FAIR: It’s Time for the Media to Start Asking Some Serious Questions About the Administration’s Border and Immigration Crisis
Here’s a List to Help Them Get Started
(May 13, 2021, Washington, D.C.) — Almost four months into an unprecedented migration crisis at our southern border, it is long past time for the Biden administration to give the American public a straightforward account of what, if anything, they intend to do to curb mass illegal immigration and the record levels of unaccompanied children crossing our border, declared the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). It has traditionally been the role of the Fourth Estate to elicit honest responses about tough issues from those in power – something that has been conspicuously lacking in the media’s coverage of the Biden administration’s handling of the border and immigration policy.
“Two years ago, amidst another migration crisis at the border, the American news media asked tough, pointed questions of the Trump administration and refused to accept evasive or patently inaccurate answers from the president or his spokespeople. The American people deserve nothing less from journalists covering the Biden White House,” declared Dan Stein, president of FAIR.
“What we are witnessing, on a daily basis, is nothing less than a humanitarian, national security, and public health crisis playing out on our southern border, while the White House tries to pass it off as a mere ‘situation’ to be managed. It is time for the watchdogs to start barking,” said Stein.
In a document titled, Questions the Media Should be Asking about the Biden Border Crisis FAIR provides several dozen questions that reporters covering the White House should be asking administration officials that would shed light on the administration’s actions and immigration policy objectives. The questions cover border policy, interior enforcement policy, the impact of these policies on American workers, taxpayers, and local governments, the role of criminal cartels in smuggling people to the U.S., and the administration’s legislative goal of granting amnesty to millions of people here illegally – to name just a few.
“Recent polling shows that the American public is overwhelmingly opposed to President Biden’s border and immigration policies, and is alarmed about the crisis playing out at the border,” continued Stein. And, well, they should be. We have an administration in place that is not only ignoring a crisis of its own making, ignoring the concerns of the American people and the leaders of Mexico and the Northern Triangle nations, but is serving as a de facto collaborator with transnational criminal cartels. Yet most mainstream news media – in dereliction of their duty – refuse to ask the questions that need to be asked,” concluded Stein.
The document may be accessed here.
Contact: Matthew Tragesser, 202-328-7004 or [email protected]