Sunday -- ignoring the story

President Trump's immigration order became a major news story on Saturday evening. Here's an Associated Press dispatch at 6:40 PM that evening:

A U.S. federal law enforcement official says any non-U.S. citizen from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia or Yemen is now barred from entering the United States. . . .

Customs and Border Protection is notifying airlines about passengers whose visas had been canceled or legal residents scheduled to fly back to the U.S., and the airlines are being told to keep them off those flights.

As the evening wore on, the AP produced numerous updates especially as a federal court stepped in.

The next morning major newspapers throughout the United States covered what happened. Here's what Kiosko highlighted at 10 AM Sunday morning:

And what kind of coverage did Sunday morning's Wheeling News-Register devote to this story? Nothing. Not a single word. At the top of the page was a story on the Regional Education Service Agency and the largest headline was reserved for a Casey Junkins story on how Ohio and Pennsylvania casinos were cutting into the profits of West Virginia casinos. While it might be tempting to say that the "newspaper had already been put to bed" (made ready for publication), a look at the rest of the paper suggests otherwise. For example, page 3 carries an AP story on Trump and Putin that wasn't filed by the Associated Press until 6:48 PM and the sports section has the scores from events later that evening. Obviously, a clear decision was made not to cover the story in the Sunday paper. So much for informing its readers of the important stories of the day.

Monday's coverage

The original story was about a number of issues: Donald Trump making good on his immigration promises, the enforcement of an executive order, civil liberties, religious discrimination and the choice of which countries were included for starters. The Intelligencer saw it differently -- here's this morning's headline:

Ban Sows Chaos at Airports

Airports? This is what's important? The Intelligencer did provide two articles. The first

Protests Continue into Second Day

is a cut-and-paste of selective passages from a much longer and very thorough AP article by Deepti Hajela and Michael Tarm who did not get any credit from the Intelligencer. (Read their original article here.) The second article

White House: Order 'Small Price' for Safety

by Jill Colvin largely gives the administration's point of view on the executive order. Like the other article, this one is also severely edited. For example, in the original article Colvin does include Republican critics Senators Lindsay Graham and John McCain who didn't manage to make the Intelligencer cut.

Finally, Monday afternoon's News-Register gave us another Colvin article:

Trump Denies Order Caused Airport Chaos

This one was the closest to the AP original. Finally, two full days after the event, we get to read some fair and balanced news on Trump's actions.

Of course all of this comes from yet another Trump executive order. Are we ever going to see an editorial or Mike Myer column about Trump's use of executive orders? "Executive overreach" and "imperial presidency" were good enough topics for at least one editorial/Myer column every month while Obama was president. For example, here's another Myer oldie-but-goodie from late October:

Look back at the preceding list of Obama’s unilateral actions. Whether you agree with them or not, ask yourself this: Should any individual have the power to take such actions?

The nation’s founders thought not. That’s why they established three branches of government to act as checks and balances on each other.

At least we’ll be rid of one of the most imperial presidents in history soon.

I'm sorry but Obama was replaced by an even more imperial president although I doubt we'll read about it in our local "newspapers."