FLASHBACK: The Liberal Media’s Slanted Farewell to Pope John Paul II

Today is Easter Sunday, a good time to reflect on the liberal media’s coverage of the passing of Pope John Paul II, 19 years ago this week (April 2, 2005). While the media praised John Paul for his “charisma” and “magnetism,” journalists rejected what they characterized as his “extremely conservative” policies, as if long-standing Catholic Church doctrines were merely one Pope’s personal opinions that could be discarded on a whim. American journalists had long separated any admiration for John Paul as an inspirational world leader from their opposition to teachings that ran afoul of modern secular tastes. “There are some who say he would have been more comfortable in the 5th century, but some theologians say that, really, some of the 5th century Popes were more progressive than John Paul II,” reporter Jerry Bowen snarked on the August 15, 1993 edition of CBS’s Sunday Morning. “There are 60 million Catholics in America, and for many of them he also speaks with the voice of a conservative crank,” the Washington Post’s Henry Allen scoffed in an October 2, 1995 Style section story. So as the Pope’s health deteriorated to the point that his death seemed imminent on April 1, 2005, network news coverage reflected journalists’ longstanding hostility to what they saw as “rigid” Church policies. “Most of his views, you’d have to say, are extremely conservative,” NBC’s Matt Lauer asserted that Friday morning on Today. “He was, of course, controversial here,” ABC’s Peter Jennings intoned on World News Tonight. “Some American Catholics have chafed at his insistence that they follow the Church’s traditional social doctrine.” “Abortion, birth control, women priests,” reporter Dean Reynolds listed. “It’s all driven a wedge between the Vatican and America, regardless of the Pope’s standing in the world.” “He was responsible for appointing almost all of the 117 cardinals eligible to vote,” CNN’s Paula Zahn pointed out that same night, “making it very likely that the next Pope will share Pope John Paul II’s conservative stances on issues like abortion and the role of women in the church.” The next morning, as the media vigil continued, NBC’s Lester Holt again channeled the dissatisfaction of American Catholics. “Some believe his unyielding stance alienated American Catholics,” Holt argued on Today. “Pope John Paul II’s legacy in the world’s most powerful country may be that of a house divided, a man who changed the world, but in many ways, was unwilling to change his Church.” That Saturday afternoon, the Vatican announced the Pope’s death, with live coverage on all of the broadcast networks. While most of the coverage was respectful and positive, there was an obvious yearning for a more liberal Pope. Anchoring ABC’s coverage, Bob Woodruff asked Atlanta’s Archbishop Wilton Gregory about how “many believe...that perhaps this particular Pope has been too conservative socially for many Catholics in the United States.” Over on MSNBC, Chris Matthews directed the next Pope to approve the use of condoms. Discussing the AIDS epidemic in Africa, Matthews instructed: “A new Pope is going to have to grab that one and grab it hard, and he’s got to get to people to say ‘You may not like condoms, they may not be, but they’re a lot better than HIV/AIDS.” “John Paul found himself at odds with millions of Catholics in the United States and Europe who considered him reactionary and out of touch,” CBS’s Martha Teichner sniffed the next day on Sunday Morning. On Monday night, CBS treated the upcoming selection of a new Pope as akin to a popular election, reporting on a poll of American Catholics demanding more liberalization. On the April 4 CBS Evening News, anchor Bob Schieffer cited the Associated Press survey: “American Catholics hope whoever succeeds the Pope will make some changes in the church.” “The next Pope will have to work hard to gain back the support of many Catholics who were put off by the policies of the very Pope that so many have come here to mourn,” anchor Brian Williams, in Vatican City, agreed on Wednesday’s Nightly News. Correspondent Bob Faw continued the theme: “Embraced by multitudes....John Paul also alienated others. Lifelong Catholic Serra Sippel was so angered by his teachings she quit going to mass.” Faw then ran a soundbite from an American critic of John Paul on the issue of women priests. Rea Howarth, of Catholics Speak Out, sniped: “This Pope didn’t care to learn from the likes of women.” Make no mistake: much of the coverage of Pope John Paul that week was positive, a testament to the powerful inspiration he provided to the world throughout his long tenure. But in discussing the issues that divide Catholics, the media couldn’t resist skewing their coverage in the direction of those who would reinvent the John Paul’s Church to better match the world view of secular liberals. For more examples from our flashback series, which we call the NewsBusters Time Machine, go here.                  

