If you relied on CNN or MSNBC evening shows for your news, you likely would have no idea that the illegal alien who murdered Laken Riley was just tried and convicted. CNN's prime time programming (between 8:00 p.m. and 12:00 a.m. ET) featured just a single, two-minute segment on the trial, while MSNBC's evening shows skipped the story entirely.
Between the morning of Friday, November 15, when the trial started, and Wednesday, November 20 at 2:00 p.m. ET, when Jose Ibarra was ultimately sentenced, CNN and MSNBC's prime time coverage of the case amounted to a single, 161-second news brief on the Monday night edition of CNN's Laura Coates Live. By comparison, CNN's total coverage of the case during that same time period clocked in at 225 minutes and 19 seconds, while MSNBC's amounted to a less impressive 66 minutes and 16 seconds.
Given the story's relative prominence throughout these cable networks' daytime programming, its virtual nonexistence during peak viewing hours is alarming to say the least.
The content of these daytime reports was also disturbingly short on details. Across 40 relevant segments on CNN, only 23 of them (57.5%) included any mention that Ibarra was an illegal alien. The situation was much the same on MSNBC, with just nine out of 15 segments (60%) providing details about Ibarra's immigration status.
Even among the segments that did bother to mention Ibarra was in the country illegally, reporters often glossed over it as though it were an incidental curiosity. On MSNBC, not even one of the nine segments in which Ibarra's immigration status was mentioned spent more than 20 seconds on the topic, and all but two spent less than 10 seconds on it. Meanwhile, CNN's programming included only two instances in which Ibarra's status as an illegal alien was treated as more than just a passing detail.
In total, only two percent (90 seconds vs 66 minutes) of MSNBC's trial coverage focused on illegal immigration. On CNN, it was just three percent (438 seconds vs 225 minutes).
But by far the most heavily obfuscated detail was the fact that Jose Ibarra was released from federal detention into the country by the Biden administration's Department of Homeland Security. MSNBC never bothered to inform their viewers of this ancillary detail, while CNN mentioned it just once during Monday's edition of The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.
It's hardly a surprise that Democrat-affiliated cable networks like CNN and MSNBC would fail in their duty to properly report on this story. The corporate media have made no secret of their outright support for open borders. For years, virtually all of their coverage of the border crisis over the past four years has focused on the plight of illegal aliens, while sparing barely a thought for its impact on American citizens.
To read our study about broadcast networks' pathetic coverage of the Laken Riley murder trial, click here.