Seizing On A Tragedy To Spread Hate
The Media Research Center joined other right-wingers in cynically exploiting the death of Laken Riley to advance its anti-immigrant agenda -- then whined when that strategy was called out.
The Media Research Center loves freaking out about immigrant crime, even when the statistics don’t support it. Still, the MRC loves to capitalize on the misery of others to push the scary-brown-person narrative, and its big story this year involved the death of Laken Riley, killed by an undocumented immigrant — so big, in fact, that the MRC got nearly a year’s worth of exploitative content out of her. Riley made her first appearance as a narrative tool to exploit in a Feb. 24 post by Alex Christy:
The big three networks of ABC, NBC, and CBS had three underwhelming, yet widely varying approaches to the news that a released illegal immigrant has been charged with the murder of a Georgia college student on the respective editions of Good Morning America, Today and CBS Saturday Mornings. ABC mentioned the illegal immigrant part, but not the released part. NBC mentioned the murder but omitted the illegal immigrant angle, and CBS ignored the story altogether.
On Friday’s Evening News, CBS did manage to do a report on the subject with Mark Strassman reporting that “Late this afternoon, police announced they had a murder suspect in custody but gave no other details. Friday felt different here, edgy for many. All day police scoured this apartment complex, and Friday classes were canceled.”
However, not only was no update given in the morning, but the story itself was ignored.
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Certainly, a good portion of the reports were appropriately spent honoring the victim, who was a nursing student on the dean’s list, but is one sentence mentioning that Ibarra is an illegal immigrant who crossed the border in El Paso and released because of a lack of detention space too much to ask for?
The next day, by contrast, Brad Wilmouth praised Fox News for adhering to the required partisan talking points:
After the other networks mostly failed to inform viewers that an illegal alien was arrested for allegedly murdering a young nursing student in Georgia, Fox on Saturday gave the story thorough coverage, informing viewers that the Joe Biden administration had released the Venezuelan national after he crossed the southern border into the U.S. illegally in 2022.
On Fox & Friends Saturday, contributor Tom Homan made two appearances on the show and helped break the news that the suspect, Jose Antonio Ibarra, crossed the border illegally in September 2022 but was released in spite of federal law that mandates detention under such circumstances.
Nicholas Fondacaro used a Feb. 26 post to complain that Republicans were called out for exploiting Riley’s death for partisan reasons:
After the liberal media initially refused to report that the murderer of University of Georgia student Laken Hope Riley was an illegal immigrant who was arrested multiple times, we have now reached the phase of the coverage where Republicans noticing the problem was the concerning issue of the story. That seemed to be the reaction CNN’s Jake Tapper had during Monday’s The Lead when he whined that “Republicans [were], obviously, seizing on this horrific tragedy.”
[…]
Later in the program, he whined that Republicans were citing the murder as a reason to get border security under control. “So, Republicans, obviously, seizing on this horrific tragedy at the University of Georgia. This girl, this nursing student, killed by an undocumented Venezuelan migrant. And they’re seizing on this as an example of Biden’s failure to protect the American people, to secure the border,” he decried as if this wasn’t the result of failed liberal border policies.
Then it was time to play whataboutism:
Former “Republican strategist,” Doug Heye kvetched that “politics enter these things very quickly. And Donald Trump knows how to take advantage of a situation like this and exploit it.”
If that’s the case, Tapper could be credibly accused of seizing on the Parkland school shooting in 2019 in order to push gun control and attack Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and gun rights advocate Dana Loesch with his so-called “town hall” event. He even got a little award for his little show trial against them.
Fondacaro spread a lie about that town hall, repeating a questioner’s false claim that CNN demanded that he ask a scripted question. Even after the questioner’s father admitted that he altered emails to support the false claim, Fondacaro never corrected the record or apologized for lying to his readers.
Clay Waters followed up with a Feb. 29 post complaining that PBS host Amna Nawaz “made a politicized pivot to chide Fox News, suggesting ‘conservatives and right-wing media’ were unfairly seizing on Laken Riley’s murder to promote their anti-immigration views, airing a Fox clip featuring anchor Jesse Watters.” When a commentator noted that “immigrants do not engage in more crime than native-born counterparts, and immigration actually can cause crime to go down, rather than up, so quite contrary to public perception,” Waters huffed that “one could argue being in the country illegally is a crime in itself.” But standing on the wrong side of a line is not a violent crime.
