(Newswire.net — November 21, 2014) — The White House is upset that the nation’s major broadcast television networks will not air President Barack Obama’s primetime announcement Thursday evening of executive actions on immigration policy.
According to AP, CBS representative said that this network would not air the primetime speech of the President Obama. NBS said it would air the speech live only on its Info-channel MSNBC.
ABC also said it would not air the speech on its main channel; however, it will be aired live on the digital ABC News channels.
The White House still hope that the majority of national networks will go live with the Obama’s speech scheduled for 8 pm ET.
“There was agreement among the broadcast networks that this was overtly political,” Politico’s Mike Allen wrote on Thursday. “The White House has tried to make a comparison to a time that all the networks carried President Bush in prime time, also related to immigration [2006]. But that was a bipartisan announcement, and this is an overtly political move by the White House.”
Nevertheless, Obama administration officials disputed this assessment saying that there are obvious differences between Bush’s 17 min. speech on deploying National Guard troops to the border and Obama’s 10 min. speech on the subject that will have a vastly greater impact on the issue.
After the networks rebuffed it, the White House promotes on social networks a live stream link for Thursday’s presidential address.
“Everybody agrees our immigration system is broken,” Obama said in the social network post. “Unfortunately, Washington has allowed the problem to fester for too long. What I am going to be laying out are the things I can do with my lawful authority as president to make the system work better, even as I continue to work with Congress.”
On the other side, CNN, FOX News and Spanish-language networks Univision and Telemundo will broadcast the speech live, according to Politico.
In his speech, President Obama will announce executive decision about reformation of the immigration law that will give a chance to near 5 million emigrants to legalize their US residence and void deportation. Opposing republicans who control the Congress warned Obama that they would go for impeachment, if he goes for such unilateral move without consulting the Congress.