The lead is one of the hardest, yet most essential, elements to a news story.  It sets the tone for the article and captures the reader’s interest by using a minimum number of words.  And speaking of minimum, the good lead offers, at minimum, the meat of the story: the who, the what, the when, and the where.  The why and the how come later.

Journalists learn lead writing in Journalism 101 classes.  They hone their skill through class assignments.  They perfect the art with the help of editors or producers.

So what happened at the Houston Chronicle last week?  Someone either (1) forgot how to write a lead or (2) the Chronicle, once again, demonstrated its penchant for shoddy writing and agenda journalism.  Of course, neither alternative is mutually exclusive.

Here’s what readers gleaned from the first three paragraphs of the front-page story of the city/state section under the headline, “Teen’s hanging in jail fuels many questions”:  17-year-old Arturo Chavez sat dead in solitary confinement in the Galveston County, Texas, jail after twisting a blanket into a noose around his neck within 48 hours of his arrest on an initial charge of making an illegal left turn.

Three paragraphs to tell us a 17-year-old may have committed suicide in the county jail after a traffic stop.

By the end of the fourth paragraph, the reader gets the idea this will not be a story about an apparent jail suicide, but rather a sob-sister account of an illegal alien from Guatemala who spent much of his time improving his English and working to send money to the folks back home.

The fifth graph introduces his older brother who says Chavez killed himself because he was “so beaten down he couldn’t take the pain.”  And then, if the reader had any doubts of the paper’s agenda, the sixth paragraph tosses them out by explaining that Chavez’s life was similar to those untold others who “live in the shadows” because of their immigration status.

Reading on in the eighth graph, we learn his parents filed a federal lawsuit against the police department, the county, and the county sheriff alleging authorities didn’t do enough to prevent the suicide.

The paper devotes the next 16 (count them, 16) paragraphs on Chavez’s dissatisfaction with his tips from loading baggage at a Guatemalan bus station; the 15 days he spent sneaking into Mexico and the U.S.; the $3,500 he and his family and friends forked over to coyotes; his rise from busboy to waiter at an unnamed restaurant owned by Mario Garcia (yes, the story named the owner, but not the restaurant); the $100 a week Chavez sent home; his classes to learn English; his pride of Guatemala, the U.S., and his Mayan heritage, his happiness with his 15-year-old girl friend; and his traffic stop.

Not until paragraph 25, more than halfway into the story, do we learn Chavez was in the U.S. illegally with no driver’s license or auto insurance, and in possession of a fake identification card.  And then, the paper takes two more paragraphs before describing how Chavez escaped from jail, scrambled up a wire-topped fence that cut his hands as he resisted arrest, and how police had to zap him twice with a taser and thwack him several times in the head with a baton before he gave up.

The remaining 16 paragraphs reflect the tone of the first 24 by painting an illegal immigrant who escaped from jail and resisted capture, who endangered lives and property, and who carried what may have been someone’s stolen identity as a hard worker whose poor family had to raise the cash to return his body to Guatemala.

There is nothing wrong with telling Chavez’s story to explain why the young man chose to kill himself rather than wait for the court to release him so he could continue his voluntary life in the shadows.  The Houston Chronicle, however, did a great disservice to its readers and to all legal immigrants and naturalized citizens by burying Chavez’s criminal activities and by portraying him as an innocent victim of a racist and uncaring society that beat him down until suicide was the only way to stop his pain.

I don’t have a problem with well-written, sob-sister, agenda journalism.  Just don’t put tripas on a plate and serve it as tournedos.

“You want us to be like you, the Land of the Free,” they must have said.  “Yet you falsely imprison your black children and you try to muzzle the freely elected leader of a great and ancient nation.”

Indeed.

We in this country, at least those of us with access to some form of medium, can explore the backstory to these front-page events, and then decide for ourselves what to believe and how to respond.  Others around the world, particularly folks in the Middle East, see the same pictures but hear a different narration.  They do not have the opportunity to decide what to believe or how to respond.

The New York Times ran a story in October 2001 with the prophetic headline: “U.S. appears to be losing public relations war so far.”  The inability of the Bush administration to convince doubters at the time that the war in Afghanistan was justified and that U.S. Middle East policy is evenhanded was the gist of the story.  A Western diplomat pointed out that talking heads cannot compete with the powerful images of wounded Afghan children and Israeli tanks rolling into Palestinian villages.

The war on terror, the story explained, has an image problem outside of these United States, in part because no sense of immediacy exists in those countries, not like here.  Stories of anthrax attacks and the hunt for Osama bin Laden led our newscasts, while Middle Eastern news outlets repeatedly aired images of bombed-out buildings and the funerals of children and grandparents.  Images provided by Western news agencies.

The message they receive, not necessarily the message we send, is that our righteous indignation over the death of innocent civilians does not extend beyond our borders, and particularly does not apply to Muslims.

And so it is with Jena and Mahmoud.

While we condemn the treatment of Muslim women and abhor the violence between members of different Islamic sects, the Muslim world sees images of massive protests in a small Louisiana town described by some as the example of the rampant racism that plagues our nation.

