Much of the coverage of recent federal immigration raids in Denver and Aurora by left-leaning news media had a curious, and easily missed, theme.  Colorado Public Radio’s (CPR) coverage is emblematic:  “Though [federal] authorities had said they wanted to capture 100 members of a Venezuelan gang in Wednesday’s action, the same report said only one person who was detained had gang ties. No evidence of that tie was offered.”

Right there at the end you have it.  “No evidence.”  Think about the last run of the mill crime story you read, something involving an arrest.  If the police made a claim about the people arrested, do you remember a modifier about “no evidence” or “without evidence” being attached?

This got me curious. Why the scrupulous attention to detail on federal claims about immigration and Venezuelan gang arrests?  Why not ask for evidence on your everyday, run of the mill gang arrests?

Zooming out a little, putting the question more generally, is there a disparity in the way the media use terms like “without evidence” or “no evidence”?  Are they applied equally to different situations and/or people?

The ‘without evidence’ disparity

Perception can be tricky.  Things that are top of mind tend to get weighted heavily.  If you’re thinking of buying a green diesel pickup, you’ll be seeing green diesels everywhere.  It doesn’t mean that they’re suddenly increasing in number.  It just means you’re paying attention to them.

A careful look, then, is needed to quantify such a disparity.  I did site searches with Google on three left-of-center media heavies in Colorado:  the Sun, CPR, and The Denver Post.  In order to not be inundated with things to catalog, I searched for results with the words “without evidence,” and another search with “no evidence” between Jan 1, 2024 and Feb 7, 2025.

You know what?  There really was not much pattern.  There is no real disparity for the three in terms of stories on Venezuelan gangs.  Green diesels strike again.

But, there was one glaring disparity that repeatedly popped up on all three.  Trump, elections, and immigrants.  Counting those led to definite patterns.  Repeating the searches above, but this time searching for the phrase “without evidence” while including “Trump” returned 7 pertinent results out of 8 for the Sun, 3 out of 3 for CPR, and 13 out of 16 for the Post.

Slipping the word “Biden” in for Trump netted no results in any of the three outlets.  Well, let me clarify.  It didn’t return empty pages, but more that there were no results where the reporters attached the modifier to anything Biden said.  Turning to state politicians, “Polis” in place of Trump came back empty, so did “Griswold”.

Perhaps this is as much as anything a case of not seeking out information the media consider important enough.  Surely there would be results about people making false claims on Russian collusion, no?  What with the potential for false claims there to influence elections and all.

I reran the searches to see if any of these outlets remarked on there being shaky evidence as to Russia collusion stories.  Were politicians back then saying things “without evidence”?

I searched the three outlets again for “without evidence” along with “Trump”, “without evidence” with “Clinton,” and “without evidence” with “Russia.”  To catch results in the thick of Russian collusion stories, I set the date controls to be across the entirety of Trump’s first presidential term, Jan 20, 2016 to Jan 20, 2021.

Out of these three searches, there was only one response even remotely close to a politician other than Trump carrying the “without evidence” label. It was an NPR fact check that CPR reprinted.  NPR fact-checked Republican Newt Gingrich blasting the Department of Justice.

Applying standards equally

My point here is not to defend Trump.  He has more than once earned the modifier “without evidence” attached to the things he’s said.  If we are clear-headed and fair, however, we would note that there are also times where “without evidence” later became “with evidence.”  Remember when FEMA avoiding houses with Trump signs was “without evidence” until it wasn’t?

As such, I don’t really have any problem with reporters adding “without evidence” to things related to Trump.  No problem, that is, with a couple caveats.  One, the media ought to be absolutely scrupulous about revisiting their reporting when there is evidence.  If you say Trump claimed something without evidence and later there is some, you should shout it just as loudly as you shouted about there not being evidence.  And if there are gang ties among those caught up in federal sweeps in Denver or Aurora, you need to, just as scrupulously, report it and revisit the earlier progressive media narrative about the sweeps making innocents nervous while not getting any criminals off the streets.

And two, there needs to be one standard for everyone, not just a standard for Trump and a different one for others like Clinton, Biden, Polis, Griswold, etc.  I will admit that my search methods are not perfect, but the fact that there were multiple searches, across multiple outlets that returned absolutely nothing is too big a disparity to shrug off.

Frequently tagging one politician or group, while almost never doing so for others would seem to point to the ludicrous idea of only one politician making claims they can’t back up, journalists and editors not caring enough to bother, or to them acting as dutiful scribes for some while holding others to a very different standard.

I reached out to the editors of the three outlets I checked on to see if they had a specific policy about when to apply the “without evidence” (or similar) label to see if perhaps there was a rationale that wasn’t obvious to me.  As of this writing, I’ve not heard back.

Whatever is driving this, the clear disparity here points to another example of the media applying labels unfairly and unequally.

Cory Gaines is a regular contributor to Complete Colorado. He lives in Sterling on Colorado’s Eastern Plains and also writes at the Colorado Accountability Project substack.