The Media Research Center’s Curtis Houck loves to gush over NewsNation and insist it’s fair and balanced — and he melts down when the channel’s clear right-leaning bias is pointed out. He gushed over the channel again in a May 10 post:
In an hour-long primetime special Thursday night called Crisis on the Border, NewsNation did something the liberal media — and TV news in general — needed to emulate, which was a more accurate, consistent, and raw depiction of the Biden border crisis from the side of law enforcement and the dangers unfettered illegal immigration posed to the public.
Hosted by Dan Abrams, it featured three different reporters live in the field, new reporting, facts about the border, and interviews with four police chiefs on how open-border policies have harmed their communities.
Abrams opened by declaring this won’t be “about politics.” Instead, NewsNation’s goal was to inform viewers “about what is actually happening at our southern border and maybe — maybe — even spur some change.”
[…]Bradley also taped a bombshell interview with an anonymous border agent, who told her what Americans don’t realize was “we do not control the border, the cartel controls the border” and “[e]verything that we do is a reaction to things that they have planned” with those apprehended merely “pawns while the kings and queens are doing whatever they want.”
They added “[n]o one” from the government will be able “to protect you” since “[e]ven at the local law enforcement level, we’re seeing them be defunded and overwhelmed to where your life has to be threatened for them to make you a priority.”
In part two, Bradley asked if they’re “scared to do your job.” The agent said while they are from “a more earthly” perspective with “policies changed” that endanger agents and place “illegals…before us,” they’re a Christian who knows God “has my back”.
Bradley’s last question about whether they’re more scared of the government or the cartels drew a surprising answer:
Look at the way you have me presented to do an interview when I’m off-duty. I’m terrified to talk to the media because I’m sacred of what, you know, the government could do, which obviously, would be losing my job, right, which I don’t think is fair.
At three different points, Abrams brought out charts about apprehensions, gotaways, and key border sectors to show “what our border patrol agents are up against” with the first showing “2.5 million encounters for the whole of last year,” “up from 1.7, just two years before” and 1.3 million already this year.
Note that this is very much a right-wing take on the border crisis, in which only people in law enforcement are featured and interviewed — not any sort of fair and balanced examination. Houck’s framing of the show as being about “Biden’s border crisis” and “the”open-border policies” undercuts Abrams’ claim that it isn’t “ablout politics.”
Houck concluded with one final gush: “By giving viewers a raw, live sense of what a day on the border looked like (as opposed to a sanitized, pro-illegal-alien perspective), it was an absolute home run by NewsNation.” If the show didn’t have a clear, pronounced bias toward is preferred political narratives, Houck wouldn’t be treating it as a “home run” and declaring, “This is how it’s done.”