Next Time You Could Try Reporting All of It

RE: THREE recently published articles from the Albuquerque Journal, which misrepresent President Obama’s message on immigration at his May 2011 press conference. Esther Cepeda of the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post Writers Group, as well as Steven Thomma and William Douglas of the McClatchy Newspapers, either blatantly ignored the president’s last sentences of his speech or were too lazy to check their sources. … These columnists neglected to finish the president’s highly publicized quote:

“Sometimes when I talk to immigration advocates, they wish I could just bypass Congress and change the law myself. But that’s not how it works. What we really need to do is pass genuine, comprehensive reform.” Yet they omitted the last lines by Obama, which change the entire concept of his views on immigration: “What we can do is prioritize enforcement … by acting responsibly, which otherwise, would be part of the DREAM Act.” Whether their blunders were deliberate or not, the writers portrayed Obama as a liar.

Obama’s use of executive authority to “prioritize enforcement” to change the deportation policies for the dreamers is also maligned by some of the press as irresponsible or unconstitutional although some of the press neglect to inform that presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George Bush and Ronald Reagan gave executive authority for deportation policies as well. … Has the press lost the art and integrity of fact-checking?

SALLY VANCE

Albuquerque