Be Mindful (Of What Exploitative Media Has Actually Done For Mental Health) - Part 1
Media Coverage of This Story Frustrates Me - Here's Why
(Note: Sensitive topics personal to me. Will contain Adult Language)
Again, Thanks to all of you who follow me on AGGregator that migrated here. This is my little pet writing project that I do to vent in a productive way in lieu of writing books. I will be writing a book soon, but there are so many little things I want to talk about on here, and they run the gamut of subject matter.
The main theme though is consumers expecting more from businesses, and conversely, allowing consumers to understand things from a business perspective, customer service/experience perspective, and from an ethical standpoint.
I started my consumer advocacy 5 years ago by alerting people to how banks operate, and have broadened by subject matter since then.
Any type of business is fair game for a fair discussion, and one of the businesses I have set my sights on for years, but have been waiting to do this right is local media’s responsibility to their viewers/readers/listeners. I don’t have the energy for national. That’s for the big boys. I am interested in talking about what my people: Las Cruces/El Paso/Juarez and all of New Mexico consume and how they consume it.
I started observing certain things in the last two years, particularly after the NM State scandals how news stories are crafted and tailored for an audience not just to watch them, but also how to disseminate them, aggregate them, and make them bigger, which of course leads to higher ratings, views, eyeballs, and in turn higher ad rates, higher revenue. It’s all about making money.
IT’S OK TO MAKE A LOT OF MONEY, but it’s not ok to put things out for the sake of chuckles, guffaws, and outright ridicule of the person or persons involved in said story. When you add mental health to that, then we start to get in the weeds here, and I want no part of it.
KVIA debuted a segment of their newscast called “Be Mindful” in February 2023, which was intended to reduce the stigma of talking about mental health. This is from their website:
MISSION STATEMENT
ABC-7’s Be Mindful multi-platform initiative seeks to strengthen the Borderland’s mental health system by empowering its residents through information and education in order to promote a culture of resiliency, reduce stigma and improve wellness.
Well, that’s certainly a lot of damn words. When I see strengthening the mental health system by “empowering residents through information and education” that’s where I get lost.
Having a lot of information is cool. I mean, hell, that’s going to get me on “Jeopardy” someday, but a lot of the time, the information that a news source gives in curated through meetings and efforts into looking for a story. I don’t mean that in a bad way. I mean there are tons of stories to be told out there, you just got to find them, and when you do, your peers recognize you. News is no different than sports. There are awards, there are people jockeying to earn recognition for higher paying gigs. Again, it’s all cool. That’s every industry.
But Be Mindful always struck me as a good idea that borders on dangerous, and I will get to why in this column.
It originated in February 2023, one month after a tragic incident in El Paso.
There was a suicide at an El Paso VA parking lot by a veteran who allegedly was having a mental health issue last January. From what was discussed in the news stories at the time, he was begging for help, was told that he would have to wait, and then he went to the parking lot and shot himself because he was not being taken care of. It was a devastating situation that brought a lot of attention to the inadequacies of the VA system, something I learned about with my time in the bank.
Here’s the KVIA story from that day:
It was hard to think about. Wanting help and not getting it is the worst feeling, which is why I do what I do for a living.
So then in the following week or so, there were many stories about this one suicide, which of course, is something rarely disseminated on the news. There are suicides every day, and it was assumed that unless it coincided with something big (say a mass shooting or a suicide that causes an interstate traffic snarl) it was not going to be on the news.
One week later, Leiloba Seitshiro, now a former KVIA reporter interviews a VA spokesman about this incident, which is 4 minutes of PR spin bullshit from the VA coupled with questions that couldn’t be more softball if they were wearing visors.
This was a rushed interview that served no purpose other than to deflect what had happened to the man.
Not KVIA’s fault, but to put that PR Spin on the air live is a miss for me.
Now, I am one of those people who have dealt with anxiety, depression, and a lot of mental bullshit myself over the years. It is hard, and my pivot to writing for a living came as a result of a very stressful career, and some hurdles in my life. We all have them, but some deal with them differently.