Middle Eastern media do not explain that well-intentioned souls and publicity-addicted agitators may have overplayed a debatably racial situation.  In fact, not until the buses unloaded their well-meaning passengers hoping to relive the heady days of Selma and Birmingham did the mainstream media report the backstory of this sordid affair:  white youths sent to an alternative school for almost a month and given in-school suspensions for two weeks, instead of the minor three-day suspension as earlier reported; an all-white jury that resulted from African-Americans refusing to report for jury duty and not from the machinations of a racist judicial system; nooses hung from an old shade tree that was not the exclusive shelter for white students as frequently described; and black students playing with the nooses instead of running from them in fear and trepidation.

Then there was the brilliantly played public-relations hand of Ahmadinejad.  U.S. media told their audiences that the president of Columbia University invited the Iranian president to speak during his visit to the United States in a move that appeared to be an ill-conceived attempt to capitalize on the moment.  The reality, however, as described after the fact by Newsweek magazine, is that Ahmadinejad was invited to speak last year by a former Columbia dean.  Security concerns prevented that appearance.

A few weeks ago, according to Newsweek, the new Iranian ambassador to the United Nations asked if Columbia still wanted Ahmadinejad to speak, under certain ground rules.

These things do not happen overnight, especially at a university.  The accusatorial and, as some would say, rude introduction of Ahmadinejad by Columbia president Lee Bollinger was worked out in advance, according to Newsweek.  Nothing was left to chance by Ahmadinejad and the Iranians, who used our righteous indignation against us by making Ahmadinejad appear to the folks back home as the innocent victim of another American outrage.

“How dare you invite someone to your house, then insult him and the people he represents,” they said.

Indeed, the chancellors of six Iranian universities and academic centers sent a protest letter to Bollinger.  The first of the ten questions they asked was why did the university and the U.S. media violate Ahmadinejad’s freedom of expression, a right guaranteed by the First Amendment of our Constitution.  We, in this country, know Ahmadinejad received more than his share of face time with the American public, but the folks back home saw only the poorly conceived attempts to restrict his message to the American people.

It boggles the mind that a nation that can sell millions of disposable diapers and bright, shiny diamonds, which do not contribute to the advancement of civilization or to peace in any region of the world, cannot sell the simple concept of a friendly and helpful Uncle Sam.

Mundus vult decipi

Every now and then, one has the opportunity to read the original story from one newspaper and the edited version carried by another newspaper.  This can lead to responses ranging from amusement to outrage.  Such was the case with a story that originally appeared in The New York Times (“Mexican Migrants Carry H.I.V. Home [www.nytimes.com/2007/07/17/world/americas/17mexico.html?hp]) and which the Houston Chronicle (“Researchers fear AIDS crisis as migrants return to Mexico) extensively edited for its print edition.

Cutting a thousand words from a 1,300-word story is not easy if one tries to retain the original sense and credibility.  The Chronicle did poorly.  Here are some examples:

The Times story said, “As sweeping proposals for immigration-law changes founder in the United States, the expanding AIDS crisis among the migrants is largely overlooked on both sides of the border.”  The Chronicle edited the sentence to read, “As immigration reform founders, the expanding AIDS crisis among the migrants goes virtually unaddressed on both sides of the border.”

The terms “largely overlooked” and “virtually unaddressed” are not synonymous.  The Times piece tells us government and health officials have not given much thought to the significance of AIDS among Mexicans working illegally in the U.S., while the Chronicle’s edited version implies policy makers know about the situation and refuse to do anything about it.

The next sentences in the Times story point out that, “Particularly in Mexico, AIDS is still shrouded by stigma and denial.  In the United States, it is often assumed that immigrants bring diseases into the country, not take them away.”  The Chronicle story says simply, “In Mexico, AIDS is shrouded by denial.”  The paper cut the rest of the paragraph.

The word “particularly” in the Times story is of particular importance, as is the word “stigma” that the Chronicle editors deleted.  This is because the Times story refers later to studies that show one in ten Mexicans working illegally in Los Angeles and hanging around job-pickup sites are so desperate for money that they perform oral and anal sex for cash.  The Chronicle deliberately deleted all references to homosexuality and its “stigma” among Mexicans, thereby eliminating gay sex as one reason for the spread of AIDS in Mexico.  The Chronicle also removed the sentence regarding the assumption that “immigrants bring diseases” into the U.S.  By now, one suspects the Houston paper is pushing a political agenda.

The Times story goes on to note that a new study found the greatest risk of contracting AIDS faced by rural Mexican women having sex with their returning husbands is the refusal of their spouses to use condoms.  The Chronicle rewrite, however, placed the blame on “the women’s inability to insist that their husbands use condoms.”

The Times story points out that “AIDS has not yet exploded in Mexico and is focused mostly among prostitutes and their clients, and drug users and gay men.”  The Chronicle turned “prostitutes” into “sex workers” and edited out their customers.

The Chronicle also left out some additional relevant information, such as the percentage of Mexicans with HIV who used to live in the U.S. fluctuated between 41 percent and 79 percent in the 1980s and early 1990s; the percentage of illegal workers from Mexico in Los Angeles who take money to participate in gay sex; and that Mexico’s northern and southern borders are magnets for prostitutes and drug dealers drawn by migrating illegal workers entering and leaving the country.

