Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
In a classic example of how the media is manipulating public opinion in the Arizona immigration law debate, most news outlets conveniently forgot to mention the fact that all students at Kalamazoo Central High School were required to show their “papers” to the Secret Service before President Barack Obama’s June 7 commencement address.
Greg Pollowitz of National Review Online is reporting that the Secret Service required each graduating senior to prove their citizenship status prior to the president’s appearance there on Monday night.
“Seniors are being asked to provide their birthdates, Social Security numbers and citizen status to the Secret Service so background checks could be performed,” wrote the Kalamazoo Gazette weeks before the president’s appearance. “Such a check is required for anyone who gets within an arm’s length of the president, students were told at their senior breakfast Friday.”
Pollowitz goes on to ask, “What’s good enough for President Obama should be good enough for Arizona, no?”
Not according to everyone. The Gazette’s public editor, Joyce Pines, rushed an op-ed into print explaining that asking for citizenship status is just standard procedure. “The purpose is to allow the Secret Service to perform a background check for security purposes. Their job is to keep the president safe, not look for illegal immigrants.”
She then goes on to repeat the same misinformation being circulated in the media about the Arizona law. After saying that forms for school, employment or any official documentation regularly include a yes/no question on citizenship, “the new law in Arizona takes this a step further by asking for papers on demand providing proof of citizenship.”
She doesn’t dare clarify that the Arizona bill only allows law enforcement to “ask for papers on demand” if a person is involved in a crime – which is a much different scenario than the one she paints. But these facts just don’t fit the narrative of the liberal media, which is why most of them never bothered to mention these background checks in their glowing reports of the president’s commencement address.
A more responsible press might have used this information to educate the public about the many legitimate occasions when citizenship papers might be required, thereby defusing the furor over the Arizona law rather than continuing to stoke it with misinformation.
In the end, the public is the big loser because we’re being left without the facts we need to make informed decisions about the prevailing issues of our day.
© All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly®/Women of Grace® http://www.womenofgrace.com
