Extreme Vetting Already U.S. Law

By Joe Guzzardi
August 23, 2016
 
Years ago, a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying group hired me to read and evaluate immigration stories for fairness and balance. That is, if a story had three pro-immigration sources, did it also have three opposed citations, and if not three, did it have any at all?  Giving equal weight to both sides is the time-honored first step in objective journalism.
 
As a barometer, the project used the 100-year old Society for Professional Journalists’ (SPJ) mission that includes, quoting from its website, supporting “the open and civil exchange of views, even views they [reporters] find repugnant.” Since immigration was my research focus, the SPJ code meant even if reporters and their editors personally favored high immigration levels, they were professionally obligated to include the restrictive perspective.
 
Cut to the finish: I randomly read 1,500 stories, and found not a single example of unbiased coverage. Some stories may have had one opposed source versus several pro, but most had none. I then embarked on my assignment’s second phase and called reporters, editors and the SPJ. Since I had printed, highlighted stories in hand, no one disputed my findings. But neither could anyone explain the obvious bias. I asked SPJ, the watchdog American Society of News Editors, and the Columbia School of Journalism if they would print my report in their house magazine or post it on their websites, and was turned down flat. In other words, journalists agreed that they weren’t meeting their own well-defined standards, but refused to change their unprofessional ways.
 
My personal history with the media and my failed efforts to encourage or possibly even shame them into writing professionally about immigration leads up to the recent kerfuffle over Donald Trump’s statement that foreign nationals who wish to immigrate to the United States should undergo an “extreme vetting” process. Such a procedure would identify and ban terrorists, and their sympathizers, as well as those who embrace Sharia law, reject the Constitution and instead “support bigotry and hatred.”
 
The over-the-top media attacks on Trump—The Washington Post said his idea is crazier than crazy, and an MSNBC broadcaster called it “the single most un-American thing I ever heard in my life”—seem to indicate that reporters are against vetting but favor admitting terrorists and Sharia followers, a logical conclusion based on their criticism.
 
Returning to my original point about accuracy and journalistic fairness, today’s reporters could have, with merely the slightest effort, learned that the immigrant vetting Trump endorsed is already in place, and has been for decades. The current I-485 form, the application to register permanent residence or adjust immigration status, asks if the petitioner intends to forcefully or violently overthrow the federal government or if he has ever been a member of a totalitarian organization or the Communist Party. Naturalization ceremonies require new citizens to “renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity” to any foreign entity, and to “defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
 
Today, only about 20 percent of newspaper readers think reporters are honest and ethical. Common sense should dictate that with readership questioning journalists’ agenda, and print media jobs increasingly scarce, reporters would made an effort to improve their immigration coverage which has come under particularly heavy fire for bias. But a media shift to the center isn’t happening, and it’s not going to happen. Today’s stories are less fair than when I began my study, and they offer little reason to expect improvement.
 

###
Joe Guzzardi is a Californians for Population Stabilization Senior Writing Fellow. Contact Joe at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @joeguzzardi19