Twin Falls TV Station Slants Reporting on Community Debate Over Refugee Rape

KMVT news director Chris Huston is hiding from Breitbart News to avoid explaining why he is slanting the community debate over the crimes caused by refugees who are being imported to work in local food processing companies.

Breitbart asked Huston for an explanation after he skewed coverage of the press conference held in Twin Falls on Friday by a local volunteer group, We the People Magic Valley. “Can you explain why your reporting on this press conference failed to include the three main points made by the group that called the press conference?” Breitbart News asked Huston on Tuesday morning.

Breitbart News has not received a response from Huston, who has been on the job in Twin Falls since October 2015.

The local group called the press conference to address their concerns about the alleged rape of a five-year-old American-born girl on June 2 at the Fawnbrook Apartments in Twin Falls. The rape was conducted by two young refugee boys, which was video-taped by a third young refugee boy, all of whom are being reared in conflict-torn, tribal Muslim refugee communities.

The speakers at the press conference made three main points:

They invited both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton to come to Twin Falls to see what was happening to the community as a result of the influx of resettled refugees.

They expressed concern that the young victim was not receiving fair treatment.

They noted that the influx of refugees as cheap labor was unfair to American-born area residents.

But KMVT reporter Amy Reid, a 2016 graduate of Utah State with a degree in American Studies and Broadcast Journalism, missed all three elements. She reported a story about the press conference which was broadcast on the station Friday evening and which made no mention of any of these three points.

Instead, it focused on pro-refugee advocate Nancy Taylor’s assertion that the speakers were “racist,” as Breitbart News reported earlier.

Here’s the transcript of the beginning of KMVT’s report on the press conference:

Anchor and Assistant News Director Joe Martin: Today, the We the People Magic Valley spoke out about the Fawnbrook case that is still under investigation. Amy Reid joins us now live in the studio to show us what they and some others in the Magic Valley had to say.

Amy Reid: Thanks Joe. This case has sparked a lot of controversy about refugees in the Magic Valley, which means anger from both sides of the spectrum.

Against a video backdrop of Julie Ruf, a spokesperson for We the People Magic Valley speaking at the press conference, KMVT ran this audio from Nancy Taylor, a pro-refugee activist who may not have even attended the event:

I believe there is a very small group in Twin Falls, very small, and vocal, who, for lack of a better word are racist.

The video then shifts to Taylor seated, apparently in a studio or residence as she delivers her pronouncement.

“And a part of that group stood up today to affirm just the opposite,” Reid then said in her report, as the video switched back to the actual press conference where one of the speakers, after delivering the main message of the press conference, responded to a question asked by one of the media representatives attending the event whether the group was racist.

On Tuesday, KMVT reported a story with the headline “Man arrested for sexually assaulting vulnerable adult” that failed to mention the station had featured the same man, Mohammed Hussein Ibraheim Eldai, in a story two months earlier on June 14 reported by Reid.

That story claimed that Muslim refugees were fitting into the Twin Falls community and highlighted their reaction, Eldai’s in particular, to the radical Islamist terrorist attack that killed 49 people in Orlando, Florida earlier that month:

One Muslim man says these acts make it harder to teach people the truth about Islam.

“These bad people they do this stuff in the name of Islam, and Islam doesn’t say it like that,” said Mohammed Hussein Ibraheim Eldai. “Now the picture of Islam is getting worse because, I don’t know. I… hope these people are going to give up.”

In its report on Eldai’s arrest, KMVT failed to mention that he is Muslim, a point it featured in its June 14 story in which he was quoted.

“A Twin Falls man was arraigned in district court Monday for allegedly sexually assaulting a vulnerable adult this past weekend,” KMVT news director Huston, appearing on air, began the report.

Breitbart News also contacted a senior executive at Gray Television, the publicly traded company that owns KMVT, for comment, but received no response.