WOODTV8 story is full of misinformation and centers Mayor LaGrand over the 2 hours of public comment demanding Sanctuary policies in response to ICE terrorism

Late Tuesday evening, after the Grand Rapids City Commission meeting had concluded, WOODTV8 ran a story about that meeting. Unfortunately, their coverage not only distorted what happened, they provided no context for what took place and they did not center the voices of those who organized people to show up that night.

On Tuesday, July 24th, Movimiento Cosecha sent out a Press Release, which not only provided the 6 Sanctuary policies that they and GR Rapid Response to ICE were calling for, the Press Release also provided concrete examples of how the GRPD has cooperated with ICE in recent months. WOODTV8 received a copy of the Press Release, as did the other major commercial news agencies did, both the English and Spanish language news agencies.

On top of the information that the Press Release provided, the organized effort to pressure the City of Grand Rapids to adopt Sanctuary policies had begun in January of this year, which WOODTV8 reported on. The same campaign organized by Movimiento Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE also showed up to a Grand Rapids City Commission meeting in late March to present their demands that the City adopt concrete Sanctuary policies. Then on July 7th, about 25 people went to the home of Mayor LaGrand, as yet another tactic to talk with him and get him to commit to adopting the Sanctuary policies they were demanding. 

So, not only has this been a 6 month campaign that local news has reported on, WOODTV8 also had the Press Release, which clearly laid out the Sanctuary policy demands. Here is the story that WOODTV8 posted on Tuesday night.

The WOODTV8 story is so bad, but let’s take a look at why. First, the story is only 29 seconds long, despite the fact that at least 40 people spoke in favor of the Sanctuary policies that Movimiento Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE were demanding. Second, the story begins with the news reader saying, “The Grand Rapids City Commission had to take a short recess after several anti-ICE demonstrators disrupted the meeting.” This statement framed the 29 second story as people disrupting the City Commission, without provided context. How news stories are framed often determine how the public navigates news stories. Channel 8 decided to make this about demonstrators disrupting a City Commission meeting. 

Third, the first image that viewers of this story would see is of Mayor LaGrand, who is asking security to remove people who are “disrupting” the meeting, which took us to 19 seconds into the story. Fourth, another news reader then tells viewers that people were escorted out by security. Fifth, at 25 second into the story is the first time that the word sanctuary was used, but the news reader said “demonstrators were saying that Grand Rapids needed to be a Sanctuary city.” Sixth, the new reader ended the story by say, “Later the meeting resumed without interruption.”

Was WOODTV8 being lazy with this story? Maybe, but that is not really relevant in the larger context. What is deeply disturbing about this story is that it not only provided misinformation, but it feeds into the narrative that the government wants us to believe, which is that people are being disruptive and it doesn’t matter why.

Sins of Omission

What was completely omitted from the WOODTV8 story:

• Nothing about the 6 concrete Sanctuary policies that people were demanding.
• No voices were represented by those who came to the meeting to demand the City adopt Sanctuary policies, especially immigrant voices.
• No information was shared by WOODTV8, based on the public testimony that was presented during public comment, about the actual harm that ICE is doing, the family separation, the fear and the trauma being experienced by immigrants right here in West Michigan.
• Security did not “ask people to leave”, the GRPD threatened to arrest people if they didn’t leave.
• As a popular grassroots social movement, Movimiento Cosecha and GR Rapid Response were using the tactic of disruption, which was central to movements like the Civil Rights Movement, anti-war movements, the labor movement, etc. Not surprising, when news media reported on those movements during those decades, it was almost always in a negative light.

However, the major issue with WOODTV8’s coverage was that it misinformed the public, it presented the public only as disrupters, it didn’t share any of the content from the dozens of public comments about how ICE is doing harm right here in Grand Rapids, and the WOODTV8 coverage essentially normalizes state violence being perpetrated by ICE and the business as usual practices of the Grand Rapids City Commission.