Sanctuary Cities

In my post on the Meta-Characteristics of Fake News,  the first two characteristics of many are:

• Promoting one ideological narrative to the exclusion of other competing narratives.
• Emphasizing stories that support one ideological narrative (the progressive narrative) and burying or completely omitting stories that conflict with that ideological narrative.

We'll return to these characteristics later in this post, but first let's explore an important narrative. For the trained hamsters of the mainstream media, sanctuary cities are the epitome in virtue. Blue cities (e.g., New York, SF, LA) flaunt their violation of federal law, refusing to work with immigration officials to deport illegal aliens who commit crimes. This, of course, signals their contempt for Donald Trump's suggestion that it might be a good idea to remove dangerous illegal aliens from our country. More and more Democratically run cities are joining the sanctuary city movement in an epic display of moral preening. One of those cities is Rockville, MD, who city council proposed it become a sanctuary city just last week.

And now, our story begins: Tragically, two older teenager boys, one an illegal alien and one whose status is uncertain, raped a 14 year-old girl in their high school bathroom in Rockville, MD a few days ago. The 18-year old illegal alien was stopped at the border a number of months back, but was released by ICE under order from the Obama administration. He was then resituated in Rockville, MD. The city is now aghast, it's democratic majority suffering from the cynical but accurate adage that "a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged."  There are angry parents worried about the safety of their children in school and angrier citizens who are now livid over the suggestion the people like the 18-year old rapist shouldn't be deported.

But here's the thing. Although this story is many days old, as of yesterday, not one mainstream media outlet has covered it—not one. Not NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, the NYT, the LAT .... (a few have covered the story at their web-sites, but not in their flagship news programs or publications). That may change as time passes, but the omission is a glaring as it is biased. The trained hamsters unfailingly exhibit the meta-characteristics I noted at the beginning of this post.

The problem, of course, is that this legitimate news story conflicts with the prevailing narrative—about illegals, about sanctuary cities, about the past administration's overly lenient treatment of illegal aliens detained at our borders, and even about "dreamers." The story demands that the reader or viewer consider the impact of decisions made by leaders of the sanctuary city movement. The story notes that like any population of people, there are bad actors among the illegal aliens who currently reside in our country and those bad actors should be removed without equivocation. But the left-leaning media would rather not have their viewership consider any of this.

So therefore, the story is buried or omitted in it's entirely because it doesn't promote the politically correct narrative. Fake News!