​Don’t Feed The Beast

They are at it again. A breathtaking report from Valley News Live alleged that refugees are spreading disease in our region and we are all at risk. The only thing being spread in our region is fear, bigotry and racism from what is supposed to be an objective news outfit.

Health officials were quick to refute Valley News Live’s report, that everyone living in refugee resettlement areas was at risk of contracting tuberculosis. Just because the rates of tuberculosis infections are rising for the first time in nearly 20 years, doesn’t mean it’s happening here. And it doesn’t mean refugees are to blame. If the choice is between health officials and reporters at Valley News Live, I’ll choose the hard facts and knowledge of health officials.

It’s not surprising. We’ve seen it before. The High Plains Reader was the first local news medium to speak out against it in an editorial. We’ve discussed their objective. It is to get social media comments on highly divisive subjects: click-bait journalism. “You may die because foreigners are coming to our area, courtesy of your hard-earned taxpayer dollars.”

People on any side of the issue click on it, share it, comment, if you disagree, you dispute the racist comments it brings out. Debates are started, hours are spent going back and forth. It is an exhausting process. I don’t find much joy engaging in it these days.

My message to you is if you disagree with their reporting, you need to ignore it. By sharing, commenting and clicking, you are feeding into their game. I don’t know how many people -- upset about Valley News Live -- shared links to their reporting on my social media feed. That is exactly what Valley News wants. The mantra of many these days is don’t read the comments. It’s easier said than done. There are a lot of ignorant people commenting in droves on Valley News Live stories.

It’s important to speak out against racism and injustice when you see it, to call it out. The place not to do it is the Facebook page of Valley News Live. Sure, we don’t want people to think everyone in Fargo-Moorhead thinks like that. But let’s bring the debate to other places where the source is fair and more open to constructive debate. I’ve seen examples of friends having their comments deleted when they were critical of the source, Valley News Live.

You could say I am feeding the beast by writing a column about it. Any attention is going to help them. The old saying goes, there’s no such thing as bad publicity as long you spell my name right. My main point in writing this is to get people upset enough about this to do the most damage they can to the source. Don’t give them your eyeballs or time. Commenting, sharing, and watching helps them.

We know they are biased, we know someone in the news organization obviously has an extreme hangup against refugees. Their laser-like focus on it exposes it. Anything that appears on their TV screens henceforth shouldn’t really shock us anymore. They’ve said refugees have increased crime, carry diseases and are using all our resources. Pretty soon they will take all our jobs, wives/husbands and food too.

The unfortunate part is that many of us won’t have to deal with the consequences. The refugees will in their day-to-day interactions with gullible citizens who buy this stuff and then take it out on those refugees. Comments will be made, bias shown. They won’t be treated fairly just because they are foreign.

We’re better than that. HPR recently told the story of Mohyeldin Omar, a Sudanese refugee who interned for Senator Heidi Heitkamp. Once he graduated from NDSU, he was forced to look for jobs on the east coast, he felt, because of bias against refugees. He was a well-spoken, intelligent college graduate. The only thing that was different was the color of his skin and where he was from. Most college graduates don’t have trouble finding jobs in Fargo if they want one. This reporting does have an effect.

I can’t imagine what it must feel like to be a refugee and watch this reporting. Of course racism is nothing new to them. But what must they feel about a community that puts this garbage on its television news programs? It’s important for them to know that not all Fargo-Moorheaders feel this way.

Why do they do it? They want your attention, and it works. Don’t give it to them. There are far better ways to occupy your time.

This time when you say don’t read the comments, hit them where it hurts and don’t do it.