I didn’t want to name the suicide victim, nor should we normally, but the media blitz surrounding the incident outed the man as Rob Renz of El Paso. The first notable thing I saw when I googled him last year?
He sold mortgages…like me. A stressful pursuit. Couple that with any amount of issues at home, and you are on a fast track to burnout and depression.
The fucked up thing? You type in Rob’s mortgage URL and it takes you to a page to apply for a mortgage, where you see if you are approved. Makes me sick. The wheels of business keep on moving.
I have been very open with my suicide attempts in 2013 and 2016, a lot of them tied to issues pertaining from Bank of America. They were NOT fun times, and both times, I was lucid and not a frantic mess and I thought, “You know what is funny and screwed up? The bank will not only be open on Monday, they will have a sales goal of 10 accounts that day, the day I am dead, and I am the primary salesperson…AND they will get chewed out for not hitting the goal!”
You might think I am crazy, but I swear to you, that’s what would have happened!
By the way, before we go any further… I am fine now. I am at peace with myself. I didn’t find God or good drugs or anything, I just got rid of all toxic things in my life, and I am thankfully happy!
Anyway, the way he got outed on KVIA was weird. From this article:
A Go-fundme page has identified the victim as Rob Renz. It says, "Renz has left an immediate hole in his circle of loved ones and friends. Most importantly, his mother, who he cared for.
So, the reporter, Seitshiro identified him through a source, which was his family’s GoFundMe (boy I got a book to write about them one day) to bury the man. The messed up thing? Unlike housefires where part of the story is getting the family’s GoFundMe link out there (where you can find it on KVIA.com) they didn’t link to old Rob Renz’s GoFundMe, even though they were reporting on this delicate topic.
(Be Mindful wasn’t even a thing yet!)
The link to the GoFundMe is almost a defacto payment if you will for the ability to interview you about the fire in your darkest moment. It’s not quite quid pro quo, but it is close. Renz, the vet who committed suicide, didn’t even get that, but his death was disseminated.
So then one February day came, and KVIA announced their “Be Mindful” Campaign with a full-on 6pm newscast with stories that discussed mental health. They even got Doppler Dave to buy in with a story on weather and mental health. I couldn’t believe it.
This thing struck me as “ambitious new manager trying something crazy” like we would have in banking at times. Tom Scott, the news operations guy for NM in KVIA just left a couple weeks before, and Kevin Lovell, the longtime main guy at KVIA retired the year before. It was a new set of bosses at KVIA, and this is possibly what likely led to this thing.
Anyway, on the 6pm newscast, you will notice that all the people reporting are wearing green for mental health awareness
As mentioned, Doppler Dave had a segment on weather and mental health that I couldn’t find on their site.
Doppler was also part of the first batch of ads promoting Be Mindful, but after this initial story, I couldn’t find another one he was a part of, which is notable. He strikes me as a guy who wouldn’t want to be a part of it (which is ok!)
Note: I found it. It’s at the 23-ish minute mark. He’s not wearing green.
The newscast had which had no “Real” news, only long-form stories directly or loosely tied to mental health, which to me was always the weird thing about “Be Mindful,” because mental health can be pretty much anything, but to condense it into one 90 second segment a day, it almost feels like some of the stories are marginalized by being painted with this brush of “Well, people don’t cover this so we finally are now!” when they actually were part of the problem in not covering them before this rebranding.
Anyway, Renz’ story was tied into this campaign. It felt like with his death happening not long before this launched, it felt like they went hand in hand, and of course, Renz was mentioned in another couple of stories by KVIA, and using the “Be Mindful” banner with a change in lighting color, a melancholy piano riff, and a somber tone when talking about stories, it was a very unique way to introduce these stories.
It’s like you are being told your dog died every single day at 6pm.
The first couple of months were kind of bizarre with ABC-7 news talent dropping mental health related stories that were very uniformed in tone. There was a shooting inside Cielo Vista Mall, near where 23 people were murdered in Walmart in 2019.
A bunch of kids starting stuff.
While “Be Mindful” was still getting off the ground, KVIA did two stories regarding the shooting and mental health with Meteorologist Katie Frazier who would occasionally be a MMJ at times, and before her was a story by Leiloba Seitshiro that pissed me off.