FLASHBACK: Celebrating Liberal Justice Jackson, the ‘American Dream’

Exactly two years ago today (April 7, 2022), the U.S. Senate voted 53-47 to confirm federal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as the newest Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, replacing retiring Justice Stephen Breyer. Eighteen months earlier, liberal journalists fumed when a nearly mirror-image Senate vote (52-48) elevated federal Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Court, rebuking it as a “power play” and “the most partisan confirmation of a Supreme Court Justice in American history.” But Jackson’s confirmation was a time for “celebration,” as reporters applauded a new Justice who “represents excellence” and the “American Dream.” The media’s effusive praise of Jackson began as soon as President Biden announced her selection on February 25, 2022. “From the beginning, the federal appeals court judge was the frontrunner, with stellar academic and legal credentials and a compelling life story,” CBS’s Jan Crawford touted on the CBS Evening News. Over on CNN, legal analyst Laura Coates pronounced Jackson “almost a legal deity.” Two days later on Meet the Press, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell proclaimed: “She has extraordinary credentials.” In March, as the Senate Judiciary Committee began its hearings, NBC’s Yamiche Alcindor assured viewers Jackson was ready: “I was texting with one of her closest friends today and they told me yesterday was very, very emotional, but that they believe that their friend is like an Olympic athlete who has been training for this her whole life.” If the media presented Jackson as the hero of the hearings, they left no doubt the Republican Senators were to be seen as the villains. “Tom Cotton was thuggish....Lindsey Graham was screamy and weird,” MSNBC’s Joy Reid erupted on the March 22 The ReidOut. During a CNN panel discussion, the Grio’s Natasha Alford blasted Ted Cruz as a “clown” while legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin derided Cruz’s line of questioning — on Critical Race Theory — as “a trip to the surreal.” Referring to the Republican Supreme Court nominee who in 2018 was smeared by Democrats as a rapist, the Washington Post’s lead editorial on March 23 exclaimed: “Republicans boast they have not pulled a Kavanaugh. In fact, they’ve treated Jackson worse.” Jackson’s biggest flub of the hearings came on March 23, when Senator Marsha Blackburn asked if she could “provide a definition for the word woman?” A four-year old could have answered such a simple question, but Jackson preferred to evade: “I am not a biologist.” That night, ABC and CBS aided the nominee by refusing to even show the exchange during their evening news recap of the hearings. The headline in the next day’s USA Today exemplified the media’s attempt at damage control: “Marsha Blackburn asked Ketanji Brown Jackson to define ‘woman.’ Science says there’s no simple answer.” “The Republican manhandling of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson this week was convincing evidence that the Senate’s Supreme Court confirmation process is irredeemably broken,” the New York Times’s Carl Husle scolded in a front-page new story on March 24. On CBS Mornings, correspondent Nikole Killion said the hearing consisted of “searing attacks on the first black woman who is likely to be confirmed to the Supreme Court.” Co-host Gayle King fretted: “It was very painful to watch.” “Watching her sit there, as we’re looking at that picture right now, I felt as if I was watching a relative go through hell,” the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart rued on PBS’s NewsHour that Friday (March 25). “We work so hard as African Americans to get to these spots and to stay in these spots... to have to jump through these hoops and be questioned by people who aren’t even at our level.” The hearings changed no votes (do they ever?), with all Senate Democrats (plus three Republicans) voting to officially confirm Jackson roughly two weeks later (April 7). Glass ceiling metaphors abounded. “The star debater from Miami Palmetto Senior High School responsible for lots of shards of glass today, as she smashes through now, this ultimate ceiling in the legal world,” anchor Linsey Davis exulted during ABC’s live coverage. “This moment, of course, is 233 years in the making and she is shattering a double-paned glass ceiling as a black woman,” correspondent Yamiche Alcindor echoed during NBC’s special report. “For the first time in history, four of the nine justices will be women, and white men will be in the minority,” ABC congressional correspondent Rachel Scott announced on World News Tonight. “It was a moment of historic celebration,” CBS’s Nikole Killion enthused the next day (April 8) on CBS Mornings. “Cheers erupted from the Senate floor, to watch parties across the country.” “It’s a very proud moment for a lot of people today,” beamed co-host Gayle King. That afternoon, President Biden held a political event at the White House to further advertise Jackson’s confirmation. Gone was the bitterness with which the media approached the confirmation of Justice Barrett a year-and-a-half earlier. “It feels a little bit like a party here at the White House,” a smiling Mary Bruce recounted during ABC’s live coverage. “This is actually the biggest celebration I’ve seen so far during the Biden administration, and this is a very happy, excited crowd.” “She has achieved so much. She represents excellence to so many people,” ABC’s Deborah Roberts enthused a few minutes later. “Yes, she’s the first black woman, but I don’t think for a lot of people that is really what this is about. This is a woman who just represents excellence....She’s the American Dream.” Certainly, any judge who makes it to the Supreme Court should be celebrated for having reached the pinnacle of their profession. It’s too bad that the media can’t be equally effusive when the high-achieving judge who reaches the Court has been appointed by a Republican president. For more examples from our flashback series, which we call the NewsBusters Time Machine, go here.               

