The presence of a Venezuelan gang in Aurora has become national news, and the story shows the importance of boots-on-the-ground, local news reporting versus parachute-in reporting by national media outlets, especially those with agendas.

Our own reporting at The Denver Gazette revealed a wildly shifting narrative that made it difficult for people to know what was really going on. Depending on how much of that narrative national news outlets reported, when they reported it, and the specific sources they relied on, the stories they told were all incomplete, a lot of them slanted to make a particular point, and most of them dead wrong.

Here’s what we found out based on police affidavits, records requests we made, the details of an investigation we were able to obtain, and interviews with dozens and dozens of people involved, including government officials, Venezuelans, residents of the apartment complexes in question, and federal immigration officials.

Yes, there is a Venezuelan gang operating in Aurora. That’s according to officials with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Local officials said they have recently arrested several members of the gang for crimes at three apartment buildings in Aurora.

Contrary to what many national outlets have reported, the gang did take over the Whispering Pines apartment complex in Aurora for some time and sought to collect up to half of the rent from leaseholders, drying up collections for the landlord, according to a law firm’s investigation and letters we obtained. The complex is one of three owned by CBZ Management in Aurora, which has been the subject of a stream of complaints about horrible conditions at the buildings.

At one point, the apartment operator said that gang activity precluded it from doing its job in running the building and cleaning up the three properties. Aurora officials at first dismissed that claim, trying to impose their own narrative that this was a story about a bad landlord, not a foreign gang.

But those officials then changed their tone after a video emerged of armed men who were possibly gang members barging into an apartment unit.

Those early denials came despite the fact that the law firm’s findings were emailed to then-Interim Police Chief Heather R. Morris, Mayor Mike Coffman, and Aurora City Manager Jason Batchelor on Aug. 9, before police officials made their denials. A 10-page letter they were sent provides an exhaustive list of details that paints the picture of a terrorized community. Those details include death threats and attempts to extort the property manager, who later fled the property. The gang also told staffers and housekeepers that they are now “working for” the gang.

Aurora officials weren’t the only ones trying to drive a false narrative. Despite the details of the investigation we uncovered, The New York Times reported the story this way:

Caught in the middle are a number of migrants, living in dilapidated apartments that Aurora officials now call squalor, amid “criminal elements,” not widespread gang activity, and unable to find or afford better. The buildings are nonetheless at the center of a national firestorm.

Problem is, there was gang activity. Their account is contradicted by arrest affidavits, by a law firm’s investigation, by the police’s own admissions of gang activities, by Coffman and Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky. But it fits with the Times’ general empathy for immigrants in its stories.

This is also a NYT misreading of a statement by local officials:

Mr. Coffman and Ms. Jurinsky have both since backtracked.

“The overstated claims fueled by social media and through select news organizations are simply not true,” they wrote in a joint statement released Wednesday that appeared aimed at pushing back on Mr. Trump’s debate comments.

In that same statement, the government officials did admit there was gang violence at the apartment complexes and multiple arrests, which the Times failed to mention. The officials pushed back against the narrative that the gang had taken over the whole city, but that’s far different than what the Times implied: that there was really no gang problem at all.

Another media outlet reported this: “The allegations do not include evidence of broad, organized, systemic gang-led extortion or control at the apartment complexes.”

That’s just blatantly inaccurate.

No, the gang has not taken over the whole city of Aurora as President Donald Trump and some national media outlets and social media influencers have claimed, but that doesn’t mean there is not a serious gang problem in Aurora that hasn’t been fully addressed.

Often national media outlets go looking for a larger story in our local communities that illustrates a national trend they are writing about, an audience they are catering to, or a point of view their owners are pushing. In those scenarios, the granular facts of the specific story matter less than how the story can be used for some bigger narrative or ulterior purpose.

Vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance may have explained this phenomenon better than anyone recently when talking about the false stories of Haitian immigrants eating pets.

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

This is precisely why local media outlets are so important, much more so than national ones.

Local media outlets generally still believe that getting the facts out to the people they serve is Job One, respecting the people in their communities enough to let them decide what to pay attention to. Our news isn’t about campaign messages or Nielsen ratings, or ideological slant.

It’s about caring for a community, telling it what it needs to know. Local journalism is about being present in a place, about depth and nuance

National journalism is more about simplifying into blacks and whites; it usually can’t be bothered with local shades of gray. It’s about the horse race, the megatrends, the outrage of the moment.

Cable news, especially, is often about filling air time. They’re on all hours of the day and they want viewers to watch as long as possible, so opinion, news reporting and so-called expert analysis are all smooshed together so much that there is almost no way for the average Joe to figure out the basic facts. When you always focus on the big picture, sometimes that picture gets blown out so much that the true picture gets pixelated beyond recognition.

Local news sources enjoy a much higher level of trust (45%) than national news sources (31%), according to a recent Gallup/Knight Foundation study.

Americans are about twice as likely to express trust in local news (42%) rather than national news (23%) to give them information they need to vote

Americans say local news does the best job of keeping them informed, holding leaders accountable and amplifying stories in their communities versus social media, community-based apps and word of mouth. These findings are from a survey of 4,221 U.S. adults who are members of Gallup’s probability-based national panel, fielded Nov. 23-Dec. 3, 2021.

So no, we don’t write for a national audience or for a cause, or a candidate, or a political constituency. We write for Colorado.

We write for the wide open minds of wide open spaces. That’s all we care about, the folks who want to make this state great. We want to help. We want to be their story smith. We hope to write like Coloradans talk, with gumption, grit and feral joy. We write for the Palisade peach grower and the Platte Valley e-biker. We write for the seventh-generation rancher and the freshly arrived RINOite. We write for the men and women who try to match our mountains, but also for the sinners and misfits who moved here to wipe their slates. We write because, unlike CNN or The New York Times or Fox News or The New Yorker or The Associated Press, we care about this place more than any other place on Earth.