89 Percent of Network Stories Omit Obama's Role in Causing Border Crisis

By Geoffrey Dickens

Deputy Research Director

While all three networks played clips of Barack Obama on Monday blaming the GOP for the border crisis, they have been reluctant to cite the President’s own failure to enforce immigration laws as a cause for thousands of immigrants illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexican border. 

From June 8 through the morning of July 1 ABC, CBS and NBC have offered a total of 45 stories on the border crisis, on their evening and morning shows, and in only 5 (11 percent) have they brought up Obama immigration policies as a possible cause for the most recent surge of illegal immigrants, including unaccompanied children, crossing the border. 

On Monday night through Tuesday morning all three networks carried clips of the President pointing his finger at Congress for not passing immigration reform as his excuse to act unilaterally without them. On the June 30 edition of ABC’s World News, Jim Avila reported: “A frustrated President Obama calling these crowded cells filled with young children a humanitarian crisis that can only be fixed by immigration reform. Today announcing he can’t wait on the Republican House anymore.” Avila then played a soundbite of Obama pronouncing: “I’m beginning a new effort to fix as much of our immigration system, as I can on my own, without Congress.”

http://www.mrc.org/biasalerts/89-percent-network-stories-omit-obamas-role-causing-border-crisis

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