Ironically, it’s actually the Jewish Family Service charity that is arranging for hotel rooms - so that the asylum-seekers can observe San Diego’s 10-day virus quarantine order. 8, Carlson started off by stating inaccurately that the “Biden administration is releasing thousands of foreign nationals living here illegally into American neighborhoods without bothering to test them for the coronavirus.”Ĭarlson also complained that “taxpayers are paying for foreign nationals who should be deported to live in hotel rooms.” And right now, for good measure, it’s about turning around the charge of insurrection and projecting it on their enemies. It’s to get them to blame Democrats for their problems. It’s to make them feel personally victimized. It’s to make them fear for their safety, their children’s safety, their homes, their neighborhoods, their quality of life and even their form of government. The plan is to make their viewers think about immigration as an invasion of Black and brown criminals. On one recent night in particular, inspired by a hyperbolic misreading of new interim instructions for ICE personnel, Carlson and Ingraham telegraphed their grotesque game plan. Newsrooms need to embrace the narrative of inclusion, rather than the narrative of invasion.Īnd although it’s tempting to simply ignore what’s going on at Fox News and other toxic propaganda outlets, the rest of the media needs to call out their vile attempts to spread hate and dissension through lies. And they need to remind people that immigration strengthens the nation and defines us as a people. They need to encourage honest, fact-based debate. Rather than get distracted by the ginned-up panic of racists and the click-baity conflicts at the border, journalists need to tell the real, complex stories of immigrants and immigration. And it’s a government story, not a politics story. With Biden slowing deportations and pushing for the biggest overhaul in immigration reform since the 1980s, reporters have countless opportunities to engage in thoughtful, nuanced coverage of a tremendously complex issue that has profound moral and practical implications for every community in the country.
#Evil lunacy how to#
So the big question now is: Will the mainstream media once again allow right-wing demagogues to establish the framing for immigration coverage? Or, after all that has transpired, have newsroom leaders finally realized that their obligation is to be on the lookout for the next big lie and, rather than enable it, figure out how to counter it and then do so insistently and enthusiastically? Throughout the 2016 election campaign, the mainstream media gave Trump seemingly unlimited, unrebutted airtime and bandwidth, even though - or perhaps because - he used the kind of language that had been considered outside the bounds of political discourse.Īnd two years later, the media dutifully succumbed to hysteria about “caravans” of migrants that Trump insisted were an existential threat to the country - until of course they were not, as soon as the midterm elections were over. It reduces immigration to one issue: race. It’s filthy stuff - visceral appeals to the very worst elements of American pathology. They’ve already found one winner: reprising the toxic, racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric that brought Trump to power in the first place, but which had ebbed as Trump turned to other grievances instead.Ĭue Tucker Carlson, stoking racialized fear the other night on Fox News, charging that under Joe Biden’s immigration policies “an MS-13 member arrested for drug dealing with previous convictions for say, theft, extortion, grand larceny” could be released “maybe into your neighborhood.”Ĭue Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, darkly warning that immigrants will “swamp the voting power of all of you Americans out there who still know the country’s traditions, constitution and history,” and “overthrow everything we love about America.”Ĭue the former Trump ICE appointee prophesying to a receptive “Fox & Friends” host that “people will die, people will be raped, people will be victimized by criminals that shouldn’t even be here.”Ĭue Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s most heartless anti-immigrant policies, telling Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo that “the legislation put forward by Biden and congressional Democrats would fundamentally erase the very essence of America’s nationhood” and bemoaning “the cruelty and inhumanity of Joe Biden’s immigration policies” with Ingraham. In the vacuum left behind by Donald Trump, the ringleaders of the right-wing media ecosystem are finding new and old ways to keep stoking white hysteria.
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