FLASHBACK: When a Juvenile News Media Tried to Destroy the Tea Party

Fifteen years ago this week (April 15, 2009), the grassroots Tea Party movement rallied to oppose the massive government programs (bailouts, ObamaCare) pushed by new President Barack Obama. In response, left-wing cable networks employed adolescent jokes to belittle the movement, while the broadcast networks decried it as a front for “corporate interests.” The media putdowns failed, of course. The following November, the energy supplied by the Tea Party contributed to a “shellacking” of Democrats in the 2010 elections, as Republicans gained 63 House seats and six Senate seats (seven if you count Scott Brown’s upset in a January special election in Massachusetts). The first T.E.A. Party (Taxed Enough Already) protests took place in various cities on February 27, 2009, a reaction to presumed new taxes that would inevitably result from the Obama administration’s huge bailouts and spending programs. A major national protest was scheduled for April 15, “tax day,” the deadline for filing federal income tax forms. Filling in as host of MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann on April 13, David Shuster mocked the Tea Party by repeatedly deploying a slang term for a sex act called “teabagging.” “It’s going to be teabagging day for the right-wing and they’re going nuts for it. Thousands of them whipped out the festivities early this past weekend, and while the parties are officially toothless, the teabaggers are full-throated about their goals,” Shuster sophomorically sneered. The next night, CNN’s Anderson Cooper got into the act. “Republicans are pretty much in disarray...They’re searching for their voice,” analyst David Gergen dryly opined on the April 14 AC360. “It’s hard to talk when you’re teabagging,” Cooper snickered.       The big protests against Obama’s policies were April 15. That morning on New York City’s Imus in the Morning radio program, CNN analyst Paul Begala suggested true patriots would have no problem handing their cash to liberal bureaucrats, as he derided those protesting as “just a bunch of wimpy, whiny, weasels who don’t love their country....There are guys at Walter Reed who gave their legs for my country, and they’re whining because they have to write a check?” Over on NBC’s Today, Chuck Todd dismissed the Tea Party as no big deal. “There’s been some grassroots conservatives who have organized so-called ‘tea parties’ around the company, country, hoping the historical reference will help galvanize Americans against the President’s economic ideas. But I tell you, the idea hasn’t really caught on....It hasn’t galvanized the party the way they would hope.” On CNN that afternoon, correspondent Susan Roesgen decried the protest as “a party for Obama bashers....It’s anti-government, anti-CNN, since this is highly promoted by the right wing conservative network, Fox. And since I can’t really hear much more and I think this is not really family viewing, I’ll toss it back to you.” On ABC’s World News that evening, correspondent Dan Harris framed the protests as something “cheered on by Fox News and talk radio,” as he emphasized how “critics on the left” claimed “this is not a real grassroots phenomenon at all, that it’s actually largely orchestrated by people fronting for corporate interests.” “Organizers insist today’s ‘tea parties’ were organic uprisings of like-minded taxpayers from both parties....but some observers suggest not all of it was as home-grown as it may seem,” NBC’s Lee Cowan echoed on Nightly News. Over on CBS, correspondent Dean Reynolds cautioned that “it’s important to keep in mind that fresh polling indicates there is not all that much passion about high taxes in the country at large right now.” “All of these tax day parties seemed less about revolution and more about group therapy,” New York Times reporter Liz Robbins dismissed in an online piece that afternoon. “People attending the rallies were dressed patriotically and held signs expressing their anger, but offering no solutions.” Someone must have thought she went too far — Robbins’ snarky observations were omitted from the version of the article which appeared in the Times’ April 16 print edition. Following the protests, MSNBC’s Countdown on April 16 provided a platform for left-wing activist and actress Janeane Garofalo to accuse the Tea Partiers of ignorance and racism. “Let’s be very honest about what this is about,” she sneered. “It’s not about bashing Democrats, it’s not about taxes, they have no idea what the Boston Tea Party was