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Reportage hyping DWI sidesteps biggest enforcement issues

The Dallas News is running a series of stories about criminal prosecutions in DWI death cases, the first article of which opened with this provocative but misleading statement:You drink. You drive. You go to jail. That's what the billboards say.But in Dallas County, a leader in alcohol-fueled traffic deaths, you may spend little or no time behind bars ? even if you kill someone. Note, the ads don't say, "You drink, you drive, you go to prison," so from the get-go it's clear that whoever wrote the lede was stretching to find (or generate) controversy. The News provides no evidence that police don't arrest drivers for intoxication manslaughter, so the claim that they spend "little or no time behind bars" is blatantly misleading. Indeed, further down in the story we learn that for "those drivers who are prosecuted and get probation, the only time they will spend behind bars is between 120 and 180 days in county jail...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on August 16, 2010 (boomark / email).