Fox News Watch: White House Leaked Friday's Immigration Announcement to NYT and Time Magazine

Noel Sheppard
June 17th, 2012 9:18 AM
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Days before President Obama proclaimed a new Justice Department edict concerning the deportation of young illegal immigrants, both the New York Times and Time magazine ran huge stories on Hispanics in America.

According to Fox News Watch panelists Saturday, this was no coincidence (video follows with transcript and commentary):

JON SCOTT, HOST: And then under the heading of coincidence or manipulation, we have this. Time magazine ran its cover story called “We Are Americans, Only We Are Just Not Legal.” The New York Times on Sunday ran a story on frustrated Hispanic, the frustrated Hispanic electorate, and then on Friday came the surprise announcement that the Department of Justice is going to ease up on deporting the illegal immigrant children or young people or offspring in this country. There any coincidence?

JUDITH MILLER, FOX NEWS: Utter coincidence.

(Laughter)

MILLER: I mean, clearly, everything that the president does from this point on that affects the Hispanic community is going to be seen in a political light whether or not it is the right thing to do, which in this instance I think it was.

JAMES PINKERTON, AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAGAZINE: The interesting question is whether the New York Times and Time magazine had any inkling that maybe the president would be doing this and they wanted to get ahead of the story and help sort of get credit for being part of the wave. That is an interesting question.

MILLER: You don't think that they would have reported it if they’d had an inkling?

PINKERTON: Actually, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have reported it because they wanted the scoop. They didn’t want to, they wouldn’t want to blow up their own story by saying, look, if they get a wink from their friend Eric Holder or Axelrod, any of these people, “Hey, we’re, the administration is going to do something good,” they want to be a part of it.

MILLER: They wanted the story.

PINKERTON: They got, they got the story, but now they get credit for having impact. They can say, “We're moving the needle."

RICHARD GRENELL, FORMER BUSH ADMINISTRATION DIRECTOR OF COMMUNCATIONS AND PUBLIC POLICY: As a former spokesman who used to brief reporters right before announcements, I can tell you unequivocally someone briefed Time and New York Times to say, “This announcement is coming. If you can hold it till a certain time, we'll give you access.” That's how it works, and in this case, absolutely how it happened.

SCOTT: That's the inside view.

Isn't that nice?

So not only is the White House leaking national security information to news outlets in order to strengthen the president's reelection chances, it's doing the same with major policy change announcements.

It really is a state run media now, isn't it?

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