CNSNews.com was so enthusiastic about a new Heritage Foundation study on immigration, it posted two items on it before the study was even released:
- A May 6 article by Elizabeth Harrington, posted before the report’s officials release, touts the report’s chief assertion that “granting amnesty to illegal immigrants would cost $6.3 trillion.” She engages in some credential-puffing by sticking a “Ph.D.” after the name of a report co-author for no apparent reason. Harrington also uses the word “amnesty” despite the fact that it’s a biased, loaded term used only by critics of any immigration reform (like CNS).
- A May 6 blog post by Joe Schoffstall uncritically repeats Heritage president Jim DeMint puffing up the credentials of the report’s co-author, Robert Rector, as “one of the nation’s leading authorities on government social programs” whose “research is based on methodology also used by the National Academy of Sciences.”
But the report has massive flaws that even Rector acknowledges: It not only doesn’t examine the entire Senate immigration bill it purports to be looking at, it leaves out any examination of provisions designed to help the economy.
Will Harrington and Schoffstall issue follow-up articles acknowledging the report’s flaws, or will it keep pushing the report as definitive and censor any mention of the errors? Our money’s on the latter.