A long-observed truth about political media bias is that whenever there’s a scandal involving the Democratic Party, its allies, or a pet issue that’s dear to the Left, the story that actually gets written is almost always about the reaction on the Right and not the scandal itself.
The “Republicans pounce” and “conservatives seize” trope has become so cliche in media, and the foundation to so many punchlines, that it’s a wonder more newsrooms haven’t updated their playbooks yet with fresher narratives.
A good example of this stale “seize” narrative can been seen in an article published this week by the New York Times titled, “‘You Hate America!’: How the ‘Caravan’ Story Exploded on the Right.”
This report is extra-fascinating, however, not just because it features the “seize” cliche, but because of what can be described most accurately as a spectacularly buried lede.
It’s true: The Internet went wild last week after BuzzFeed News reported on March 30 that a “caravan” comprising hundreds of Central American migrants planned to emigrate North, some with the plan of settling in Mexico and some planning to request refugee status at the U.S. border, which is legal.
The Daily Mail, Axios, and a select number of local news stations covered the story, each citing BuzzFeed News as the primary source. Variations of the “caravan” story also appeared on right-leaning news websites, including Breitbart News and the Washington Examiner, which cited a Center for Immigration Studies release that cited — you guessed it — BuzzFeed News.
Naturally, conspiracy theory websites, including InfoWars and Gateway Pundit, wasted no time pushing their own immigrant-invasion narratives.
It’s important to stress here that the story really caught on last week with the publication of BuzzFeed’s original work. Their report drew the attention of Fox News, President Trump, and eventually the Mexican government, which reportedly took steps later to break up the caravan.
Amazingly enough, the Times’ article detailing the Right’s reaction to the “caravan” narrative goes a full 21 paragraphs before mentioning the BuzzFeed News report that was at the heart of it all. Twenty-one paragraphs.
Twenty-one paragraphs.
Which means, of course, that the reader is four paragraphs away from the finish line before finally leaning that the “caravan” story is not just some right-wing fever dream, one that “took a dark turn through the conservative news media” before making its way to the president, but the product of thorough, on-the-ground reporting from a news outlet that no one would characterize as “conservative.”
A quick side note: Shame on the Times for characterizing obvious conspiracy websites as “conservative news media.” Gateway Pundit is neither particularly conservative (unless you consider being a docile MAGA minion the same thing as being “conservative”), nor can you characterize the stuff it publishes “news.” Not by a long shot.
The Times isn’t wrong when it claims certain newsrooms (looking at you, Fox News) and conspiracists have blown the “caravan” story out of proportion, and that others have straight up fabricated “facts.” But it would have probably been useful for the Times to mention a little higher up in its article that the basic story was true and can be traced back to a BuzzFeed News article with a headline as jarring as any produced by right-leaning newsrooms: “A Huge Caravan Of Central Americans Is Headed For The US, And No One In Mexico Dares To Stop Them.”
