NBC News retracts spurious report on underage slaughterhouse workers

On Apr 20, 2023

Recently, NBC News and Noticias Telemundo published a series of reports on minors working for Packers Sanitation Services Inc. (PSSI) cleaning slaughterhouses in the Midwest, as well as a piece about workers using stolen identities to obtain jobs at PSSI.

In the U.S., it’s illegal for minors to work in certain dangerous jobs, and this includes slaughterhouses.

Back in February, the Labor Department detailed an investigation that found at least 102 children ages 13-17 were illegally employed by PSSI across 13 facilities in eight states. The children work with hazardous chemicals and equipment such back saws, brisket saws, and head splitters — often on overnight shifts.

The department said investigators learned that three minors suffered injuries while working for PSSI, including one 13-year-old who suffered chemical burns.

The company paid $1.5 million in civil penalties for the employment of children in facilities across Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Tennessee, and Texas.

NBC recently carried a report that a 16-year-old boy named Pedro works at the slaughterhouse. The report claimed that Pedro is responsible for hauling away animal parts in a cart, scrubbing blood off the floor and cleaning machines with harsh chemicals and that his work hours are 11 p.m. to 6 a.m.

“Although the job is hard, dangerous and tiring, he fears losing his paycheck would put him and his family in Guatemala in an impossible situation. Pedro said he used a false identity to get the job,” said the report.

Days after the reports aired, PSSI sent NBC News a videotaped interview the company conducted with Pedro in which he said he is not a minor.

NBC News also asked Pedro to reconfirm his age, and he said it was “hard for me to explain.” NBC News and Noticias Telemundo then traveled to Guatemala and obtained official documentation showing he is 21.

The report turned out to be a complete falsehood.

NBC News was compelled to retract the story and issue a corrigendum.

NBC News revealed “that Pedro is an illegal alien and presenting as a minor at the border made it easier for him to enter the country under current U.S. immigration policies.” The Biden administration issued him documentation based on that false information.

NBC News, perhaps unwillingly, revealed how easy it is to cross Biden’s open border and enter the US by understating one’s age.

Pedro is most likely an asylum seeker. He was set free into the US, and he made his way to Kansas and had taken up a job meant for citizens. This is why, the left was, once upon a time, against open borders.

In 2015, during an interview when Bernie Sanders was asked about open borders, Sanders curtly replied “that’s a Koch brothers proposal.” He further added,

“The idea is a right-wing scheme meant to flood the US with cheap labor and depress wages for native-born workers. I think from a moral responsibility, we’ve got to work with the rest of the industrialized world to address the problems of international poverty,” he conceded, “but you don’t do that by making people in this country even poorer.”

This was the Marxist position. But Sanders is singing a very different tune lately.

But there is a brighter side to this Pedro story; at least he doesn’t seem like he belongs to the criminal variety of illegals, which would place citizens in peril. But it would appear that even the criminal variety won’t find it impossible to enter.

The open borders are impeachable offenses on the part of Joe Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas

Now we look at the NBC News’s blunder.

We are once again reminded why the late, great Rush Limbaugh referred to them as drive-by media. They break news or carry reports that cause a sensation. They spread falsehoods, ruin reputations and inflame the situation. By the time facts emerge, they have either moved on to the next story or selectively present facts to hide their mendacity.

In this case, NBC News did retract their story.

But as always, the sensational lie travels halfway across the world while the boring truth got it socks on.

The root cause of these repeated failures is that news organizations no longer consider reporting facts to be their function. Instead, they exist to propagate the Narrative. For any given report they have already arrived at their conclusions. They then merely work their way backwards to accommodate fact selectively or fabricate using anonymous sources.

Perhaps in this case the narrative is evil corporates exploits children.

Any story that gets published is subjected to a series of reviews and fact checks. But if every reviewer suffers from the same bias, a review is pointless.

In this case a simple call to PSSI would have exposed the facts. But their goal was to cause a sensation and not enlighten with facts. They have even cultivated an audience that only want their biases confirmed.

They also know that if caught, they will not receive much punishment.

The way PSSI has been targeted by the media and Biden’s Labor Department (yes, they were guilty of engaging underaged employees, but doubtlessly other businesses violate law without the news causing headlines) you would be forgiven for thinking that they could be connected to President Trump or the GOP. Perhaps in this case PSSI can sue the NBC news the way Dominion sued Fox News?

As consumers, you have no choice but to presume that all that you see in the news media is false until proven true.