NYT: Labeling Slant in AZ Immigration Coverage, Silence on La Raza Extremism

The New York Times maintained its usual labeling slant in its coverage of Arizona's new immigration law in Friday's story by Julia Preston, "Latino Groups Urge Boycott Of Arizona Over New Law."

Several large Latino and civil rights organizations on Thursday announced a business boycott of Arizona, saying that a tough anti-illegal immigration law there would lead to racial profiling and wrongful arrests.

The boycott call was led by the National Council of La Raza, or N.C.L.R., one of the nation's biggest Latino groups, and was joined by the League of United Latin American Citizens and the National Puerto Rican Coalition. The groups said they would ask members and supporters to refrain from planning conventions or conferences in Arizona and from buying goods produced in the state.

"The law is so extreme, and its proponents appear so immune to an appeal to reason, nothing short of these extraordinary measures is required," Janet Murguía, the president of N.C.L.R., said Thursday at a news conference in Washington.

Speaking of extreme: The unlabeled La Raza is a left-wing Hispanic activist group ("La Raza" stands for "the race,") leaving the group not much room to accuse others of making race-based appeals. And La Raza president Janet Murguia has a disturbingly authoritarian take on her political opponents.

Back in February 2008 she called for opinionators like Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck to be removed from the airwaves because of their "hate speech" against illegal immigrants. (Revealingly, the Times's unquestioning story on the rant failed to place the inflammatory phrase "hate speech" in quotation marks, letting the smear stand as apparent fact.)