The title of this post sure demands your attention. And it's not surprising; short, sweet and shocking nuggets like that "sell". After all, who's gonna bother reading the actual article? Most won't, and of those that do, few wiill read more than a few sentences. The folks at the Conservative Tribute know this, which is why their articles are structured and written as they are. Which is why I wasn't that surprised when the post here opened with a statement that this was "an Obama administration plan that would cut out the smugglers and coyotes as the middle men of the illegal immigration business, and take over operations themselves."
Strong words...
The Conservative Tribune post mentioned that their commentary was in response to reporting by the New York Times and handily provided a link to said reporting. When I read someone's commentary in response to an article - especially someone who has a clear partisan bias - I prefer to not just take their word that they are describing the article they are commenting on accurately or objectively. Also, since they provided me with a link, it'd be impolite to not actually click it. So off I went to read the New York Times piece.
Not surprisingly, the statements made by the Conservative Tribute were not accurately describing the issue. They didn't quite distort things, but they manipulated it just enough as to make what the NYT reported and what they wrote two very different things. How so?
First, remember that the Conservative Tribute said that it was commenting on an "an Obama administration plan that would cut out the smugglers and coyotes as the middle men of the illegal immigration business, and take over operations themselves." Or where they?
The NYT article was about a plan that, if approved, "would direct the government to screen thousands of children and youths in Honduras to see if they can enter the United States as refugees or on emergency humanitarian grounds." In other words, this plan involves checking whether Hondurans likely to make the trip to attempt to enter the country illegally actually qualify to enter the coutry legally instead. So, the outrage here is that the Administration appears to want to screen these people before they embark on the trip and attempt to enter into the country without going through immigration.
This is something very different than the story the Conservative Tribute headline sold...
Let's be clear. I don't particularly like this plan; I think that it's misguided and does little to help address the very real problem of illegal immigration. Nor am I posting to voice my support of said plan or to defend it or the Administration.
I am, however, posting to suggest that if you are going to be outraged about something, then you may not want to rely on what partisan hacks write since their goal is to agitate the mindless partisan lackeys that pay them any attention rather than to inform you of facts and let you form an opinion on the merits of an issue.
