'Blood of Their Brothers' Journalist Speaks

A response to former Union-Tribune border reporter Anna Cearley

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In comparison, the U.S.-Mexico border (of which San Diego/Tijuana has a huge stake) has been crossed every year for the last two decades by hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants and billions of dollars of cocaine. The hometown team, the Tijuana Cartel, has pumped hundreds of millions, likely billions of dollars of cocaine over the border in that time (a border that lies less than 20 miles south of the Union-Tribune’s offices). Since the turn of the century, almost as many Tijuana residents have been executed as Americans have died in the Iraq War, and the region has produced (on both sides of the border) thousands of narco-gangsters since the name Arellano-Felix started popping up around drug shipments in the late 1980s.

All of that proliferation has occurred, as you point out in your letter, in an atmosphere where names, dates and acts are often readily apparent through the rumor mill — it’s not exactly a mystery who’s committing the crimes in Tijuana, or where to begin overturning rocks to get to their identities. The sprawling Union-Tribune has, meanwhile, until the past several years, enjoyed something in the vicinity of the industry standard 20 percent profit margin. Though it’s dwindled of late, the U-T’s newsroom has, for decades, had scores of well-paid people on its payroll.

To all other reporters at the border (independents, freelancers, bloggers, et al.) the resources given to U-T reporters are unimaginable. That’s not counting the paper’s decades-long Rolodex of law enforcement and government contacts; being the daily of note for more than a century lends a paper incalculable clout and cachet. Yet after reading the U-T’s border coverage for six years, I can’t remember an article dealing with organized crime that cited anything but the same three sources (Victor Clark, David Shirk and a wild card here or there), or that didn’t simply restructure a press release and quote a DEA or an FBI source.

In the past two decades, during the explosion of the cartel epidemic in Mexico (in which Tijuana has played a salient role) — with thousands of gangsters and corrupted officials operating freely at any given time — how many organized crime sources have been fostered by Union-Tribune reporters (reporters with incredible assets at their disposal)? How many unique stories were broken about rampant government corruption south of the border? About police forces so compromised the federal government withdrew their weapons? About the sale of 76 first-class government IDs to the cartel, or the savage beheading of three police officers in the small and helpless town of Rosarito?

How much new information was divulged about former Tijuana mayor (and Coronado resident) Jorge Hank Rhon, whose family was called a “significant criminal threat to the United States,” by a leaked American law enforcement report? (The report was later rejected by then-U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, ostensibly because it hadn’t been vetted by senior intelligence before it was leaked, and so couldn’t be deemed certified.) Going by what I’ve seen as an avid follower of border coverage, the sum answer to all of those questions is zero. In the big picture the weight put on the shoulders of regional dailies in the U.S. is unfairly onerous. In the local picture, the U-T hasn’t carried that weight; arguably, not at all. And yet 20 miles south of the U-T’s multimillion-dollar office complex lies a small weekly paper called Zeta that, week in and week out, explains what’s happening inside Tijuana’s organized crime world, and why.

The U-T would do its readers a greater service by simply translating and reprinting Zeta’s copy every week. Three Zeta editors, of course, have been gunned down (two killed) since the 1980s, for getting too close, for becoming a threat to organized crime — a high price to pay for a civilian media organization. A new question, then, revolves around that price. Has the U-T — which has clearly been retarded in its coverage (why does the paper have a two-person bureau in a Baja region with so much importance and so much intrigue to cover?) — intentionally sacrificed border coverage out of fear?

And if it’s been cowed in this arena, what sector of society will be allowed next to operate without Fourth Estate oversight? Renegade city cops? Local gangbangers? Corrupt politicians? Correctional officers? A bully mayor? Even more disheartening, what if the failure of Tijuana’s newspapers isn’t simply an effect of organized crime, but a contributor to its existence? Only a few people, from inside the organization, know the U-T’s reasons for its restricted coverage south of the border. But if it hasn’t been for fear, it’s been to save money — and either way it’s let organized crime off the hook, which has cost the reading public immeasurably. Whatever the case, the term “bad newspaper coverage” was charitable.

I know you were a dedicated reporter and I think your hands were bound at the U-T (though much of that binding had to do with the notions of objectivity that I know you were in accord with). Regardless, your feedback is valuable and I welcome more exchange here or in any other forum, as I hope improved newspaper coverage (and greater public understanding) will play a role in Calderon’s war against Mexican organized crime. And few people understand the inherent challenges (and frustrations) of border reporting better than you.

s.d. liddick

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