photo courtesy of channel.nationalgeographic.com

A number of television stations have been selling their souls to reality TV the past few years for cheap ratings. Look at Bravo, which once focused on the arts, is now touring American cities for rich, materialistic housewives.

Some are relatively harmless—if you ignore the assault on brain cells—but others go the exploitive route. Perhaps one of the most problematic to spring up comes from a station that just should’ve known better.

Border Wars premiered on National Geographic Channel on January 10th. As you can guess, it’s about the producers’ imaginary war at the border between Mexico and the U.S. The audience gets to see border agents suited and armed patrolling the desert looking for those oh-so-dangerous illegal immigrants who according to Huffington Post writer, John Carlos Frey, are 99 percent of the time just looking for a job.

These armed men and women are the supposed heroes of the show as they risk themselves protecting the U.S. from Mexican invasion. The search and capture scenes remind one of Call of Duty with night-vision cameras portraying the agents crouching through the desert with guns pointed. You would think the migrants were traveling in tanks instead of on foot.

The worst part is, it is the highest rated show in the history of the channel of the network. Programs like this are propaganda for the political agenda promoting unfair immigration practices that violate human rights. They created an enemy out of immigrants by leaving out context by sensationalizing border patrol. They utter words like “terrorist” for ratings knowing there is no evidence of a terrorist threat. Most of all—they perpetuate fear. And when people are afraid, they don’t think rationally, allowing extreme immigration legislation all in the name of “protecting our borders.”

To learn more about the show and what it’s doing to promote negative views towards immigrants and immigration, read a great post on our Restore Fairness blog.

January 26, 2010 by Stefani
Tags: Border Wars, culture shockers, immigration, National Geographic, reality TV
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