AP tells its reporters not to call the migrant surge at the US-Mexico border a "crisis."EPA
Like White House, Associated Press won’t use ‘crisis’ to describe migrant surge at border
President Biden’s Homeland Security secretary says migrant apprehensions are hitting a 20-year high, and record numbers of unaccompanied minors are already in federal custody — but the Associated Press is ordering its reporters to ignore reality and not call it a “crisis.”
In an internal memo from “the Standards Center,” the AP told staff, “The current event in the news — a sharp increase in the arrival of unaccompanied minors — is a problem for border officials, a political challenge for Biden and a dire situation for many migrants who make the journey, but it does not fit the classic dictionary definition of a crisis.”
A “crisis,” it explained, might be a “decisive or crucial time” or “a time of, or a state of affairs involving, great danger or trouble, often one which threatens to result in unpleasant consequences.”
Biden’s reversal of his predecessor’s policies has led to a surge at the southern border, with 16,500 minors in custody as of Wednesday, including 5,000 in Border Patrol detention-like facilities not meant to house children. Most kids are held longer than the three-day legal limit. Those aren’t “unpleasant consequences”?
“In theory, there could be a security or a border crisis if officials lose control of the border, allowing people to enter unencumbered in large numbers,” said the guidance, to which “the Washington bureau, the immigration reporting beat team and the inclusivity champions” contributed. Never mind that just 13 percent of family members were turned back to Mexico last week, even as the Homeland Security secretary declared “the border is closed.”
This newspeak is becoming a habit for the once-venerable news agency: In 2013, it forbade reporters from using “illegal immigrant,” instead telling them to call those crossing the border illegally “undocumented.” And last year’s AP Stylebook suggested replacing “riots” with “milder” terms such as “unrest,” saying, “Focusing on rioting and property destruction rather than underlying grievance has been used in the past to stigmatize.”
The administration is so overwhelmed that it’s asking federal workers to volunteer for 120-day border deployments to help with the kids. Only in AP stories is that not a crisis.
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