about, they don’t know their history at all. This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks.” The disdainful coverage of the April rallies set the tone for the rest of the year. “What do you call a crazed group of people that disrupts a meeting on health care and hangs the congressman holding it in effigy? A mob,” ex-CNN reporter Bob Franken deplored in his August 7 “Politics Daily” column on AOL. “When Hamas does it or Hezbollah does it, it is called terrorism. Why should Republican lawmakers and the AstroTurf groups organizing on behalf of the health care industry be viewed any differently?” MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann growled that same night on Countdown. “They’ve waved signs likening President Obama to Hitler and the devil; raised questions about whether he was really born in this country; falsely accused him of planning to set up death panels; decried his speech to students as indoctrination; and called him everything from a ‘fascist’ to a ‘socialist’ to a ‘communist.’” ABC’s Harris scolded on the September 15 World News. “Add it all up, and some prominent Obama supporters are now saying that it paints a picture of an opposition driven, in part, by a refusal to accept a black President.” When radical liberals take to the streets to rail against Republican policies, the media like to paint their cause as popular and bend over backwards to present the protesters as mainstream and normal. But when it came to the anti-big government Tea Party, the media’s mission was to disparage and destroy the grassroots opposition to the Obama administration’s unprecedented liberalism. For more examples from our flashback series, which we call the NewsBusters Time Machine, go here.                          

STUDY: At Least 90% of TV News Fails to Call Trump Prosecutors ‘Democrats’

Barring a last-minute hiccup, today a Democratic prosecutor — Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg — will begin his unprecedented criminal trial of former President Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s certain presidential nominee in November’s general election. Despite the obvious political implications of such a prosecution, a new study of ABC, CBS and NBC evening news coverage shows at least 90% of their coverage failed to inform viewers that Bragg and the other elected Democrats going after Trump are “Democrats.” It’s as if the networks prefer to disingenuously portray the indictments and civil lawsuits as the work of nonpartisan career prosecutors, rather than as partisan attempts to use the court system to hobble the electoral prospects of the country’s top Republican. For this study, our analysts reviewed all broadcast evening news coverage from January 1, 2023 through April 10, 2024. Here’s a rundown of how the networks are failing to adequately disclose the partisanship of the three elected Democrats prosecuting Trump: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg; Fulton County (Georgia) District Attorney Fani Willis; and New York Attorney General Letitia James. ■ Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg: Bragg attained his current post after he ran and won as a Democrat in the November 2021 general election. During his campaign, Bragg all but promised to use his office to pursue the former President — to hold him “accountable,” as Bragg not-so-subtly put it as he vied with other Democrats for the coveted nomination. And Bragg isn’t just a mainstream Democrat — he’s clearly on the far left (“progressive”) wing of the party. A New York Times “fact check” last March grudgingly documented the links between Bragg and left-wing billionaire George Soros as “real but overstated....Mr. Soros donated to a liberal group that endorses progressive prosecutors and supports efforts to overhaul the criminal justice system — in line with causes that he has publicly supported for years. That group used a significant portion of the money to support Mr. Bragg in his 2021 campaign.” In other words, Bragg is exactly the sort of ideological prosecutor the Soros squad pushed in big cities across America a few years ago, with damaging results for the people who live in those jurisdictions. In spite of this, since Bragg zeroed in on Trump early last year, the Big Three evening newscasts have rarely mentioned his undisputed partisanship. ABC’s World News Tonight has aired 56 stories discussing Bragg’s “hush money” case against Trump, yet sharp-eared viewers only once heard that Bragg was a Democrat — on February 26, 2024, when correspondent Aaron Katersky relayed