That media manipulation is scheduled this morning April 30 when, according to a County media rep yesterday, the County is implementing a protocol to suit federal HHS officials. We editorially note that the protocol will effectively block most reporters from firsthand access to L.A .County Pomona Fairplex facilities used to temporarily house migrant minors. On April 22, Long Beach officials, apparently similarly complicit with HHS desires, did basically the same thing and got away with it by preventing most reporters from seeing firsthand the Long Beach Convention Center detention facilities for migrant minors.

In both cases, we object.

And we're fed up with euphemisms. Both sites, temporary though they may be, are federally operated detention facilities. The Biden administration and its local allies can't have it both ways: shrugging media restrictions on detention facilities for unaccompanied migrant minors while using media outlets to portray the facilities as happy-face childrens' playgrounds.

In both Long Beach and Pomona, HHS and its local enablers abused the practice of offering "pooled" coverage in which one or two reporters and a photographers get access and allow others to use their text and photos. Pooled coverage is appropriate when physical conditions (e.g. a political fundraiser inside a person's home) don't permit access by a large group of reporters. That wasn't the case on April 22 at the commodious Long Beach Convention Center and won't be so on April 30 at the sprawling Pomona Fairplex.

No, the pool isn't to protect the privacy of migrant children. They weren't present at either location yet. Those two events should never have been pooled. In our view, they were pooled as part of an effort to manipulate press coverage.

In both cases, event organizers offered self-serving politicians access that they denied to most reporters trying to tell you the story. The electeds and their supportive allies toured the Convention Center with two pooled reporters and a pooled photographer (from a single media chain) plus a TV outlet's video. The pols and their supporters then emerged to offer a "press conference" with predictable responses from the supportive politicians and groups.

It was ludicrous. In Long Beach, questions were allowed in person; in Pomona, a media advisory demanded questions in advance. LBREPORT.com used the April 22 opportunity to ask Long Beach's Mayor a quick question about initial White House involvement; he answered but follow-ups weren't allowed and we didn't directly raise the pooled media issue at that time. Neither did others.

But one of our competitors got to the heart of the matter with his question, paraphrased here: How will we be able to confirm whether everything you're promising will actually be provided. he asked. After hearing the tap-danced response, we have no idea.

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