Continuing a broader mainstream media pattern that NewsBusters has already recognized, Sunday's New York Times and Washington Post hit Obama almost exclusively from the left on his decision to hold off on his brand of unilateral immigration "reform" until after the 2014 election cycle.
The Times led off Sunday's front page with a report by Michael Shear (with reporting by Carl Hulse and Peter Baker): "Obama to Delay Executive Action on Immigration." The Times focused heavily on a broken promise by Obama made to the left (so unlike the manner in which the paper shrugged his broken promise on deficit reduction).
President Obama will delay taking executive action on immigration until after the midterm elections, bowing to pressure from fellow Democrats who feared that acting now could doom his party’s chances this fall, White House officials said on Saturday.
The decision is a reversal of Mr. Obama’s vow to issue broad directives to overhaul the immigration system soon after summer’s end, and sparked swift anger from immigration advocates. The president made the promise on June 30, in the Rose Garden, where he angrily denounced Republican obstruction and said he would use the power of his office to protect immigrant families from the threat of deportation.
Criticism from unlabeled liberal immigration "advocates" swiftly followed:
Cristina Jimenez, the managing director for United We Dream, an immigration advocacy group, accused Mr. Obama of “playing politics” with the lives of immigrant families and said, “The president’s latest broken promise is another slap to the face of the Latino and immigrant community.
Obama advisors warned that an announcement now "would encourage members of both parties to take more hard-line positions on the issue than they normally would," while Obama confessed that "the surge in unaccompanied children at the border undermined public support for a broader immigration overhaul."
The Times gave the GOP three brief paragraphs in the middle to blast Obama for a "cynical ploy to avoid letting voters express their opinions on his plan to use executive power", before pivoting back to immigration and Latino "activists" angry at Obama for breaking "a solemn pledge to immigrants."
The Washington Post was similarly biased, with criticism of Obama from the left in its Sunday coverage, with reporter Ed O'Keefe following up a slanted Page 1 story with an emotional news analysis in the news pages of the same Sunday edition, headlined "To some, Obama's immigration delay proves 'it's never convenient to help out Latinos.'" O'Keefe led off:
There was nothing mixed or muddled about the reaction.
Among undocumented immigrants and activists working on their behalf, President Obama’s decision to wait until after November’s elections to make promised changes to immigration policy provoked raw anger.
One group called the president’s decision “an affront” to migrant families. Another said Obama had “prioritized politics over reform.”
An immigration lawyer said her clients had been “sold out,” and one longtime activist burst into tears when asked how the decision might affect his friends and family.
The piece got no more balanced, as Republican policy concerns over Obama's plan to bypass Congress for unilateral mass amnesty for illegals were utterly ignored in favor of emotional anecdotes on how leftist Latino activists reacted to the betrayal.
