The Media Research Center spent much of the past year exploiting the death of Laken Riley at the hands of an illegal immigrant to push right-wing anti-immigrant narratives. 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.
[…]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.
[…]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.