I actually referenced it in a book I was working on regarding NM State scandals where this was the week the hazing allegations happened as well. The sexualized story of NM State basketball players engaging in misconduct allegedly against a teammate was the lead story.
While talk of sexual assault and bullying could be triggering to some people’s mental health, there was no “Be Mindful” story regarding it. I felt the alleged molestation of student-athletes in such a cavalier manner which can affect those mentally who have been abused liked that coupled with a softer story about mental health without tying the two together was WEIRD!
The 2023 mall shooting coverage was excessive when it happened. Don’t believe me? There’s a 3 hour video KVIA posted of their newscast that day.
Forgive me for saying this, but the way they covered the 2023 shooting almost felt like they thought a 2019-level shooting happened. Since the Walmart shooting was on a Saturday morning, there is a bare bones news ops going on in local newsrooms at that time, so none of the big names were in house when it happened. They were called in when we knew the level of carnage.
With the 2019 shooting being the catalyst for such wall to wall coverage, People thought it was deja vu all over again. In reality, one kid died after an argument between groups of young people. It was scary, it was violent, but it was isolated, and despite the wall-to-wall coverage that night (it was excessive) the public never really was at risk. The cops said so two hours later. Don’t want to minimize a person dying, but it’s not 23.
The next day? More wall to wall coverage, with Frazier’s story which was totally fine. She’s a sweetheart anyway, so she definitely meant well.
But back to Seitshiro’s story. She was at the site of the Walmart shooting memorial at a park, which of course has nothing to do with what happened regarding the mall shooting aside from its proximity to Walmart.
The cameraman is told to pan over across the interstate to show how the mall was in the line of sight of this memorial, which was weird, and required a lot of zooming in. Then she went on with the story of interviewing a victim’s family member regarding the 2023 shooting… a victim’s family member of the 2019 shooting to see how the recent shooting may have triggered those 2019 feelings inside of her.
Conveniently it is not on Youtube on KVIAs page, nor could I find it on their website. But in researching my NM State book, I have a copy of the story. Here it is.
I decided to upload it almost a year ago in the hopes that I would one day talk about it. It’s exploitative garbage, having the family of one tragedy comment her feelings on another one and then trying to tie it together. That’s not getting in tune with mental health.
Now it should be noted the “Be Mindful” bug isn’t on this, but with Frazier’s story leading the way with the thought, this was definitely served as a part 2 to an aggressive discussion on mental health by trying to tie it all together somehow.
It was wrong, and that is why you can’t find it on KVIAs platforms.
I got so so mad when I saw this story, because it’s like interviewing a 9-11 survivor about a natural gas explosion at someone’s house, and tying together, “Well, you sure know about explosions from 9-11, so give us some insight on what goes through your mind?”
Ugh. I can’t do it… I just can’t.
The mission statement of Be Mindful is meaningful in hopes of “strengthening” the El Paso Mental Health System, but I felt Renz’ death, and the liberal use of mental health as a guideline for telling real-time news stories as they happen kind of led KVIA astray.
Now, the Be Mindful campaign ended up getting its own dedicated reporter in Avery Martinez to tell the stories for Be Mindful, starting May 1, 2023. I like him, he is genuine and has a great voice. It allowed the other reporters to not have to be a part of it. But when Martinez was announced, that’s when I wanted to find out how “Be Mindful” came about.
After doing some research, I found out that he was hired through a “competitive grant” from a group called “Report for America” which in their mission statement they say, “Our mission is to strengthen our communities and our democracy through local journalism that is truthful, fearless, fair and smart.”
Ok, that’s cool.
More from them:
The Crisis
The collapse of local journalism has created a crisis for democracy. Residents no longer get the information they need to understand the critical issues facing their community, to make good decisions for their family, and hold elected officials accountable.
This problem is not going to be solved by a new phone app or an increase of a few pennies in digital ad rates. It’s time to try something dramatically different.
HILARIOUS that they mention the phone app, because KVIA mentions their app at least 10x a newscast
The Solution
Report for America is a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. An initiative of the nonprofit media organization, The GroundTruth Project, it is structured to harness the skills and idealism of an emerging group of journalists plus the creative spirit of local news organizations.
