New York Times article a fantastic distortion of J-1s

Anybody who has written a news story will know that one is required to get the substance into the opening sentence. The writers of the New York Times piece on the Irish J1 student work visa program do not mention the accident at Berkeley until their third paragraph.

It opens with talk of Irish students "flocking to the West Coast to work in summer jobs by day and to enjoy the often raucous life in a college town at night". They go on to explain (this will be news to most readers) that the J-1 Visa exchange programme, which allows students go work in the United States, has become "a source of embarrassment for Ireland". To support this thesis, we are presented with stories concerning the wrecking of apartments in San Francisco and Santa Barbara.

It is only then – after establishing the J-1 programme as a gateway to bacchanalian excess not seen since the days of Nero – that the writers tells us that, on Tuesday morning, six people fell to their deaths when a balcony collapsed at an apartment complex in California. They move on to fill in details on poor behaviour by other Irish students in San Francisco last year.

Skewed context

If the story is not blaming the accident on the dead students’ “raucous” behaviour then why place it in this skewed context? There are no meaningful links between the incident in Berkeley and those in Santa Barbara and San Francisco.

Something quite strange has happened here. The journalists have happened upon two or three boozy stories and expanded upon them to create a fantastic distortion of the J-1 work programme. The scheme seems to have become confused with popular perceptions of American “spring break” culture. This is the period when (according to media legend, anyway) disproportionately well-off US students retire to Florida for binges of booze and unprotected sex.

An unfair comparison? Well, in one of the piece’s more bizarre corners, a former participant describes the “the program” as “party central”. Let’s just unpack that. A visa exchange programme that allows students to travel to all parts of the United States to work for the summer is being equated with a “party”. The category confusion alone makes the head spin.

Times may have changed. But the description here bears no comparison with the experience that I and other near-contemporaries remember. Whereas the spring break ballyhoo is a holiday, the J-1 programme offers often-impoverished students the opportunity to earn money for the upcoming year. Some of us canned fish in Massachusetts. Others cleaned hotel rooms in Boston. I waited tables next to Radio City Music Hall.

Degree of fury

Not surprisingly, the New York Times' story has kicked up a significant degree of fury. Aodhán Ó Ríordáin TD, minister of state, tweeted to the New York Times: "Your newspaper's reporting of the #Berkeley tragedy is a disgrace." By mid-afternoon, Margaret Sullivan, the New York Times public editor, had commented that she was "aware of reaction and will look into it today".

If Irish students are behaving badly when abroad then it is, of course, acceptable for a newspaper to comment upon it. Weaving those investigations into a news report concerning a tragedy that is still unfolding seems, however, more than a little inappropriate.