Shawna Forde in Washington Post today....

[molly]

The Washington Post today reports on the Shawna Forde trial. If you
can call it reporting. The very first paragraph of the story mentions
the killing of Robert Krentz and then says that Brisenia Flores was
killed TWO MONTHS AFTER Krentz. In truth, the home invasion and
murders of Brisenia Flores and her father took place 9 months BEFORE
the Krentz killing, at the end of May 2009. Krentz was killed in
March 2010. I browsed thru the 110+ comments posted so far this
morning and I see none of them that mention this egregious error of
fact. Maybe someone else noticed, but so far I don't see it.

If a national newspaper cannot get this most basic fact right, I think
it speaks volumes about the lack of press attention to the real issues
on the border. Fact-checking is not hard. I assure you the editors and
others at the Washington Post have better access to news databases
than the NMSU Library does. BUT, my search in the ALL ENGLISH-LANGUAGE
NEWS section of Lexis Nexis on "Brisenia Flores Arizona" yields 48
stories, mostly from the wires, and including today's Washington Post
story. A search in the same database on "Robert Krentz Arizona" yields
489 articles. More than 10 times the coverage... factually correct and
otherwise... I will post a comment to the WP website and encourage
others to do so. Below is the Washington Post story and also above
it, an original wire story on the Arivaca killings from May 31, 2009.
Shawna Forde was arrested for the killing about a week later in June
2009. To call her an "immigration activist" in the HEADLINE of the
Washington Post shows (IMO) even more ignorance of basic facts, not to
mention an editor that doesn't know the meanings of words... molly


The Associated Press State & Local Wire
May 31, 2009 Sunday 1:34 AM GMT
Man, girl killed in So. Ariz. home invasion
SECTION: STATE AND REGIONAL
LENGTH: 178 words
DATELINE: ARIVACA Ariz.
A home invasion in a rural southern Arizona community early Saturday
left a young girl and a man dead and a woman wounded, authorities
said.
Pima County Sheriff's Department officials said it's believed four men
and one woman forced their way into the home around 1 a.m. and fatally
shot 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and 29-year-old Raul Junior Flores,
who is believed to be the girl's father.
A 911 call summoned sheriff's deputies to the home in Arivaca where
they found the two bodies and a woman who also had been shot.
The wounded woman was taken to an area hospital, but her condition
wasn't immediately known, said sheriff's spokeswoman Sgt. Cathryn
Masters.
The woman's name was not immediately released and the relationship
between her and the other victims wasn't yet confirmed, Masters said.
Authorities said there was no vehicle description and no motive for
the home invasion was immediately released.
The small community of Arivaca is about 60 miles south of Tucson and
10 miles north of the Mexican border. Largely rural, homes are widely
spread across the desert.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/05/AR2011020504164.html
Trial of immigration activist accused in killings spotlights tense
climate along border
By Krissah Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 5, 2011; 9:49 PM

After Arizona rancher Robert Krentz was killed on his land last year
by a man police believe was an illegal immigrant, television networks
and more than 300 newspapers wrote about his death as an example of
the dangers on the border.

Two months after Krentz was killed, 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her
father, Raul, were shot to death in their home, 150 miles from
Krentz's ranch. Their attackers were allegedly affiliated with an
militia group opposed to illegal immigration that was conducting raids
to steal money.

The Flores case is now being tried in Tucson, and immigrant rights
activists contend that it deserves more attention. The reason why: The
raid was allegedly organized by Shawna Forde, 43, head of a fringe
border patrol group called Minutemen American Defense.

Forde's murder trial, which has been marked by vivid testimony over
the past two weeks, has become a cause celebre among proponents of
overhauling U.S. immigration law, who cite the killings as an example
of the risks of extremism in the immigration debate.

"There has been the prospect of people taking the law into their own
hands for some time," said Frank Sharry, executive director of
America's Voice, which advocates a path to citizenship for illegal
immigrants. "The rhetoric, the hate mail. It's unbelievable."

The organization Cuentame posted a video online last week asking, "Is
hate turning to violence?" It elicited hundreds of comments.

But unlike the Krentz case, the trial has been a largely local story.

"There's a few places writing about this, but it is not getting the
attention it deserves," said Eric Rodriguez, vice president of the
National Council of La Raza. "It should be shocking to more people. Is
there any circumstance where what took place is acceptable to people?"

Krentz's shooting, which for a time was a staple of news coverage and
has been brought up in homeland security hearings on Capitol Hill,
struck a nerve in part because of the government's failure to deal
with illegal immigration. Arizona, which the Pew Hispanic Center
reported this month is home to 400,000 undocumented immigrants, has
passed tough legislation in recent months to crack down on those who
are in the country illegally.

Forde's small Minuteman group was known for tough rhetoric on illegal
immigration. According to police, Forde believed Flores was a drug
trafficker and planned to seize money and drugs from him to fund her
group's patrol efforts. Police found no drugs in the home and little
money.

During the early-morning incident, Brisenia Flores was shot twice and
Raul Flores multiple times. Brisenia's mother, Gina Gonzalez, was shot
twice but survived and called 911.

Prosecutors accuse Forde of leading the raid, shouting orders to two
men, her alleged accomplices, who will stand trial this spring.
Defense attorney Eric Larsen counters that there's no direct evidence
that she organized the raid or was at the house at the time of the
shooting.

Forde was at one time a member of the much larger Minuteman Project,
though that group's leader, Jim Gilchrist, has insisted his
relationship with her was never "extensive." Forde, whose group had
about half a dozen members, had been pushed out of other civilian
border patrol groups because of her extremist views, said Professor
Brian Levin, director of a nonpartisan group that studies extremism at
California State University in San Bernardino.

"She was not an unknown," he said. "She was known as a firebrand."

In a 2007 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Forde was quoted
saying she worried that illegal immigrants would soon "outnumber real
Americans." She said she didn't like the common use of Spanish on
business telephones and that she "decided to do something about it."

Because of her past comments and actions, immigrant rights groups say,
the killing and the trial deserve to be treated as a crime with strong
political overtones.

"It is important to raise that particular issue because it seems like
a lot of the media is focusing more on the individual crime, the
individual action, but what we are seeing is a trend," said Axel
Caballero, director of Cuentame, which is affiliated with the liberal
Brave New Foundation. "People are talking about this."

The conversation is being led by Hispanic bloggers and picked up by
activists, who are focused on Forde's ties to the border militia
movement.

Forde supporters have rallied around a Web site, Justice for Shawna
Forde, and allege that her trial is an effort to upend the border
militia movement. The operator of the site, Laine Lawless, who is a
likely witness in the case, appeared in the courtroom last week
against a judge's order and interrupted the trial, according to the
Arizona Daily Star, which has followed the case closely.

Closing arguments in Forde's trial are expected late next week.
Testimony so far has included Gonzalez's recounting of the death of
her daughter by an alleged accomplice of Forde. "I can hear it
happening. I can hear her telling him to 'Please don't shoot me,' "
the mother testified. Last week, prosecutors introduced text messages
allegedly sent by Forde to others implicated in the killings.

If convicted of murder, Forde could receive the death penalty.

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