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While Media Outlets Across the World Covered the Emily Ruiz Story, Newsday Sat on Its Haunches

Posted April 13, 2011 by David Sperling, Esq.

David Sperling, Esq., is the lawyer handling the case of Emily Ruiz, as well as a blogger for Long Island Wins.

The world’s top prize for the worst coverage of a huge Long Island story goes to…(drumbeat)...Newsday!

Since the plight of 4-year-old Brentwood resident Emily Ruiz broke more than three weeks ago, Newsday has buried the story and refused even to correct mistakes in their skimpy coverage. I think they are upset because I originally offered the exclusive to a Newsday reporter, but he was too busy with other assignments.

Then, I offered to talk with Bart Jones, a top-notch Spanish-speaking reporter who used to cover immigration. But he was apparently taken off the beat because he was fair and balanced, and showed some sympathy for undocumented immigrants.

In retrospect, I’m glad Newsday didn’t get the exclusive, because the reporter would probably have quoted Steve Levy in the third or fourth paragraph.

When my team and I brought Emily back to the United States, we had a news conference attended by about 20 media outlets from around the world, including The New York Times. Newsday also sent a reporter. Their brief double-bylined story, buried on the bottom of page 18, contained a major error regarding U.S. Customs and Border Protection policy, but the editors decided it was not worthy of a correction.

I later offered several exclusives to Newsday – where I worked as a copy editor from 1989-1997—about our mission to Guatemala, but the editors never responded.

Emily’s story has received extensive coverage in The New York Times, USA Today, CNN, Associated Press, the New York Daily News, Huffington Post, and all the New York TV affiliates—ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox—as well as National Public Radio with Maria Hinojosa. And of course, Long Island Wins, which sent Ted Hesson down to Guatemala with me to cover the story and provide pool photos and video of Emily to feed the media wolf pack.

Little Emily’s story attracted even greater attention in the Spanish-language media—from Univision (which broke the story), Telemundo, CNN en Español, La Opinión, the Spanish news agency EFE, and the German news agency DPA in Spanish. I was even interviewed last week by the Russian TV network RT.

News 12, which is owned by the same corporate parent as Newsday and Cablevision, also carried the story. But the TV station displayed extremely poor taste by staking out Emily’s home and thrusting a microphone and camera in front of the family’s babysitter, even though they knew the parents were undocumented and were represented by an attorney.

Millions of people throughout the world learned about the story of 4-year-old US-citizen Emily Ruiz and sympathized with her plight at the hands of a cold, heartless government bureaucracy.

But if you lived on Long Island, and your only source of news was Newsday, you barely had a clue.

Tags : bart jones, brentwood, de facto deportation, deportation, emily ruiz, media watch, newsday