Praising the Good Guys

This from The Plaza:

An aggressive Mexican army general and Tijuana’s top cop have been named “Men of the Year” by the Baja California news weekly Zeta.

The hard-hitting Spanish-language publication typically skewers public safety officials for failing to rein in drug cartels, but editors said Gen. Alfonso Duarte Mujica and Tijuana Secretary of Public Security Julian Leyzaola last year put up a strong fight.

Mujica, 56, spearheads the Mexican government’s offensive in Baja California from the Morelos army base overlooking Tijuana. Leyzaola, 49, heads Tijuana's 2,100-member police department.

“The offensive of these two men against organized crime generated confidence in the community and gained credibility for the institutions in one of the most difficult years in terms of security,” said the article in the magazine’s most recent issue.

I'd like to see more pieces like the above, at least in Mexico. I hate to sound like Paul Wolfowitz circa 2004 and obviously the primary function of the press is not to celebrate government, but the ratio of negative to positive information about Mexican officials floating around is stratospheric. That, combined with the inconsistency of media coverage, creates this environment where virtually everyone in the government is presumed to be guilty of something, which is needless to say a bit destructive. At the risk of inviting more hagiographies, there is a real benefit to stuff like the Zeta piece: readers are reminded that not everyone in public office is dirty, officials are reminded that not all good works go unnoticed, a more complete picture of the world is illustrated, et cetera.

In the US, on the other hand, there is already more than enough such journalism. Click here for a recent example.