Tags: Immigration | nbc | media | matt lauer | illegal | immigrants | border
NBC's Matt Lauer Refuses to Use Word 'Illegal' in Border Coverage
Wednesday, 02 Jul 2014 04:09 PM
By Sandy Fitzgerald
NBC's "Today" show is not only avoiding using the world "illegal" when it comes to the immigrants flooding the border states — it's given them a special Twitter handle to show its support of them.
"As so many issues in this country do, it's going to boil down to politics," host Matt Lauer said on the show Wednesday morning, reports NewsBusters.org.
"And wherever you stand on the issue, one side or the other, I'm not going to weigh in on that. It's hard to see those images of moms and their kids in that situation."
He then encouraged watchers to share their thoughts on Twitter by calling the immigrants by a hashtag: #RefugeeRiders.
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The Daily Caller posted a video showing NBC's Miguel Almaguer also refusing to use the term "illegal," choosing to use "undocumented" instead.
Story continues below video.
NBC isn't the only network refusing to use the word illegal. CBS on Tuesday was still using the word, but by Wednesday morning had joined ABC and NBC in avoiding the word.
On "Good Morning America" on ABC, "undocumented" was not used early when discussing protests in California about buses of immigrants that were blocked by protesters from entering a California processing center Tuesday, reports NewsBusters. By 8 a.m., however, Ryan Smith used the word "illegal" to report the incident.
And on CBS, substitute "CBS This Morning" anchor Margaret Brennan called the immigrants undocumented, and Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, reporter John Blackstone provided a full report without the word "illegal."
The television networks' shift to the term "undocumented immigrants" is nothing new, however. Last year, well before the current immigration crisis, several major news organizations decided to reduce or ban the use of the term, reports the Pew Research Center.
In 2013, several key news organizations, including The Los Angeles Times and The Associated Press, announced a ban on the term "illegal immigrant," saying it broadly and unfairly labeled a large group of people.
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