how “a spokesman for Trump... called Bragg ‘another deranged Democrat prosecutor.’” That’s still better than the CBS Evening News, which aired 48 stories discussing Bragg’s case, none of which revealed that the District Attorney is a Democrat. NBC Nightly News was the most informative on this score, informing viewers that Bragg is a Democrat in 16 out of 59 stories, or about 27% of the time — still barely one-fourth of stories. Add it all up, and the Big Three only labeled Bragg as a Democrat 17 times out of 163 stories, which means Bragg’s partisanship was omitted from nearly 90% of evening news stories about his election-season indictments of the former President. ■ New York Attorney General Letitia James: Twice elected as an anti-Trump Democrat (in 2018 and 2022), James showed her ambition for higher office when she briefly challenged incumbent Kathy Hochul for the Democratic nomination for governor in 2021. After two months, she dropped that campaign in favor of a second term as the state’s Attorney General. “There are a number of important investigations and cases that are underway, and I intend to finish the job,” James explained. That same day, she stepped up her investigation of the Trump businesses that led to the unprecedented $355 million civil judgment against the former President, now being appealed. In other words, James seems to have concluded she needed to win a judicial victory against Trump to make herself more popular among Democratic voters. Yet on ABC, CBS and NBC, there’s been even less discussion of James’s blunt partisanship than of Bragg’s. Through April 10, ABC’s World News Tonight has aired 44 stories mentioning James’s suit against Trump and his businesses, yet only one — back on November 6 — identified the state Attorney General as a “Democrat,” in a fleeting on-screen graphic that was shown for less than two seconds. Similarly, the CBS Evening News produced 35 stories that discussed James’s civil case, but only once did viewers learn about James’s partisanship. As with ABC, the information was disclosed in an on-screen graphic, as the March 24, 2024 Sunday night newscast briefly showed a Trump campaign message demanding that “Insane radical Democrat AG Letitia James” keep her “FILTHY HANDS OFF OF TRUMP TOWER.” Compared to its competitors, NBC Nightly News was again the most informative. The newscast discussed the civil case in 26 stories, seven of which (27%) mentioned James’s party affiliation. Yet that means the vast majority of stories (73%) omitted this important information. The final tally: As of April 10, the Big Three have aired 105 stories about the civil case against Trump, but only nine mentioned that the official who brought the charges, Letitia James, is a partisan Democrat — leaving this crucial fact out of 93% of network stories. ■ Fulton County (Georgia) District Attorney Fani Willis: As with Bragg and James, Willis’s partisanship is not in dispute. She ran and won as a Democrat in 2020, and she is running for re-election this fall as a Democrat. This spring, during a misconduct hearing into her affair with a lead prosecutor, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported “prominent Democrats” in Georgia were “rallying around” Willis, hoping to keep her from being removed from the Trump case. Nonetheless, while ABC’s World News Tonight (60) and the CBS Evening News (39) have aired a combined 99 stories mentioning Willis’s prosecution of Trump, none — ZERO — have told their viewers that the District Attorney is a partisan Democrat. For its part, the NBC Nightly News mentioned Willis was a Democrat eight times out of 50 stories — omitting this fact from the remaining 84% of its coverage. Add it all up, and out of 149 evening news stories about the Georgia election case against Trump, a scant five percent revealed that Willis was a Democrat, vs. 95% that kept viewers in the dark. +++++ From the beginning of these cases, journalists have had a choice in how they frame these various legal challenges to Donald Trump: Democrats vs. a Republican (i.e., a partisan food fight), or nonpartisan law enforcement vs. an accused lawbreaker. Clearly, the editorial choices made by these broadcast networks shows they are framing these cases as the actions of nonpartisan law enforcement officials — all of whom just happen to be Democrats. But if it were a leading Democrat who had been placed under the legal microscope by a trio of elected Republicans, does anyone think that the media would be so reluctant to even mention the partisanship of the prosecutors? Of course not.

FLASHBACK: Media Seized on Elián Saga to Vilify Anti-Communists

Twenty-four years ago tomorrow (April 22, 2000), Attorney General Janet Reno ordered gun-toting immigration officers to snatch six-year-old Elián Gonzalez from his Miami home in preparation for his return to communist Cuba after a lengthy diplomatic dispute. Five months earlier, Elián was brought by his mother and her boyfriend in their attempt to flee Cuba by sea, hoping for a new life in the United States. Their boat lost power and sank, and Elián’s mother drowned along with most of the other passengers. The U.S. Coast Guard  brought him to Florida after he was found floating in an inner tube on November 25, 1999; the youngster was then sent to live with relatives in Miami, just as he would have if his mother had successfully completed her escape. From the beginning, liberal journalists insisted there was nothing superior about living in the United States vs. the communist dictatorship in Cuba. On his December 6, 1999 Upfront program, for example, CNBC’s Geraldo Rivera argued the only problem was that Castro’s tyranny was “unpopular” with Americans. “You can hate Castro and hate his government,” Rivera lobbied, but then “every time you have an unpopular government that we object to, children can be snatched from that country....It’s just unconscionable....It’s politics, it stinks.” During ABC’s round-the-clock New Year’s coverage on December 31, 1999, correspondent Cynthia McFadden in Havana related how in a visit to a Cuban school, the children “talked about... their fear of the United States... because it was a place where they kidnap children — a direct reference, of course to Elián Gonzalez.” Of course, there was no hint that the children McFadden spoke with were merely repeating the propaganda line fed to them by the government. By April, it was obvious that the Clinton administration was going to find a way to send Elián back to the nation his mother fled. Journalists claimed that life in Castro’s Cuba might be better than life in America. “Elián might expect a nurturing life in Cuba, sheltered from the crime and social breakdown that would be part of his upbringing in Miami,” Newsweek’s Brook Larmer and John Leland argued in their magazine’s April 17, 2000 issue. “The boy will nestle again in a more peaceable society that treasures its children.” “To be a poor child in Cuba may in many instances be better than being a poor child in Miami, and I’m not going to condemn their lifestyle so gratuitously,” their Newsweek colleague Eleanor Clift pronounced on the April 8 McLaughlin Group. Pressed, Clift later doubled down, telling FNC’s Bill O’Reilly on May 1: “I can understand why a rational, loving father can believe that his child will be protected in a state where he doesn’t have to worry about going to school and being shot at, where drugs are not a big problem, where he has access to free medical care and where the literacy rate, I believe, is higher than this country’s.” In an April 20 interview with Vice President Al Gore’s wife, Tipper, CNN host Larry King echoed the Castro regime’s anti-American talking points: “One of the things that Elián Gonzalez’s father said, that I guess would be hard to argue with, that his boy’s safer in a school in Havana than in a school in Miami. He would not be shot in a school in Havana. Good point?” To her credit, Tipper Gore disagreed: “Well, I think that’s a, that’s a bit of a harsh point....” As they peddled the idea that life under communism was grand, journalists also took nasty swipes at the anti-communist Cuban community in Miami. “Some suggested over the weekend that it’s wrong to expect Elián Gonzalez to live in a place that tolerates no dissent or freedom of political expression. They were talking about Miami....Another writer this weekend called it ‘an out of control banana republic within America,’” NBC’s Katie Couric jabbed as she opened the April 3 Today. “In Miami, it’s impossible to overestimate how everything here is colored by a hatred of communism and Fidel Castro,” ABC’s John Quinones relayed the next day on World News Tonight. “It’s a community with very little tolerance for those who might disagree.” “The ‘banana republic’ label sticking to Miami in the final throes of the Elián Gonzalez crisis is a source of snide humor for most Americans. But many younger Cuban-Americans are getting tired of the hard-line anti-Castro operatives who have helped manufacture that stereotype,” Time’s Tim Padgett echoed in his magazine’s April 17 edition. The New York Times suggested it was old-fashioned to have a negative opinion of communist dictatorships. “Communism Still Looms as Evil to Miami Cubans,” the newspaper screamed in an April 11 headline. On CBS’s The Early Show (April 14) , co-host Bryant Gumbel offered this slanted question to his network’s Cuba expert, Pamela Falk: “Cuban-Americans, Ms. Falk, have been quick to point fingers at Castro for exploiting the little boy. Are their actions any less reprehensible?” Then on the Saturday before Easter, immigration officers raided the home of Elián’s Miami relatives to begin the process of returning the child to Cuba. Anchoring live coverage that morning (April 22), CBS anchor Dan Rather praised Janet Reno for ordering the assault: “In the end it worked. The child was gotten out safely.” Rather also took the opportunity to vouch for the Cuban dictator’s good intentions: “There is no question that Castro feels a very deep and abiding connection to those Cubans who are still in Cuba....There’s little doubt in my mind that Fidel Castro was sincere when he said, ‘listen, we really want this child back here.’” The heavy-handedness of the raid, typified by the picture of a fearful Elián being confronted by an armed immigration officer, was actually saluted by some in the press. “I gotta confess, that now-famous picture of a U.S. marshal in Miami pointing an automatic weapon toward Donato Dalrymple [the man holding Elián in the picture] and ordering him in the name of the U.S. government to turn over Elián Gonzalez warmed my heart,” New York Times columnist Tom Friedman cheered in his April 25 column headlined “Reno for President.” According to Time’s Michael Duffy, the only valid criticism of Attorney General Janet Reno is that she waited too long to send in the soldiers. “I think any raid where no shots are fired and no one is hurt is a success,” Duffy affirmed on the April 28 edition of PBS’s Washington Week in Review. “I think where Reno is to blame is not that she should have talked longer or kept the negotiations going, but that she should have cut them off much sooner....She just should have stopped it earlier.” Meanwhile, NBC’s Avila continued to reject the idea that Cuba was oppressed by communism. “The one thing that I’ve learned about Cubans in the many times that I have visited here in the last few years, is that it is mostly a nationalistic country, not primarily a communist country,” he naively insisted on MSNBC’s Imus in the Morning four days after the raid (April 26). After two months living with his father as court challenges concluded, Elian and his father returned to Cuba in late June, 2000. The media continued to present the communist indoctrination that awaited him as normal. “The school system in Cuba teaches that communism is the way to succeed in life and it is the best system. Is that deprogramming or is that national heritage?” NBC’s Jim Avila wondered on CNBC’s Upfront Tonight on June 27. “Elián will almost certainly rejoin the Pioneers as almost all Cuban children do. It’s very much like the Cub Scouts, camping trips and all, but with a socialist flavor and a revolutionary spin,” NBC’s Keith Morrison exclaimed on the June 28 Dateline. All of that “education” has certainly had an impact: In March 2023, Elián Gonzalez was “elected” to Cuban National Assembly — which means he was selected by the communist party to run unopposed in his district. “At 29, he is a show pony for Cuba, just as many exiles feared,” the Miami Herald noted in a March 27 editorial. “The fight to claim Elián Gonzalez and give him a life in America was the last great battle between Castro, U.S. ‘imperialism’ and Miami exiles. And the dictator won.” With a lot of help from a compliant news media. For more examples from our flashback series, which we call the NewsBusters Time Machine, go here.                          

