Good newspaper columnists fix their mistakes.
Mistakes hurt vulnerable people, including children. When a newspaper columnist promises a reader to correct a mistake in the next day’s paper, the columnist corrects the mistake in the next day’s paper.
Scranton Times-Tribune columnist Chris Kelly made a mistake in his Feb. 2 column. Kelly’s words hurt people, including children. After I challenged his inaccuracy and provided him with detailed facts to the contrary Kelly promised to fix his error the next day.
Instead, Kelly broke his promise.
When I declined to help him clean up his mess the way any good journalist would want to do, Kelly made matters worse.
My communication with Kelly began when I read Kelly’s column and he wrote, “Undocumented immigrants are, by definition, illegal immigrants. Calling them ‘undocumented’ creates a distinction without a difference.”
Undocumented immigrants are not “illegal” immigrants. Even the Poynter Institute’s journalism fact-checker site agrees that “Living in the U.S. without documentation is a civil violation, not a crime.”
In an “issue brief” titled “Criminalizing Undocumented Immigrants,” the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants’ Rights Project asks, “Is the fact of being present in the United States in violation of the immigration laws a crime?”
“No,” says the ACLU. “The act of being present in the United States in violation of the immigration laws is not, standing alone, a crime. While federal immigration law does criminalize some actions that may be related to undocumented presence in the United States, undocumented presence alone is not a violation of federal criminal law.”
A large number of undocumented people in the United States, including those who overstay their visa, actually enter the country with authorization and remain when their authorization expires. The ACLU brief goes on to explain legal rights all undocumented people possess in the United States.
Kelly can call people anything he likes. As long as he abides by the law he is free to disparage and diminish the hopes of men, women and children who deserve better. Some conservative media commentators do just that. Fancying himself a liberal you would expect Kelly to carry himself above the right-wing crowd.
Most reliable journalists agree Kelly’s characterization is incorrect. Portraying decent people as illegal demonizes them. By spreading confusing information, Kelly slurred immigrants who pursue the American Dream by living and working in the shadows of official U.S. government approval.
I sent Kelly a Facebook message letting him know why he needed to correct his mistake. I included the link to the ACLU brief. Kelly seemed to agree with me and said he would correct his statement.
“Tomorrow,” he wrote back.
The more I thought about Kelly’s words the more I saw the need for Scranton’s sole mainstream media commentator to offer a clearer explanation to his readers and to the community.
“You really need a whole new column,” I wrote Kelly. “You drew some terribly harmful conclusions. With friends like you undocumented people don’t need enemies. A paragraph correction won’t cut it.”
I also sent Kelly a 2019 column I wrote about immigration and posted on one of my websites. Between 2002 and 2006 I lived and worked as a daily newspaper columnist in Central Coastal California agricultural country where many Mexican farmworkers are undocumented. I stood with documented and undocumented immigrants then and I stand with documented and undocumented immigrants now.
“Thanks again. Be well,” Kelly responded.
The next morning I sent Kelly another Facebook message: “Did you make the correction? What did you or your editor say?”
Kelly responded, “I think you’re right about needing a new column. Working on sourcing it now. Do you have any contacts I should reach out to? Again, thanks for the feedback.”
I ignored Kelly’s request for my assistance. Kelly has been working at the Times-Tribune for decades. If he doesn’t have multicultural contacts by now, I urge him to connect with people who shape the future of the city and nation he serves. Talk with a few of the young men from Mexico he can easily find working in all kinds of weather on house roofs throughout the city. Walk through South Side where it’s easy to find people who can introduce you to new immigrants. Persist until Latinos might consider trusting you. At the very least, call the ACLU.
No newspaper correction or new Kelly column appeared the following day. Instead Kelly wrote about cleaning up a local cemetery. I sent Kelly another message.
“When is your correction column running?” I wrote.
Kelly responded with raw defensiveness.
“So the ‘Great Champion of the Undocumented’ has no sources who could actually help me get it right?” Kelly wrote. “I tried to be cordial out of my genuine respect for your long and consequential career, but you won’t have that. Maybe you really do care about undocumented people, but it’s clear your goal here is to break my balls. Don’t bother. I learned a long time ago that ‘my ego is not my amigo.’ It’s clear you’re still ruled by yours. Unless you have something of value to pass along, stop wasting your time and my attention.
And be well. (I mean that.)”
Consider this column “something of value.”
Five generations on my father’s side of the family in Scranton started with an immigrant. James Patrick Corbett journeyed from his tiny Cornamona village on the Irish West Coast to work for 45 years as an underground coal miner in Scranton. He and my grandmother Mame raised 10 children in their tiny house on Cedar Avenue. Toxic coal dust-induced Black Lung disease killed Pa at 81. In 1966, when I was 15, I rode with him in the ambulance to Mercy Hospital in Scranton where he died just a few blocks from where I now live.
Immigration that helped build Scranton hard coal country and the nation still matters to the Irish. Undocumented Irish make up tens of thousands of hardworking people under attack by America’s cruel culture of ignorance. Undocumented Indians, too, and I’m not talking about Navajos or Apaches. Countless immigrants from countless foreign countries move to Scranton for countless reasons. Not all these men, women and children are documented. But they all deserve a chance. The U.S. Constitution supposedly protects them.
Kelly makes it easier for anti-immigration zealots to vilify defenseless people terrified by right-wing threats of mass deportation. It’s hard to trust a newspaper columnist who maligns the brave human quest for freedom. The public trust we serve as journalists depends on clarity for credibility.
After looking and failing to find a correction in the Times-Tribune or in Kelly’s Sunday Feb. 9 column, I gave the man described on his Facebook page as an “award-winning columnist, editor and writing coach” another chance to keep his word.
“Are you writing and publishing a correction?” I asked in yet another Facebook message.
Kelly again failed to respond.
No correction has yet to appear.
A few days later I spoke on the phone to a California friend of more than 20 years as he and his wife braved rush hour traffic, rain and mud slides on their drive home from Los Angeles. His English is about as good as my Spanish. We laughed and I sang him a piece of a song popular in his native Sinaloa, Mexico. I told him how proud I was of his passing his American citizenship test earlier that day.
The land of the free needs all the good citizens we can get.
Good journalists, too.
