Kurtz: Media Support for ‘End Result’ of Exec Amnesty ‘Coloring’ Coverage

Media analyst Howard Kurtz, host of the Fox News Channel’s “Media Buzz,” argued that the media’s support of the “end result” was “coloring the coverage” of President Obama’s executive order on immigration on Friday’s broadcast of “The Kelly File.”

“I don’t think a lot of journalists like the process or the fact that the president is acting unilaterally. They would prefer to see the Senate compromise get passed by the House and all of that. But i do think they like the end result and I do think that’s coloring the coverage” he stated.

Kurtz laid out examples of the media being favorable to Obama, saying “I’ve seen a lot of [Sen.] Ted Cruz (R-TX) and [Rep.] John Boehner (R-OH) on TV. But a lot has to do with the tone and the framing of stories. Most journalists actually think immigration reform is a pretty good idea, in fact overdue…instead of the howls of outrage you would have if it was say George w. bush unilaterally imposing Social Security privatization you have stories that say ‘Republicans say it’s outrageous.’ And that’s a very important tonal difference.” And “what is missing [is] what I call the media drumbeat because when the press is really ticked off about something and particularly we hate flip-flops and we hate when politicians seem to do something very different from what they said they were going to do, then it’s a story that we drive…the drumbeat that you might have seen in other circumstances is absent.”

He also said that at first, there were “a lot of stories, including a pretty tough piece in the New York Times saying President Obama [is] blatantly contradicting what he said repeatedly in the past, that he’s not an emperor,” but that this changed after “the White House spin machine kicked into action, and by Friday morning, the headline in the same New York Times said ‘Obama’s Action has Precedent[s], but [May Set a New One],’ meaning that the president’s pushback had resulted in making the story a he said/she said and that’s a win for the White House.”

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