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Last week, the New York Times published Daryl Hannah’s op-ed “How Can ‘Love Story’ Get Away with This?”

Hannah was referring to the FX made-for-television series that focused on the whirlwind love affair and marriage between John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, then a Calvin Klein employee. The couple and Bessette’s sister, Lauren, died in July 1999 when a small plane that Kennedy piloted crashed off Martha Vineyard’s coast.

Hannah correctly complained “Love Story” producers maliciously and for profit misrepresented her five-year romance with Kennedy, Jr. In the process of churning out salacious content, FX also slanderously misrepresented her character.

“The character Daryl Hannah portrayed in the series is not even a remotely accurate representation of my life, my conduct or my relationship with John,” Hannah wrote. “The actions and behaviors attributed to me are untrue… It’s appalling to me that I even have to defend myself against a television show. These are not creative embellishments of personality. They are assertions about conduct — and they are false.”

How does the media get away with gross misrepresentation which it presents as hard fact? Immigration enforcement advocates have been asking the same question for years.

Comparing Hannah’s disgust with the media’s mischaracterization of her to the lies surrounding immigration may seem like a stretch to some. But only to those not engaged in the fray.

Around 2000, NumbersUSA assigned me to head its newly formed Media Standards Project. The task was straightforward – everyday I would read immigration stories and evaluate them against the fairness and balance standards the Society for Professional Journalists set for reporters. SPJ has a code of ethics that emphasizes the importance of seeking truth and reporting it, respecting all individuals, of considering the potential effect of their reporting on subjects and engaging in open dialogue about their practices. By adhering to those principles, journalists can foster credibility and integrity in their work.

Over the three-year period that I analyzed immigration stories – I read about 1,500 – only a small handful of reporters admitted their stories could have been more balanced. Even considering the blatant one-sidedness like a San Francisco Chronicle page one homage to illegal immigration – eight quoted as pro; zero opposed – reporters would not back down, claiming that to include the enforcement perspective would be “another story” and not the one they wanted to tell.

Reporters told lies of omission, like portraying congressional enforcement heroes like Senator Jeff Sessions and U.S. Representatives Tom Tancredo and Steve King as racists. The list also included the failure to write about how illegal immigration, asylum fraud, refugee resettlement overwhelms schools, hospitals and communities. Out of 1,500 stories, the odds would favor that some stories would include the downside to open borders. The stories defied the odds; I never found true 50-50 balance.

During the 25 years since I concluded the project, fairness and balance in the failing, fading legacy media immigration stories is still non-existent. In an indirect victory for enforcement advocates, the public’s trust in the media is at an all-time low, 28%.

In other words, the media is still cranking out dishonest stories, but fewer and fewer readers believe them.

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Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].