With the announcement of the 3rd Annual VDARE.COM worst immigration-reporting award right around the corner, I have the sobering responsibility of reading and reviewing dozens of misguided and unprofessional news stories and columns about immigration.

The question I keep asking myself over and over is:

“What went wrong with this journalist?”

Assuming that the person in question chose journalism as his profession because of a willingness–if not eagerness–to seek out the truth and report it, how did he go so wrong on immigration?

Take Georgia-based Bill Shipp as a good example. A life-long journalist who spent three decades on the staff of the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Shipp covered the civil rights movement, the first manned space program and several presidential campaigns and served in the United States Army. With his credentials, you would expect him to be patriotic and insightful.

Wrong!

In his syndicated column that goes out to over 60 Georgia newspapers, Shipp is consistently on the wrong side of the immigration issue.

Shipp hit a low point in his October 23 column titled “Another Win-Win Issue for the Demagogues” wherein he suggests that recent legislation introduced by Georgia Republican State Senator Chip Rogers denying social services to illegal aliens is merely a re-election ploy.

Shipp, charging demagoguery all around, adds that Rogers’ bills are also about “race baiting and foreigner hating.”

To make his point Shipp sunk to the bottom of the barrel. Using a technique I have never seen before–despite reading literally thousands of columns about immigration–Shipp created two fictional characters, “Rosita” and “Juan,” and put them into fictional situations wherein they were fictionally denied social services.

To answer my own question–“What went wrong with this journalist?”–Shipp has fallen into the same trap as countless others. Shipp thinks he travels on the high road but is close-minded about hearing any facts that contradict him.

Shipp has no interest in learning about the complex issue of illegal immigration and therefore cannot write about it intelligently.

I am sure my Georgia friend D.A. King would be happy to enlighten Shipp.

And you can ask Shipp yourself why he uses such shoddy journalism practices by e-mailing him.

Here’s a tradition you don’t hear about — immigrants knocking on doors for drinks was the origin of a famous parade ["Philadelphia Mummers Parade Is 10,000 Strong"].

Mummers! Who knew?

According to a history of the parade from the sponsoring New Year’s Shooters and Mummers Assn., it began with the custom of immigrants going door to door on New Year’s Day and dancing while reciting rhymes such as,

“Here we stand before your door
As we stood the year before.
Give us whiskey; give us gin
Open the door and let us in.”

Say, why don’t we have cheerful immigrants like the old-timey ones any more?