavery”.

It was too long to give as a quote, so I took the relevant bit of Tabachnik’s article and collected it as a picture. This is screenshot 3 attached.

Reading through the quote, you might easily get the sense that, as Tabachnink writes, “Farmworker attorneys and industry experts say the problem is not limited to individual employers [as you get repeated mention of by Tabachnik]. It’s the entire system.”

That is, that the H-2A system is rotten down to the core, that farmers and employers here in the States are the problem.

Missing, however, if you go through and actually read the reports that Tabachnik pulls from is any notion that a large part of the problem has nothing to do with the US. The problem happens in the countries of origin for these workers.

Much of the horrible exploitation and deceit happens in their home countries with the recruiters and criminals there.

One wonders why Tabachnik failed to make more mention of this.

READ THE FULL COMMENTARY AT COLORADO ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT

Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.