Bill D’Agostino similarly whined in a March 1 compilation post that the “Republicans pounce” strategy was called out:
The horrific murder of college student Laken Riley in Athens, Georgia last week has resulted in some of the most inhuman political coverage imaginable from our news media. Corporate journalists have spent the week wringing their hands about the resulting “backlash” against illegal aliens, and scoffing at Republicans for “seizing” on this tragedy — by calling for policy changes that could have prevented it.
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The news media know the border is a losing issue for their favorite political party. Thus far, they’ve been dealing with it by obfuscating as much of the damage caused by America’s open border as possible. But it looks like that’s not working anymore, and instead they’ve fallen back to accusing critics of xenophobia and feigning outrage whenever anyone to the right of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talks about crime perpetrated by illegal aliens.
D’Agostino offered no evidence that anyone in his video compilation has ever identified the Democrats as their “favorite political party.”
Blaming Biden
the Media Research Center moved on to trying to blame President Biden for her death, despite never identifying no action directly linking him to it. Tim Graham responded in a March 1 post to a reporter calling out Donald Trump for blaming Biden for the crime by playing whataboutism: “That would be unfair, to connect Biden to a death? Interesting, since CBS in 2019 was aiding Democrat presidential candidates in connecting a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso to Trump.”
In a March 6 post, Curtis Houck cheered right-wing Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy for asking White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre if Biden would “publicly address Laken Riley’s murder allegedly at the hands of an illegal immigrant” during his State of the Union address, whining that “Jean-Pierre callously linked Riley’s murder to Republicans not taking the Senate border deal supported by the White House.” Houck didn’t explain why Republicans should have rejected a bipartisan deal.
When Biden did reference Riley, the MRC melted down because he mispronounced her name:
Nicholas Fondacaro screeched about “Biden’s bumbling, stumbling, and disgraceful mispronunciation of Laken Riley’s name.”
Houck complained that one correspondent “refused to mention Biden mispronounced her name.” He then attacked another correspondent who “didn’t take notice of Biden referring to Laken Riley as ‘Lincoln Riley.'”
Foncacaro returned to huff that Biden “butchered her name.”
By contrast, the MRC cheered when Donald Trump deliberately and repeatedly mispronounced Kamala Harris’ name on the campaign trail. Still, Geoffrey Dickens listed this among “eight brand new Biden gaffes” that “the networks (mostly) refused to cover” in a March 27 post, and referenced Riley’s death and Biden’s mispronunciation in an April 11 post listing “six of the most horrific cases of innocent victims killed by illegal immigrants during the Biden administration.”
Then it was back to exploiting Riley’s death for its partisan agenda, as Jorge Bonilla did in a May 8 post:
The murder of University of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley shook the nation, and hammered home the real dangers to which the nation became exposed when the border was flung open on January 20th, 2021. The media has been reluctant to cover the story because it casts Democrats (generally) and President Joe Biden (specifically) in a very bad light. That reluctance continues to this day.
CBS Evening News was the only national network newscast to report on the indictment of the illegal alien that murdered Laken Riley.
[…]
The national news media, bent on protecting Biden, will do everything they can to avoid covering this story, which hammers home the dangers of imposing open-borders policies upon a nation that wants nothing to do with them.
When the alleged killer was reported to have ties to the Venezuelan-based Tren de Aragua gang — whom Bonilla fearmongered about in connection to gang activity in a Colorado town — the MRC was on that too:
Bonilla hyped in an Aug. 29 post that “Tren de Aragua has become something of a household name as of late, with a history of criming all over the nation including, most notoriously, the murder of University of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.”
Bonilla similarly touted in a Sept. 29 post that the killer “reportedly has ties to the murderous Tren de Aragua gang that has established multiple beachheads across several U.S. cities.”
Bonilla used an Oct. 16 post to cheer biased Fox News host Bret Baier for boosting the pro-Trump narrative during his interview with Kamala Harris, gushing how he “pivot[ed] to saying the names of Jocelyn Nungaray, Rachel Morin and Laken Riley, who were brutally murdered by illegal migrants.”
Trial and aftermath
As the suspect went on trial, the exploitation ramped up. Curtis Houck made a completely irrelevant coverage comparison in a Nov. 20 post:
ABC, CBS, and NBC have shown a disturbing aversion to covering the murder trial of Georgia student Laken Riley by an illegal immigrant. In five days, they spent nearly four times less coverage on the flagship newscasts about Riley versus the manufactured and partisan obsession over the October 27 remark by a pro-Trump comedian that Puerto Rico was a “floating island of garbage.”
