President Obama gave a speech last night at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s Awards Gala, and the Associated Press write-up of the event led with Obama saying his jobs package “would put more money in the pockets of Latino workers and business owners and increase opportunities for Hispanics.” It carried the headline “Obama pushes jobs plan as help for Hispanics.”
From the story as it appeared on the AP website:
That headline apparently wasn’t exciting enough — or sufficiently disparaging of Obama — for CNSNews.com. Its version of the AP article carries the headline “Obama Renews Call for Amnesty for Illegal Aliens,” with the original headline relegated to a subhead:
CNS made no changes to the AP article itself; rather, it decided to ignore the AP’s lead and interpret a statement later in the article that Obama “remained determined to pass a rewrite the nation’s immigration laws to offer a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants” as calling for “amnesty” for “illegal aliens.”
Neither “amnesty” nor “illegal aliens” appears in the AP article, and the AP Stylebook rejects the use of “illegal alien,” preferring the term “illegal immigrant” instead.
CNS regularly declares anything faintly resembling immigration reform to be “amnesty” — which is a loaded term that influences people to oppose immigration reform.
CNS likes to add a right-wing reinterpretation of AP headlines to AP articles on its site, particularly when immigration issues are involved. Last month, it changed an AP article headline from “US makes criminals priority for deportation” to “Obama Administration Grants De Facto Amnesty to Many Illegal Immigrants.”
In July, it changed the AP headline “AP sources: Obama ends talks brusquely” to “Obama Showboats His Way Out of Debt-Limit Talks.”
(Cross-posted at Media Matters.)