News in Costa Rica – Sensational, scandalous and “if it bleeds, it leads.”

As a 20-year plus professional in the building and development trades, who also happens to have 4 years actual experience writing for a daily newspaper who has also won several awards in journalism photography, I feel uniquely qualified to add to your comments about news sources in Costa Rica.

I can say from experience that I know that of the many reasons the English ‘news-sources’ seem to have a prevalence for ‘bad news’ is most likely due to a couple of basic factors, although your thoughts about their life-inexperience are also dead on:

1. First, the old theory of ‘if it bleeds it leads‘ means that for the same reason people have to look at a car wreck, they want to know about the crimes of the day. Believe it or not, no body wants to read happy news or predictable stuff – that’s why it is always buried in the back. The news people are always on the lookout for the daily ‘man bites dog’ story.
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2. This leads to the second factor which is that reporters are basically LAZY people. It is easy to call the local contact at the ‘cop shop’ and get enough to fill up the pages. It’s much easier than really trying for an actual balance in the inch count and having to make dozens of contacts in multiple areas. And it saves time and mileage…. lazy.
3. Third, fear sells, too. The interesting thing for me is that monitoring the news in Costa Rica from my perspective, it is so difficult to really know what’s going on because in the states we have such a vast array of news sources who simply never shut up – at any given moment we can flip on hundreds of news outlets via the net, TV, papers, etc. and this doesn’t exist in the US for CR info, which creates an un-easiness which (I think) is an unfair characterization of crime in Costa Rica in the perception of US citizens.

Lastly, there is a crime problem in Costa Rica which is different than crime in the USA which is hard to quantify fairly using these same stats. As you have pointed out, many US cities are demonstrably more dangerous in several ways than Costa Rica, depending on which stats you cite, i.e. gun shootings, etc. But the crime in Costa Rica which scares some is the rather extreme, newer crimes (home invasions in gated communities, for example) where the police cannot or do not follow up and resolve.

Justice in Costa Rica is rare and takes a long time if it is served at all, and even though the total personal crime may be statistically fewer, it can be very much more devastating as the resolution may never come.

I believe this strikes fear into many in the USA. We are quite spoiled in this area, in the mind of the collective anyway, as the crime fighters here have a more connected and modern technique.

I for one, am prepared to face this challenge and continue to love Costa Rica and its culture, its people, and will continue to come until I can stay forever. (I feel that if a man is born to be free and wishes to be free, he needs to be prepared to be on his own, as relying on the government to save or protect me is a direct contradiction to said freedom.)

Lastly their is rumor, and we all love a good, juicy story. Last week a friend of mine said he would never go to Costa Rica because a friend of his went down there to have some fun for a few weeks. He had two of the finest young ladies over for some ‘professional’ fun one evening and they drugged him and then dug up his hidden $20,000 in the back yard and took off.

My response was varied, but let’s face it, any idiot who allows anyone to know how much money, much less actually having that much cash might deserve to lose it, but I handled it this way…

I asked him if he thought the same thing might happen here in the states if he had $200,000 (comparable value to the monthly incomes of locals in CR) buried in the back yard and a few parties with ‘professional’ girls. After he agreed, he also agreed that his friend was probably a blowhard and an idiot, and more importantly, that perhaps Costa Rica wasn’t so bad after all.

Nobody makes that argument of comparison and I think it is hurting the ‘safe’ image of a tourism country.

Amazingly, these very few actual stories of these so called ‘news sources’ carry a lot of influence because of the handful of a few pages available to us, but they certainly seem to feed on the bad news dejour.

Imagine that, in a country of several million folks, and an annual visitation of over a million foreigners, the “news” outlet(s) are 5 pages (with 10-15 stories) on one website, and the bigger real paper, which comes online once a week.

That is why I refer to them as the daily crime reports, not the daily news.

Your friend in Arizona, USA who cannot wait for the next chance to come back to CR,

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Written by Jim Liesen who has been a VIP member of WeLoveCostaRica.com for more than three years and has been coming to Costa Rica since for business and pleasure. His architectural career spans over 20 years and has also been acknowledged as an award winning writer and photojournalist. He hopes to someday move to CR and help others fulfill the same dream of living in the land of stunning scenery, sunshine, and smiles.

Andrew Makarik

to@welovecostarica.com

Andrew Makarik is the main editor of WeLoveCostaRica, a fan of this sunny country. He is also a loving husband and a has a lovely daughter. By being a devoted family man and the biggest Costa Rica fan, he wants to make more people feel at home there. WeLoveCostaRica unites people and helps them find new home or a new travel destination. This website is a friendly community where everyone can find not only information, but also new friends and travel pals. Andrew is also passionate about IT and programming, so he himself maintains a friendly atmosphere in this cozy environment of WeLoveCostaRica.com.