From Friday, November 15 through Tuesday, November 19, the networks dedicated 20 minutes and 33 seconds to the Riley trial across their top morning and evening newscasts and Sunday morning talk shows.
That paled in comparison to the nearly 78 minutes (77:42) whining about the so-called joke from Tony Hinchcliffe during President Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally. To capture an equal number of newscasts, NewsBusters included coverage from October 27 to November 1.
CBS led the way with 31 minutes and 25 seconds on what one could be refer to as garbage-gate, thanks in part to a lengthy segment by correspondent Lilia Luciano (which aired on both CBS Mornings and the CBS Evening News) hoping Hinchcliffe’s remark would cause fellow Puerto Ricans and Hispanics writ large to abandon Trump.
ABC came in second with nearly 24 minutes (23:42) and NBC only a minute behind (22:35).
As we wrote at the time, the networks were apoplectic about the Trump rally and Hinchcliffe’s quip, which ABC’s Good Morning America deemed “dark,” “filled with grievances,” “incendiary,” “outright racist,” “profane,” and “vulgar.”
As if Houck’s obsession with Riley’s death isn’t manufactured and partisan — and it wasn’t news that a Trump-endorsed comedian disgustingly smeared an entire U.S. territory at a Trump event. Houck doesn’t explain why he doesn’t Hinchcliffe’s disgusting remark (which the MRC tried to distract from by trying to distance Trump from the comedian his team hired for his rally) should not have been covered at all. Indeed, he perpetuated the partisan Riley obsession:
At least Riley’s name was mentioned by ABC, CBS, and NBC. Searches on Nexis and Snapstream revealed two other young women allegedly murdered by illegal immigrants — Rachel Morin and Jocelyn Nungaray — yielded few results on the flagship morning, evening, and Sunday political talk shows.
Along with both women having been mentioned on the June 21 and October 16 NBC Nightly News, Morin came up June 16 on CBS’s Face the Nation. At the Republican National Convention, all three carried President Trump’s acceptance speech, which had a passage memoralizing them as victims of the border crisis.
Thanks, Curt, for confirming that exploiting a tragedy is all about politics for you and your employer.
A post the same day by Jorge Bonilla complained that non-right-wing media outlets don’t hate immigrants enough:
NBC’s coverage of the Laken Riley murder verdict in Athens, Georgia called upon familiar tropes that might lead viewers to believe that they are watching Telemundo instead. Immigration advocacy was presented to viewers as a substitute for journalism.
[…]
Folks are fond of saying that this case became “a focal point of the presidential race”, as anchor Lester Holt says to open the report. Regime Media coverage of the trial is littered with some variant of that phrase. And yet no one really delves into why.
Laken Riley’s killer, a member of the violent transnational Tren de Aragua gang, illegally entered into the country in September of 2022. He was apprehended and then released, making his way to New York City. While there, he incurred several criminal charges but was not handed over to ICE because New York is a sanctuary city. The killer then asks for and received a humanitarian flight to Georgia, where he would later encounter and kill Laken Riley. THESE are the reasons why this heinous murder is such a political flashpoint- this horrendous cascade of bad decision-making and refusal to be held accountable. The Biden administration, aided and abetted by the Regime Media, facilitated this murder. Plain and simple.
These are the underlying facts of the case that have gone grotesquely underreported. Instead, we get the trope about migrants criming at a lower rate than Americans. The fact is that this murderer did not displace an American rapist-killer waiting in the wings. This was a heinous crime committed by someone who should not have been allowed to enter into the country.
No amount of Regime Media spin will ever change that.
Bonilla offered no evidence to support his contention that all illegal immigrants are violent killers soming to specifially murder you.
Bill D’Agostino served up another coverage count in a Nov. 21 post — with one conspicuous admission:
If you relied on CNN or MSNBC evening shows for your news, you likely would have no idea that the illegal alien who murdered Laken Riley was just tried and convicted. CNN’s prime time programming (between 8:00 p.m. and 12:00 a.m. ET) featured just a single, two-minute segment on the trial, while MSNBC’s evening shows skipped the story entirely.
Between the morning of Friday, November 15, when the trial started, and Wednesday, November 20 at 2:00 p.m. ET, when Jose Ibarra was ultimately sentenced, CNN and MSNBC’s prime time coverage of the case amounted to a single, 161-second news brief on the Monday night edition of CNN’s Laura Coates Live. By comparison, CNN’s total coverage of the case during that same time period clocked in at 225 minutes and 19 seconds, while MSNBC’s amounted to a less impressive 66 minutes and 16 seconds.