I agree with this. Mental Health is an issue rarely discussed at length. But within a 30-minute local newscast, especially if the stories have no bearing on El Paso, then I ask why even have a story?
Here’s a story they had about the Golden Gate Bridge installing nets to catch suicide jumpers. This did NOT need a local El Paso spin to it.
If anything, this story takes away from reporting on local mental health issues. This is not local. It’s local to San Francisco…
Again, Avery Martinez is an awesome reporter, and he will do big things, but when I saw that competitive grant thing, I had to investigate more. So… RFA pays for half of Avery Martinez’s salary at KVIA
So it leads me to this question:
If KVIA didn’t get the grant, would it have Be Mindful and would they care about mental health stories in El Paso?
Or… did they see it as a trade-off? We get a two minute story every newscast, so we have less holes to fill, and because it is a niche topic, this outfit is going to pay for half our employee’s salary? Win-win!
I have some military vets in my life that resent the grants some companies get paid for employing them. Bank of America went on a 10,000 vet hiring spree in 2019, and I thought the same thing: They are getting cheap labor because of grants from the government.
While RFA isn’t the government, the proposition to hire a reporter and pay most of their labor while injecting news stories that DO highlight the community most of the time, but tell them in a way that seemingly tries to extrapolate a mental health story out of EVERYTHING is kind of odd, and I don’t like that.
Long story short, Martinez would not be here without that grant, and that speaks more about the campaign to help with mental health than anything.
If the grant wasn’t given, how would the suicide story at the VA be handled going forward? Posting the 988 Suicide Hotline every chance you get is not promoting mental health awareness. If you read stories about Renz’s last day on Earth, he was trying to call 988 but was placed on hold. He was at the VA where he was told to wait his turn.
There was moments when I heard how he was ignored at the VA that reminded me of poor training on the part of the receptionists that should have been able to identify a mental health emergency/breakdown from a guy just looking to cut the line. They should have been able to get him into a room at the minimum. That’s poor training of someone likely not in the medical field but more the “answering phones” field.
Needless to say, my first experience with Be Mindful was a bad one… While I grew to kind of enjoy it, and simultaneously make jokes about the direction of their stories at times, it wasn’t until very recently, I was totally done with it, and finally decided to talk about it.
I just feel that it aggregates stories like Robert Renz to get even more run out of them until they are done with them.
I felt that way about their NM State coverage, the “El Paso Gas Cards” scandal this summer (I need to do a separate column on that) and anything crime related which can be talked about nonstop and fed into a true crime podcast KVIA has called Borderland Crimes. It is another conduit not to shine the light on mental health, but to dig until you find gold.
Even the description is weird: “El Paso is one of the safest cities..” it starts out.
Then the rest is a justification of “Even though it’s safe, let me tell you why it is not.”
Hearing about how the system fucked over Rob Renz does not “IMPROVE MY WELLNESS” like Be Mindful’s mission statement states. It doesn’t reduce the stigma, it actually highlights the overtly bad treatment of people with mental health issues, including my own.
Stigma still there, trust me.
On the opening broadcast of “Be Mindful” we found out about Renz’s mental health issues, but we also found out he had tinnitus, an inner-ear disorder. Why was that pertinent to this conversation?
But the thing that bugs me the most? If this is indeed a public service campaign to highlight issues with mental health and the borderland…. do you think you can do away with the commercials on the videos on your site?
I am being sold shit when I am told stories that are supposed to combat mental health issues and improve wellness. If you are trying to be a public service, there has to be a line you cross to show me how serious you are. Right now, I cannot take you serious with the commercials.
Remove them and then we’ll talk.
Part 2 will explore some of the more ridiculous stories I have seen through the last year, and Part 3 will explore the exploitative story of the man who was arrested for allegedly stalking pop star Shakira which sent me over the edge.
I mean these stories in total fairness to the local media outlets, and if they want to hear real constructive criticism, then I am your guy… I am a media “consumer” and consumer advocacy is all I know.
James