The Times put its warm and fuzzy spin on the story by using the term “migrant workers” when referring to illegal immigrants.  It further attempted to evoke sympathy for these individuals by telling us they are “displaced” from their homes.  Victims of natural disasters or wars are displaced from their homes; these folks left of their own volition.

Probably the most tortured phrases came when the Times quoted a researcher who tried to explain why these workers do who they do.  According to the researcher, they are vulnerable, isolated, exposed to different sexual practices, hampered by language barriers, depressed, lonely, and abused.

But the worst aspect of both articles is the subtle implication that illegal immigrants come to the U.S. disease free and return to Mexico with AIDS and HIV without infecting anyone in this country.  It is ludicrous to believe they have sex only with prostitutes who give them AIDS or, in some cases, become prostitutes for men who give them AIDS.

In the end, a story giving the sad and disturbing truth about the spread of HIV/AIDS among the returning illegal immigrants and their families turned into a justification for their philandering and an indictment against our nation for not having the programs in place to make them less vulnerable, less isolated, and less likely to hook up with a hooker or to bend over for a buck.

Yes, it is a horrible problem, but it is not our fault.

Mundus vult decipi

You would be hard-pressed to find news stories referring to the birthplace of Jesus Christ, THE SON OF GOD, as “the holy city of Bethlehem.”  Journalists would never describe as Christian holy cities the ancient patriarchates of Constantinople, Rome, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria.

Constantinople is now Istanbul, but at one time, it was the seat of the Byzantine Empire and the ecumenical center of the Christian world.  Rome, Jerusalem Antioch, and Alexandria are still around, but journalists and their editors back home go out of their way to avoid the hint of Judeo-Christian bias.

This is why you won’t read about the 22-year-old man arrested for swimming nekked in the “historic” Baraccia fountain in the holy city of Rome, as happened this week and reported by Reuters.

Nor will you read about responses from the holy city of Vatican City about a proposal for Roman Catholic pope Benedict XVI and Russian Orthodox patriarch Alexy II to chew the holy fat in Cyprus sometime during the year, as reported this week by the Associated Press.

Anglicans won’t read about controversial housing development plans accepted by the holy city of Canterbury’s city council this week, as reported in The Times of London.

Folks in Japan and China never see their capital cities referred to as holy cities or former holy cities, even though the emperors of both countries claimed divine status.  Maybe the lack of a recognized holy city led the Chinese to take control of Tibet, home to the holy city of Lhasa.

Latter-Day Saints never hear the Mormon mecca called the holy city of Salt Lake City.

Gays, however, can read the Agence France Presse story about an ultra-Orthodox Jew arrested last week for trying to blow up a Gay Pride parade route in the holy city of Jerusalem.  In case the reader starts feeling distressed about the use of the term, and experiences an overriding desire to apologize for religious insensitivity, the writer included the following disclaimer:  “Jerusalem (is) revered as a holy city by millions of Christians, Jews, and Muslims all over the world.”

Maybe the title of holy city doesn’t mean what it used to mean.  Think of a holy city and you may think of a peaceful place populated by people filled with some kind of holy spirit.  The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines holy city as a city that is the center of religious worship and traditions.

These days, though, a holy city may find itself as the center of a story about a natural or political upheaval.  “Another quake jolts holy city of Qom in Iran,” read a Payvand News headline on the last day of spring.  Historians of the twentieth century know the Punjab holy city of Amritsar for the martyrdom of 206 Sikhs in 1984.  In February, officers from Saudi Arabia’s Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice set out to protect the rectitude of the holy city of Mecca by arresting more than 200 Saint Valentine’s Day observers from Bangladesh and Myanmar.

Even though western journalists try hard to play up the religion-of-peace aspect of Islam, they find themselves writing stories of gunmen killing six people riding a minibus near the holy city of Karbala, or of soldiers guarding the funeral of a police officer in the holy city of Najaf.

Samarra, also in Iraq, may not be a holy city, but it has a revered mosque bombed by al-Qaeda earlier this month.  (Please note that western journalists only use the word revered with Islamic places of worship.  God forbid, so to speak, that the reporter for an Irish newspaper describe the “ancient” Basilica of Saint John and Saint Paul in the [holy city] of Rome as revered, even though it is the administrative headquarters for the Passionist order to which the newly canonized Charles of Mount Argus belonged.)

Pity the poor United States.  We’re not old enough to have anything that’s ancient.  We reserve revered for really old actors or professors who just died.

But we do have Charleston, S.C., named after King Charles II of England, and a self-proclaimed Holy City, because of the abundances of places of worship.

Charleston also is the home to Sammie Smalls, the inspiration for the Porgy character in “Porgy and Bess” and a guy who used to ride around James Island on a goat cart.  Charleston will be a mecca this weekend for people attending the “Comin’ Home to Porgy” celebration, a Lowcountry version of a haj.

Others can have their holy cities and revered places.  We have our own holy city, complete with a revered goat cart rider.

We’re doomed.