For decades Mexico has been criticized in the U.S. media for failing to bring drug traffickers to justice. The story has always been that the Mexican government either ignored or secretly protected the thriving drug trade in the region.
But lately, President Felipe Calderón has broken with his predecessor’s 
policy of benign neglect. The result has been a violent power struggle between the government and drug cartels.
Rather than a sign of Mexico’s collapse, this conflict should be regarded as a serious effort to fight back, according to this editorial in the Wall Street Journal.
Overly Cautious Advice. It comes as somewhat as a surprise then that Fox News—the U.S. media source who you’d think would most fully support this anti-drug endeavor—is warning Americans to stay away from Mexico even though the violence has been largely contained to one region.
“I would not allow my children to go to Mexico on spring break, particularly when you have Florida and the Caribbean and other alternatives,” Bill O’Reilly said this week on his show the O’Reilly Factor.
Even though his guest, Pauline Frommer, pointed out that “Mexico is a very big country and 50 percent of the violence is in the state of Chihuahua in northern Mexico,” O’Reilly could not be persuaded.
Avoid New York City Because of Crime in Detroit? Not even when Pauline managed to ask O’Reilly between shouts if he would “tell someone not to go to New York City because there are murders in Detroit.”
But O’Reilly’s unfair assessment of the situation is just one aspect of Fox’s sensational coverage of the crisis in Mexico. The blog Crooks and Liars asks “Why is Fox News trying to scare young tourists away from Mexico?” It then lists just some of the following stories that Fox has run in the past few weeks:
- Students Warned About Spring Break Travel to Mexico,
- U.S. State Department Issues Travel Alert for Mexico,
- Colleges warn students about Mexico travel,
- College Students’ Spring Break Hopes Dashed by Mexico Drug Violence,
- U.S. Says Threat of Mexican Drug Cartels Approaching ‘Crisis Proportions’,
- If Violence Escalates in Mexico, Texas Officials Plan to Be Ready
- Will Mexico Bring Down the U.S.?,
- What Happens to the U.S. if Mexico Collapses?, and
- Mexican Drug Cartels Armed to the Hilt, Threatening National Security
“In this time of crisis, we need to help our southern neighbor, not make things worse,” a recent editorial in the Latin Business Chronical says. The editorial correctly concludes that:
Mexico is currently suffering from a unique combination of problems ranging from the drug war to reduced exports to the United States and declining remittances from workers here. The last thing the country needs is a boycott of popular tourist destinations.
on Mar 5th, 2009 at 10:10 pm
There’s so many just “wrong” elements to this article. What was Pauline Frommer doing on Fox, for one. And what is Bill O’Reilly doing dishing travel info.
Hopefully no one was watching
on Mar 6th, 2009 at 3:45 am
I agree Beth. If you watch the segment on O’Reilly on the Crooks and Liars blog, you can really see that trying to offer an opposing view on his show is a pointless exercise. During much of their conversation, O’Reilly was streaming video of the drug battles taking place on the border.
on Mar 6th, 2009 at 8:00 am
It is maddening to read things like this, especially when there is no such coverage of the type of gang wars that go in the ghettos of L.A, New York, Detroit, or D.C., or the incredible murder rates in the states (exorbitant compared to Europe and other “first world” countries.) Did the State Department issue warnings about travel to the U.S after repeated school shootings over the years? I don’t think so.
I met a tourist the other day on the streets of Oaxaca who I think got it right. He stopped to pet my dog and we got to talking about the State Department warnings. He said, “if I listened to the State Department I’d be too petrified to ever leave America. I’ve traveled around plenty of places they’d tell you never to go and met wonderful people. And they never say anything about what happens in certain neighborhoods of U.S cities and what could happen to a tourist who wandered into the wrong area there.”
Right on, I thought. The U.S has a knack for pompous hypocrisy.