A series of CNN chyrons this week scare-quoted President Donald Trump when he tweeted about and discussed the "caravan" of Central American migrants approaching the southern border, but it did not do so when interviewing the reporter who broke the story on Thursday.
The caravan, first reported on by BuzzFeed on March 30, attracted the president's attention after Fox News aired a report about it Sunday morning.
In an article headlined, "A Huge Caravan Of Central Americans Is Headed For The US, And No One In Mexico Dares To Stop Them," reporter Adolfo Flores described a group of more than 1,000 people, many from Honduras, on a march to the U.S. border.
"Organized by a group of volunteers called Pueblos Sin Fronteras, or People Without Borders, the caravan is intended to help migrants safely reach the United States, bypassing not only authorities who would seek to deport them, but gangs and cartels who are known to assault vulnerable migrants," Flores wrote.
After the Fox report on the caravan, Trump criticized "ridiculous" laws like "Catch & Release" and warned of "caravans" coming toward the border in a tweet.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/980443810529533952
Over the past few days, he's tweeted about caravans several more times, taking credit at one point for Mexico intervening and halting the caravan in the southern state of Oaxaca.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/980762392303980544
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/980961086546632705
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/981121409807155200
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/981859214380462081
In a series of on-air reports on Monday and Tuesday, CNN's lower third chyrons featured Trump referring to "caravans," with the word in quotation marks.
It was unclear why the word, which BuzzFeed itself used repeatedly to accurately describe the large group of migrants, was placed in quotes when attributed to Trump.
At one point, CNN did quote Trump without scare-quoting the word "caravan."
On Thursday, however, while CNN interviewed Flores about the story, the chyron appeared without putting "caravan" in quotation marks.
