West Mayor Jerrel Bolton told the Trib he was embarrassed for his community last week after a nationally televised news program shined a spotlight on anti-Muslim racism in Central Texas.

I have to say to Mayor Bolton that I am embarrassed for my profession.

Broadcast on a television news magazine, moderated by a journalist and produced by the news division of ABC, the show, “Primetime: What Would You Do?” may have been entertaining. It may have been engrossing, perhaps even a little illuminating.

But it certainly wasn’t journalism.

In the program, reporter John Quinones, a journalist I long have admired, set up a series of staged events intended to provoke a reaction among passers-by and records on hidden camera just how they react.

One segment shows both a man and a woman actor parallel parking and slamming into a parked car, literally knocking its bumper off. Then the actor declares to witnesses that he or she is too busy and walks off without addressing the damaged vehicle.

In another segment, strollers in a park become witnesses to three teen-aged girls taunting and bullying a fourth girl.

Hidden cameras in West bakery

In the segment that so enraged Mayor Bolton, hidden cameras were set up in West’s Czech Stop bakery to capture reactions to an actor portraying himself as an employee who is refusing service to a Muslim woman while demeaning her faith.

Using imprecise language in the local segment, the staged event broadly indicts much of Central Texas by simply describing the location of the racist one-act play as a roadside bakery outside of Waco.

Although each segment includes some psychologist providing color commentary about human behavior, viewers are left to wonder: what are we to conclude by this behavior?

That people leave the scenes of accidents? That there are bullies and racists in this world? Or that we are good or bad depending on how we confront these situations?

To be sure, some heroic moments were captured on the hidden cameras, especially in West when the Rev. Charles R. Holm-Roesler stood up to the actor portraying a clerk and defended the Muslim.

Those were genuine tears he shed later when the hidden cameras were revealed to proclaim him a decent person.

But journalism is about informing, not manipulating.

Admittedly, the Trib got caught up in it, too, when we found out that West was going to be featured in a nationally televised segment and we ran a large front-page story about this last Monday.

Had I seen the ABC segment before we ran our story, I would have challenged the play of our story.

Just like NBC’s “To Catch A Predator,” in which journalists set up Internet sex sting operations in cooperation with police, I do not believe what ABC did is journalism.

Indeed, in one of the most blatant instances of racism that ABC’s cameras captured, it then masked the identity of the offender.

By using actors to create a story where none existed, by lacking the courage to show on TV the most blatant example of racism that it captured on its hidden cameras, ABC effectively left viewers with exactly the wrong impression.

So instead of exposing that racist for what he is, ABC protected the man. He becomes a symbol for a community. Our community.

The viewer is left with an impression that such overt racism is commonplace in Central Texas and Waco, the only city named.

If anything, the problem with racism in society today is that it is much more subtle than a generation ago, certainly more subtle than ABC depicted.

That’s not journalism.

Mayor Bolton told the Trib that he would like to see ABC apologize to West.

I doubt he’ll ever see such an apology. So I will take it upon myself to apologize on behalf of all journalists who take offense with this electronic voyeurism and call it journalism.

Carlos Sanchez’s column appears Sunday. You may contact him at 757-5703. E-mail: csanchez@wacotrib.com.