Given the story’s relative prominence throughout these cable networks’ daytime programming, its virtual nonexistence during peak viewing hours is alarming to say the least.
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It’s hardly a surprise that Democrat-affiliated cable networks like CNN and MSNBC would fail in their duty to properly report on this story. The corporate media have made no secret of their outright support for open borders.
Also hardly a surprise: D’Agostino curiously omitted from his documentation of cable-news coverage that of Fox News — presumably because he would be demonstrating that it’s as partisan story pushed by a Republican-affiliated cable channel that hates immigrants. He’s paid well to never admit Fox News’ right-wing bias, after all.
Tim Graham spent his Nov. 22 podcast rehashing Houck’s and D’Agostino’s irrelevant and deficient work to exploit Riley’s death yet again:
This week, illegal alien Jose Ibarra was convicted of the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley. PBS and NPR have aired next to nothing on Riley over the last 6 months. Curtis Houck and Bill D’Agostino explain their studies of broadcast and cable news coverage of the Laken Riley trial.
AP’s insensitive headline was “Man convicted of murder” of Laken Riley. The lead paragraph just said “A Venezuelan man has been convicted of murder in the killing of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, a case that fueled the national debate over immigration.”
There was nothing on the Laken Riley trial until it was over. There was nothing on Laken Riley’s murder on PBS over the last six months. Finally, when the trial was over, NewsHour anchor Geoff Bennett gave it 31 seconds. “A Venezuelan man was convicted today,” he said, and “Ibarra entered the U.S. illegally in 2022.” But the same show gave ten minutes to Trump “rolling back” transgender rights.
NPR’s newscasts aired no segment in the last six months on Laken Riley until after the election. When reporter Sarah Kallis talked to a Trump voter named Caden Cromer about why he voted for Trump on November 10. Kallis was callous as she said Riley was “allegedly killed by an undocumented migrant.” She concluded: “For some Trump voters like Cromer, safety and migration seem linked, and Trump has promised mass deportations. But research has shown undocumented migrants are not more likely to commit violent crimes than U.S. citizens.”
Like his subordinates, Graham wouldn’t reveal how much time right-wing media like Fox News spent obsessing Riley’s death, lest he demonstrate the partisan narrative at work.
Jeffrey Lord dutifully pushed the partisan narrative in his Nov. 23 column:
Amazing.
Subtle too.
Over there at Newsmax’s nightly show The Right Squad, hosted by Chris Plante (and full disclosure, I am a Newsmax TV contributor) Chris opened his show the other night with a very interesting media observation.
Chris ran through some media headlines about the murder of University of Georgia student Laken Riley by one José Antonio Ibarra. Ibarra is a 26-year-old Venezuelan, an illegal migrant who is a member of the notorious gang Tren de Aragua.
Chris noticed something that is very curious indeed. One by one he flashed media headlines about the guilty verdict handed down on Ibarra.
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Notice anything in all of those headlines? Chris Plante did because he gets it exactly. In every media headline above – all those major American media outlets describe Laken Riley’s murderer simply as a “man.” There is zero reference in those headlines to the reality – call it news – that the murderer – José Antonio Ibarra by name – is in fact, as noted above, “an illegal migrant who is a member of the notorious gang Tren de Aragua.”
But why? There is no thought here that all of those media outlets had a conference call to decide how to describe Ibarra. There was, one can bet, no conspiracy here. What there was is something infinitely worse and typical of the American “mainstream” lefty media. That would be an ingrained far-left mindset that quite deliberately if unconsciously is so far left it is utterly self-unaware.
The thought that Laken Riley’s murderer would be accurately described in a headline as “an illegal migrant” or “a member of the notorious gang Tren de Aragua” would either be deliberately withheld from the headline or, instinctively, without a thought otherwise as to the reality. The news.
And why? Because those mainstream media’s headline writers have absolutely no problem with illegal immigration. And from their perspective to call out the problem is, but of course, racist.
Lord is not going to admit that obsessing over the killer’s immigration status is itself a partisan narrative. Perhaps he’s unconscious and self-unaware that his right-wing media exhibits bias too.
It takes a lot of cognitive dissonance on the part of MRC writers to actively deny the existence of right-wing bias — and that its obsession with politically exploiting Laken Riley’s death is a prime example of that.