“The Real Death Valley”: Joint Investigation by The Weather Channel, Telemundo and the Investigative Fund.
In 2014 the Weather Channel released a documentary film called “The Real Death Valley” dedicated to immigrants entering the United States and passing through Brooks County, Texas, whose lives are at risk because of the extreme heat and lack of water. I had a conversation with Neil Katz, VP Digital Content and Editor in Chief at the Weather Channel to find out more about how this important and sometimes tragic film has been created.
About two years ago the digital news group at the Weather Channel created a documentary unit called the Weather Films, the goal of which is to conduct investigative work dedicated to intersection of weather, environment and human condition. The team searches for stories not usually typical for the Weather Channel, such as, for instance, “Down and Out in Anchorage”, a documentary about homeless teams struggling with winter in America. “The Real Death Valley” shows the opposite side, extreme danger that can be caused by heat.
The joint project started when the Weather Channel reached out to community of journalists looking for someone who had the story that fitted the concept. John Carlos Frey, a talented journalist who received a grant from Investigative Fund, has been looking at border issues for a while by that time and came across the anomaly in Brooks County, in the state of Texas. This place, located 70 miles North of the border, is extremely dangerous for migrants crossing the country. The fact seemed most unusual because, despite of the common belief that most problems happen at the border, The Brooks County is located miles to the North. The area was so deadly that the bodies kept piling up and “mass graves” were discovered in the locale.
The team was appalled with the facts and decided to make a huge investigation. The Weather Channel partnered with Telemundo, Efran Films and Investigative Fund and co-produced different versions of documentaries in English and Spanish based on the same material. The overall production took close to a year, from the first news clipping to getting the film on the air.
“We certainly hoped it would humanize the migrants who are crossing” says Neil, referring to the cases when the migrants and their intentions are demonized and considered harmful to the country. Despite the politics of the border the idea of humanity hopefully still prevails in the society: “I don’t think there are any Americans, or certainly very few, who think that people should die, especially women and children, trying to enter the United States”.
Another angle to the story is how the weather can become deadly in an unexpected way. “We focused a lot on tornadoes and hurricanes because they are acute and its obvious when those weather patterns create damage and death. Much less obvious, even to us, although we focus on this all the time, was how heat and drought can create this unbelievably dangerous passage of land”. It is safe to assume that it would be extremely hard or maybe even impossible to walk close to 40 hours in these conditions, but the team discovered that thousands of migrants do exactly that. As part of the English version of the documentary, John Carlos Frey along with the colleague travels through the route himself describing the tough conditions and interviewing a group of migrants.
Materials and sources used in the films include local sheriff, border patrol, 911 records and many others. The team went through the tapes of 911 emergency calls and interviewed representatives showing their point of view to the problem. Local 911 team sees it as their responsibility to save lives no matter the nationality of the individuals, however the investigation revealed that sometimes it is difficult to find people in this region even after they call. Sometimes the phones from Central America do not connect properly with towers in the US and indicate an incorrect location or the calls simply do not go through.
It was also not as easy for the reporting team to get the border patrol on camera. However after a couple of months of mutual efforts of Frey in the field and the team the interview was recorded. “Soon after we did our interview with them, even before we published the story, but soon after the co-interviews with them, the border patrol had more than a hundred people into that region”.
One of the best ways to get a difficult interview is “making clear to people that we understand they’ve got another perspective on what’s happening and they have a big opportunity to explain it” says Neil, rather than facing an interviewee with a set of prerequisite facts and conclusions. “ It’s always a risk for government or corporate official to go on camera and tell their side of the story even if they have a great side of story to tell” he continues “so i think they were courageous”.
The protagonist of the English version is Fernando Palomo, from El Salvador, who was forced to call 911 facing deportation, because of the severe health condition of his brother who got sick while crossing the border and walking through the Brooks County. Through interviews and recording of 911 calls very emotional and tragic story line describes his struggle and difficult choices he had to make while waiting for more than 9 hours for the rescue team to arrive and eventually loosing his brother to death.
“We hoped that the impact of the story would be that America would figure out a way to make this safer” says Neil.
The full version of the documentary film “The Real Death Valley” and description by the Weather Channel could be found here:
