Time Manipulates Emotion

More Misinformation from the Media.

John Moore, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer for Getty Images, has been photographing immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border for years. This week one of his pictures became the most visible symbol of the immigration debate in America.

“This one was a tough one for me. As soon as it was over, they were put into a van. I had to stop to take deep breaths,” describing his reaction to the scene of a two-year-old Honduran girl crying as her mother was being detained in McAllen, Texas. “All I wanted to do was pick her up. But I couldn’t.”

Due to the power of the image, which attacked President Trump’s now-reversed policy of separating children from parents who were being detained for illegally entering the United States, Time’s editors selected Moore’s photograph to create a photo illustration, including Trump, to make the July 2, 2018, cover of the magazine. – The Story Behind Time’s Trump ‘Welcome to America’ Cover, Time magazine, 7/2/18. [link]

Fact Check: The cover on Time displayed a small crying Honduran girl standing before an imposing President Trump. On the red background is the message: Welcome to America. The meaning is plain: President Trump is a hard-hearted man who wants to stop little kids at the border and rip them from their parents. This is the narrative throughout the corporate media.

It is quite dishonest. Until recent years children seldom crossed the border, but word got out during the Obama administration that entering the U.S. with a child was a good way for an illegal alien to get a free pass to stay in the U.S., especially if done so with a bogus asylum claim. The Trump Administration has tried to stop this evasion and contempt for our laws. In doing so, it has incurred the media’s wrath.

Rather than discuss what is really happening, the media are resorting to the crassest form of emotional manipulation. Thus we have the Time cover, and the little girl.

What’s interesting about this cover is the actual reality behind it. The little girl was brought to the U.S. by her mother, who abandoned her other children to come here. There is little reason to believe that she qualifies for asylum. She was previously deported from the U.S. Her aim, according to her husband, was to better her economic situation, even though he had a job and was supporting the family. She and her child were not separated by U.S. authorities, as the Time article suggested.

Eventually, Time acknowledged that it didn’t have its facts straight, but went on to claim that the cover still made a valid point against Trump. Again, the problem isn’t the president. He is simply trying to enforce the law. The blame properly belongs to the lax past enforcement that has enticed parents and other adults to bring children across the border, often putting them in danger.

What Time did was exactly the same sort of emotional blackmail that the European media employed several years when they ran a photo of a dead child on a beach. The message was that the child died while trying to flee warfare in his homeland, and that anyone who opposed the migration going on at that time was complicit in the child’s death. Later the truth came out. The boy and his family were safe in a refugee camp. The child drowned after his father recklessly tried to sneak the family into Europe to pursue a better economic situation.

Unfortunately, many people are susceptible to media manipulation, particularly on topics related to immigration. The media try to pose as the spokesmen for morality—but their utter disregard for truth is anything but ethical.

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