They have done it again. The once credible Business Insider continues to twist and angle stories in an effort to cash in on the furor caused by the capture of Joaquin “El Chapo’ Guzman and the subsequent propaganda piece penned by Hollywood activist Sean Penn.
The most recent example of click-bait comes from Business Insider’s piece that claimed Delta Force operators were on the mission to capture ‘El Chapo’ Guzman.
The way the story is written, it makes it seem like if Delta Force operators in Mexico were the ones who kicked down the door to El Chapo’s hideout and killed multiple cartel gunmen. In reality, it is no secret that American agents and military personnel have been working in Mexico for years as advisers, but not as combatants.
Buried in the story is a paragraph that explains that Delta Force did not fight El Chapo’s gunmen. The section points out that U.S. Marshals helped tracking down Guzman and “Operators from Delta served as tactical advisors but did not directly participate in the operation.”
The article itself was taken from another site, called SOFREP, which deals with military and special forces related stories. What neither Business Insider nor SOFREP report is that the Mexican government has been open about their relationship with U.S. agents and officers.
In a statement provided to Breitbart Texas by the Mexican Navy in November 2014, they pointed out, “Our institution is constantly receiving sensitive high tech equipment from the U.S. government which requires field training that is usually done by agents, some of which are the U.S. Marshals.”
As Breitbart Texas has reported in the past, Mexico is expected to receive more than $2.3 billion from the United States in aid through equipment and training as part of the “Mérida Initiative. “
Since 2008, Mexico has received military vehicles, aircraft and training form the U.S. government, all aimed at fighting drug cartels. The amount of involvement of U.S. authorities in Mexico has drawn criticism from nationalistic detractors who have begun to call the initiative “Plan Mexico” referencing “Plan Colombia.”
In November 2014, the Wall Street Journal wrote an article claiming that a U.S. Marshal had been shot while dressed as a Mexican marine and taking an active role in a raid targeting the Sinaloa Cartel.
Breitbart Texas reported that the Mexican Naval Secretariat issued a statement calling out WSJ. The Navy pointed out that while U.S. agents are present in Mexico, they are not allowed to take an active role. In the case of the shot agent, the Mexican Navy said the article was partially right since “the U.S. agent had been in a training mission helping the military, but not as a participant in a drug raid when the shooting began.”
Business Insider is the same news outlet that published a story this week glorifying the lifestyle of Guzman’s sons calling them “royalty.”
As Breitbart Texas pointed out, the BI click-bait article was based on some debunked social media accounts. BI themselves pointed out in their story that the validity of the accounts could not be confirmed but they went ahead and continued to glorify the narco-life by posting photos of fast cars and guns.
Breitbart Texas has repeatedly reported on how the two Twitter accounts that the online news outlet based their story on are, in fact, false. But, they have managed to dupe multiple news outlets. One of the clearest example of those two accounts duping news outlets came when they published a photo of a family in Costa Rica where they claimed that the people pictured were El Chapo and his sons. That photo has since been proven to be a fake.
Business Insider is the same outlet that, in December, published another click-bait story looking at the theory of El Chapo’s 2015 escape form a maximum security prison having been an effort by the government to have the capo help reduce violence in that country.
Breitbart Texas called out Business Insider for their story and pointed out that factual arguments presented there were in fact taken from an article written five months before by Pulitzer Prize winner Ginger Thompson. Despite being several months late, the Business Insider piece did not add any new information or facts to the theory.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award winning journalist with Breitbart Texas you can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.
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