The media does not want to show you the whole truth (Marsh and Melville, 2009). The truth, to be quite honest, is pretty boring, especially when it comes to something like border patrol. Sure, now and then you hit something exciting like a drug trafficker or somebody trying to smuggle in their favourite chunk of raw overseas meat, but in the grand scheme of things, quarantine appears quite a dull job. Ruffling through peoples bags and finding nothing does not exactly make for an exciting television show. So now and then the media finds it needs to bend the truth a little, especially shows marketed as reality television.
Border Patrol is a popular reality television show, where quarantine folks go through people’s bags and mail and whatnot on camera. There are many exciting finds on this show, ranging from small crimes such as gun shaped cigarette lighters to some woman trying to bring in live bugs to eat to cure her migraines. This seems to give off the impression that being a quarantine officer is a rather glorious job, full of exciting moments. However, it fails, quite understandably, to show the many hundreds of people who walk through quarantine with no drama.
RBT is another show that would be rather dull if they showed every part of the job. People breath tested are shifty or obnoxious and often extremely drink, many times over the legal alcohol limit. Again, the many hundreds of people who drive past and do not exhibit any dodgy behaviour or blow some ridiculous blood alcohol level are not shown. Only the six or so who do are, yet this is what is portrayed as reality and the brunt of public exposure to such occupations.
In a way, reality television glorifies crimefighting, even in rather mundane situations like quarantine and random breath tests. Of course, there are the shows that up the ante, but most seem to focus on parts that should, when you think about it, be quite boring. This goes to show how easy it can be to put a spin on things to make them more appealing to a general audience (Smolej, 2010). By concentrating on only the exciting bits, however minor part of the job that is, interest can be sparked as suddenly an extremely boring job is made a whole lot more dramatic and exciting.
Marsh, I., Melville, G., 2009, Crime, Justice and the Media, Routledge, New York
Smolej, M., 2010, ‘Constructing ideal victims? Violence narratives in Finnish crime-appeal programming’, Crime Media Culture, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 69-85
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