The "border crisis" narrative doesn't add up

[Nevilledog]

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Matthew Gertz
@MattGertz
The "border crisis" narrative has spread from rightwing orgs, politicians, and propagandists to mainstream outlets. It doesn't add up.

The "border crisis" narrative doesn't add up
mediamatters.org
2:35 PM · Mar 22, 2021

https://www.mediamatters.org/abc/border-crisis-narrative-doesnt-add

Several leading news outlets appear to have decided that this is Border Crisis Week.

On Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas appeared on five different political talk shows to discuss the situation along the U.S.-Mexico border, a sign of how much elite journalists are focusing on the issue. NBC’s Chuck Todd, host of Meet the Press, warned on his program that it posed “a political crisis for the new president, with no easy way out,” while ABC’s This Week shipped its panel south to film in front of border fencing in Texas. On Monday, all three broadcast morning shows ran chyrons describing a border “crisis,” and commentators on MSNBC and CNN used falsehoods to criticize President Joe Biden’s administration’s handling of the border.

News outlets are making a judgement call by describing the situation as a “crisis.” Republicans, who hope to use the issue for partisan gain and believe that successful immigration policies prevent asylum-seekers from making claims in the U.S. even if the result is a humanitarian catastrophe outside our borders, say it is. The Biden administration, as one might expect, says it is not. Some local officials and nonprofit leaders engaged on the issue also say that the situation, while difficult and requiring care and attention, has not reached crisis levels.

While journalists often treat themselves as passive observers of political events, the volume and tenor of coverage they provide actually shapes the views news consumers have of the importance of different stories. Reporters who devote substantial attention to a story and describe it as a “crisis” are using their agenda-setting power, priming their audience to treat it as one. When The Washington Post reports that the border situation “threatens to overshadow the president’s recent political victories in passing a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package and making rapid strides in vaccination efforts,” its writers are implicitly discussing the result of more press coverage of the former and less of the latter.

In this case, the “crisis” tone plays into weeks of right-wing demagoguing of the border issue. Major news outlets risk repeating the flawed 2018 coverage of migrant caravans, which surged as then-President Donald Trump, congressional Republicans, and propaganda outlets like Fox News made it the centerpiece of their midterm strategy, then plummeted after the election when Trump and his allies stopped talking about them.

*snip*

[IcyPeas]

1. Well now that they are not covering Trump 24/7 they need to get eyeballs on the tv somehow

Makes you wonder.

[jimfields33]

4. Let them talk. They failed huge in 2018. Proof is the election results.

2022 is a million years away in politics.

[ibegurpard]

2. Repukes have learned that racism and xenophobia

Sell very well to their base

[Hortensis]

3. Sure doesn't. All the crises are south of the border, creating the desperation

that brought all these kids and families thousands of grim miles.

Our NEW Sec of DHS, Alejandro Mayorkas, explained how we are dealing with this current situation beyond any honest misunderstanding:

"The border is closed. We are expelling families, we are expelling single adults, and we've made a decision that we will not expel young, vulnerable children."

All the kids, the vast majority in their teens, will have legal representation as they apply for asylum and to be taken in by foster families, many of them the relatives and friends they came to join. Their period of great physical danger now becomes a period of waiting, but the fortunate ones will spend it in caring private homes,