NPR's E-Verify Court Coverage: Fanning the Flames with Falsehoods

By Jeremy Beck, Monday, June 6, 2011, 11:02 AM EDT
The errors in National Public Radio's coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court's 5-3 decision to uphold Arizona's E-Verify law were so blatant and verifiable that the segment would have made a good candidate for one of NPR's famous April Fools Day reports. But the falsehoods that listeners heard in the "All Things Considered" segment are no joke. There has been no correction in the story online, which would indicate no one within the organization caught the errors.

I don't believe that "All Things Considered" intentionally lied to listeners. Supporters of unchecked illegal immigration spend millions of dollars every year on media mis-education campaigns. That's their right. But that's no excuse for professional reporters to fail to test the accuracy of their sources or to engage in inadvertent advocacy.

Falsehood #1

The first major error occurred before the host and legal affairs correspondent even got to the Supreme Court's decision. NPR's correspondent started things off by inaccurately describing a different Arizona bill (SB 1070) as requiring police to check the immigration status of anyone "they think on the street is illegally in the country." That's nonsense. Only after a “lawful stop, detention or arrestâ€