FLASHBACK: Lib Reporters Championed ’06 Illegal Immigrant Protests

Eighteen years ago this week, the liberal networks donated their airwaves to the cause of protesters seeking to kill a bill which would have increased the federal government’s ability to enforce immigration laws. The May 1, 2006 protests were part of a wave of activism that spring sponsored by left-wing groups aimed at derailing GOP efforts to curb illegal immigration — even as polls at the time showed four out of five Americans (81%) thought illegal immigration was “out of control.” [For perspective: in 2006, there were a total of 1,089,096 encounters with illegal immigrants at all U.S. borders, according to government statistics. Under Joe Biden, those numbers were nearly three times higher last year (2023): a whopping 3,201,144 encounters. So what was regarded as “out of control” 18 years ago would today seem like great progress.] We’ll never know if today’s situation would be significantly better if Congress had succeeded in passing new enforcement mechanisms in 2006. Back then, the networks helped immigration activists thwart these conservative proposals, with fawning and emotionally-charged coverage of these political marches — “people draping themselves in the American dream,” as one over-the-top morning host anchor enthused. That spring, network correspondents invariably expressed admiration for the large size of the protests — as if a few hundred thousands of participants rendered the cause genuinely popular in a nation of 300 million. “[The immigration issue] erupted this weekend in mass demonstrations that matched the biggest of the civil rights movement or the Vietnam War,” CBS weekend anchor Mika Brzezinski enthused on March 26. “Over the past several days, a protest movement has been born, erupting with a startling air of spontaneity in mass demonstrations,” ABC’s Terry Moran cheered the next day on Nightline. “You could hear the anger about the proposal before Congress that would criminalize illegal or undocumented immigrants and make it a felony to help them in any way.” Three weeks later, another round of protests earned more free airtime. “Across the country today, hundreds of thousands of people came out in support of millions of undocumented workers,” ABC’s Elizabeth Vargas touted on the April 10 World News Tonight. The tone was unquestionably sympathetic. “They are not American citizens yet, but they want to be. And from every corner of America, immigrants took to the streets today to ask for new immigration laws,” CBS Evening News anchor Bob Schieffer applauded that same night. “Not since the protests of the Vietnam era has there been anything quite like it.” Newspapers conveyed the same spin. “A Banner Day on the Mall,” declared the Washington Post the next morning, while USA Today heralded: “Historic rallies voice a ‘dream.” On CBS’s The Early Show, co-host Harry Smith was giddy. “These demonstrations in all these cities across the country, hundreds of thousands of people, American flags unfurled, people draping themselves in the American dream....People literally all over the country walking away from their jobs to stand in the street and say, ‘I count for something,’” he beamed. The biggest event came on May 1, and the networks supplied blanket coverage of the heavily-promoted event. “From coast to coast, from North to South, they wanted us to know what America would be like without them, and so millions of immigrants missed work, skipped school and marched in the streets,” CBS’s Schieffer explained on the Evening News. Over on World News Tonight, ABC’s Vargas called it “an economic show of force by America’s illegal immigrants....They wanted to show America just how much the country and the economy depend on undocumented workers.” “In Philadelphia today, huge crowds converged on the Liberty Bell. In Milwaukee, a massive march on the shores of Lake Michigan,” Terry Moran exulted on ABC’s Nightline. “Hundreds of thousands of workers, their families and supporters, took over the city streets today in a massive demonstration of sheer numerical power. It was breathtaking....” The next morning on NBC’s Today, co-host Katie Couric chirped that the events were “shades of the early days of the civil rights movement.” Reporter Kevin Tibbles kept up the theme: “These people vow to continue their push for immigration reform, so those who critics call ‘illegals’ can continue to call America home.” If there was any confusion about the political motivations at play, CBS carved out some airtime for a soon-to-be-famous Democratic Senator who had attached himself to the cause. “Unlike last month’s wave of demonstrations, politicians didn’t simply take notice. Today, many showed up,” correspondent Byron Pitts saluted on the May 1 Evening News. Viewers then saw Pitts with then-Illinois Senator Barack Obama, who wagged his finger at Americans who thought immigration laws should be enforced. “We’ve been engaging in hypocrisy in this country. We don’t mind these folks mowing our lawns, or looking after our children, or serving us at restaurants, as long as they don’t actually ask for any rights in return.” The MRC’s Tim Graham studied the broadcast network coverage that spring, documenting the gross imbalance. “Advocates of opening a wider path to citizenship were almost twice as likely to speak in news stories as advocates for stricter immigration control,” he discovered. Out of 830 soundbites, Graham found 504 (61%) advocated amnesty, vs. 257 (31%) who wanted tighter border controls. (The rest were neutral.) Graham also found the networks essentially ignored topics that might harm the cause. Out of 309 stories (from March 25 through May 31, 2006), only six “mentioned studies that illegal aliens cost more to governments than they provide in tax dollars.” Similarly, only six stories mentioned crimes committed by illegal immigrants, and “no story in the study period mentioned the problem of Latino criminal gangs” infiltrating the United States. Fast forward to 2024, and today’s utterly unrestrained immigration — and the Biden administration’s obvious tolerance of it — is the top reason voters oppose the President’s re-election this year. It would be ironic if today’s pro-immigration Democrats are booted as a delayed reaction to the liberal media’s assistance in short-circuiting attempts at tougher enforcement a generation ago. For more examples from our flashback series, which we call the NewsBusters Time Machine, go here.