Nobody Wins When Media Take Sides

Something just didn’t make sense. I can’t remember when I first heard about the case involving the Border Patrol agents from Texas serving time for shooting a drug smuggler. It was probably after a group of Republican congressmen, among them Ted Poe and John Culberson from Houston, started crying out for something to be done to correct the injustice. They were calling the two agents heroes and arguing that it was an outrage for them to be in prison while the drug smuggler walked free.

However, soon after first hearing about it, I learned which U.S. Attorney’s office was responsible for prosecuting the agents, and that made everything a lot more confusing. I’ve known Johnny Sutton since my days in the late ’80s as a Houston radio reporter. Back then, Sutton was a hard charging Harris County assistant district attorney, and while I didn’t know him well, I was familiar with his reputation for being a straight shooter and a by-the-book kinda guy. He certainly had never impressed me as the type who would find any joy whatsoever in prosecuting a law enforcement officer.

But apparently none of that matters when you’re an “advocacy journalist.” That’s how CNN’s Lou Dobbs described himself to Texas Monthly’s Pamela Colloff who, in this month’s edition, does a masterful job of showing what can happen when the media loses all regard for the truth. What Colloff’s reporting makes quite clear is that the two much heralded Border Patrol agents are the furthest thing from heroes. They’re two guys who, after screwing up the arrest of an unarmed drug smuggler, shot at him 15 times, hit him once, failed to report the shooting and did their best to cover it up. Once found out, they then refused plea bargains that would have given them short sentences. They instead rolled the dice, went to trial, were found guilty by a jury of their peers and then, according to federal guidelines, received sentences of 11 and 12 years.

Dobbs did more than 100 broadcasts about the case and, according to Colloff, never bothered to mention that the agents failed to report the shooting and tampered with evidence or that the drug smuggler had attempted to surrender. Instead, wanting to fan the illegal immigration flames, he painted a picture of a gross miscarriage of justice and, joined by right wing radio hosts and bloggers, demonized Johnny Sutton.

The U.S. Attorney began receiving loads of hate mail and, at rallies was called a traitor, a coward and corrupt, among other things.

In talking about what happened, Sutton remains quite calm and collected. Now that the real story is beginning to get out, he chooses not to criticize harshly those who have worked so hard to destroy his reputation. He was surprised by how the story escalated beginning last year, but he really shouldn’t have been. As a rule, federal prosecutors don’t appear on cable news programs and radio talk shows to engage in debate about pending cases. As a result, for months, only one side of the story was getting out.

That might have been okay if that one side had been truthful but, in this day and age, there’s no such guarantee and, as Johnny Sutton learned the hard way, the consequences can be most serious and most painful.

(Originally published by Examiner Newspaper Group)