Photo finished: The slanted front page of the Los Angeles Times

The editors of the Los Angeles Times have had a challenging week.

It's not that easy to portray illegal immigration as a right and a virtue in the face of overwhelming public opinion that it is a crime and a burden.

Still, they're trying.

Wednesday's front page carried a photo and a report of Tuesday's rallies for legalization of illegal immigrants. The balanced story by Times staff writers Teresa Watanabe and Francisco Vara-Orta began with this:

Waving U.S. flags and demanding citizenship for undocumented immigrants, tens of thousands of jubilant protesters marched through the streets of Los Angeles on Tuesday during a mostly peaceful day that ended with clashes between police and demonstrators in MacArthur Park.

Fifteen police officers were among those hurt. About 10 people were taken from MacArthur Park by ambulance to hospitals for treatment, said d'Lisa Davies, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Fire Department. She said the injuries mainly were cuts, including head and neck wounds. None of the injuries were believed to be serious. Police reported that one demonstrator was arrested.

But the Times editors did not choose a photo of the violence between police and protesters to accompany the story. This is the picture they selected to represent the events of the day:



This photo by Luis Sinco was captioned "Parents and their babies march down Broadway for a May Day rally at Los Angeles City Hall."

The madonna-and-child portrayal of the immigration rallies was chosen over some of the more threatening images captured by Times photographers, like this one by Rick Loomis, captioned "Demonstrators stand their ground during a confrontation with police at the end of an immigrant rights march in MacArthur Park":



On Thursday morning, after it had become clear that the police officers -- and not the masked immigrants -- were going to take the blame for the violent clashes, this is the picture the editors chose for the front page:



It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the editors of the Times would like their readers to feel sympathy for illegal immigrants and anger at the Los Angeles Police Department.

Unfortunately for the editors, the images of illegal immigrant mothers and their babies may actually be perceived as more threatening than the photos of fist-waving masked men.

On Wednesday, the Times reported that the population of Los Angeles has climbed past the four million mark, up from 2.9 million in 1980. That's just the City of Los Angeles. It doesn't include the area's separately incorporated cities, like Burbank and Pasadena, or the unincorporated parts of Los Angeles County, or the adjacent Southern California cities in Orange and Riverside counties.

The City of Los Angeles now has a population greater than that of 24 states and equal to the population of New Zealand.

Meanwhile, the city's annual campaign against toilet-flushing has begun.

"Mother Nature Disappoints...." screams the flyer stuffed into my Los Angeles Department of Water and Power bill this month. "LADWP Anticipates Below Average Water Year from Sierra Snowpack." It goes on to warn that everyone must conserve water so the department can meet the city's needs. "Don't use the toilet as a wastebasket," the flyer advises.

Perhaps you've heard that the schools are overcrowded, and that programs which once were guaranteed to all students, like Drivers' Education, have been dropped from the schools due to budget constraints.

Perhaps you've seen our traffic reports on World's Scariest Videos.

However compelling the individual stories of illegal immigrants may be, the unlimited immigration of impoverished people and their dependents comes with a cost. The citizens of Los Angeles are paying it -- in the schools, in the housing market, on the roads and in the emergency rooms.

But the editors of the Los Angeles Times don't want anyone to talk about that. They choose photos for the front page that tell a story of joyful protesters with children and evil police with batons.

You have to turn many pages to find out that the batons came out in an incident that began with a crowd full of masked protesters throwing bottles at police.

Maybe it's not the Internet that's causing the paper to lose circulation.


Copyright 2007

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier post, "A wall and a bus ticket: the new shape of immigration reform," and in the essay, "How to Get Congress to Foot the Bill for Illegal Immigration, and Fast" at www.SusanShelley.com.

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