Since last Tuesday, CNN has on and off been preoccupied with the case of a non-citizen from Poland, Dr. Lukasz Niec, who was recently detained by ICE and is in danger of deportation because of a combination of two misdemeanors he committed in 1992, combined with more recent brushes with police, including a child abuse accusation from last year.
After initially making it sound like his detention was entirely about the two misdemeanors from 25 years go when he was 17 years old, the liberal news network on Wednesday finally informed viewers of some of his other brushes with the law, downplaying them as mostly "minor traffic violations," but never did get around to mentioning the child abuse accusations from just last year.
As of the weekend, instead of improving their coverage by giving viewers additional information on why he was detained, CNN got worse as host Ana Cabrera on Saturday's CNN Newsroom made it sound like Dr. Niec was detained solely because of his legal problems from 1992.
On Saturday evening at 8:47 p.m. Cabrera introduced a segment by bringing up President Donald Trump's latest offer on how to deal with illegal immigration, as she fretted: "The President has presented a deal that is said to reshape U.S. immigration dramatically -- a deal all sides are up in arms about. It's easy to forget, though, that there are real lives at stake here. Families have already been torn apart."
After recalling the case of Jorge Garcia -- who entered the country illegally at age 10 and was recently deported to Mexico -- Cabrera then moved to the case of Dr. Niec.
A Kalamazoo doctor was enjoying a day with his family when ICE agents showed up, taking him away in handcuffs.. Lukasz Niec was just five years old when his parents left Poland with their two children in 1979. And now, he faces deportation to a country he's never known. ... Niec was arrested over administrative immigration violations -- two misdemeanors from 1992. His new wife still in shock.
Cabrera informed viewers of Loyola University's efforts to help DACA students, and then brought aboard two guests from the university -- medical student Cesar Montelongo Hernandez and Professor Mark Kuczewski. Addressing Hernandez, Cabrera began by sympathetically posing: "Your thoughts about what's happening in Washington right now with the negotiations on immigration -- do you feel like you were a bit of a political football?"
So far, CNN's New Day morning show has covered the story twice -- once on Tuesday and again Wednesday. Also on Wednesday afternoon, CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin picked up on correspondent Jason Carroll's report from Wednesday morning which was a slight improvement from Tuesday's coverage in that it informed viewers of the DUI and other infractions but downplayed them as "minor traffic violations." But the report did not mention the child abuse accusation from last year which other news outlets have cited as playing a major role in the decision to target Dr. Niec.
Even CNN.com eventually published an article online linking the abuse accusations to Dr. Niec's detention, even though CNN TV shows have so far never mentioned it.
Additionally, early Wednesday morning on CNN's Early Start show, CNN political commentator Errol Louis had also neglected to mention recent legal problems as he referred to Dr. Niec as having been brought into the country from Poland as a "five-year-old."
On Thursday evening, Fox News at Night notably ran a full report by correspondent Trace Gallagher calling out CNN for misleading its viewers on the story.
