When it comes to Speaker Pelosi and her bipartisan delegation to the Middle East this week, this has not been the mainstream media’s finest hour. Take Matt Lauer’s reporting from this morning’s Today Show.
This morning, NBC’s Today Show ran a biased segment casting doubt on Pelosi’s Syria trip. Every single question asked by anchor Matt Lauer was framed around conservative talking points. In his first question, Lauer claimed Pelosi has gotten off to a rough start because of criticisms from a baseless Washington Post editorial, Vice President Cheney, and the conservative editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal:
“Vice President Cheney called Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Syria ‘bad behavior,’ a Washington Post editorial on Thursday called it ‘counter-productive and foolish,’ and an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this morning goes a step further and suggests her trip may actually have been a felony, that it may have violated something called the Logan Act. Tim, is this the way the Democrats wanted to get off the mark in terms of foreign affairs?” […]
To wrap up the segment, Lauer suggested that Pelosi may be “seen as usurping presidential power in designing and implementing foreign policy.”
Look, I know the Today Show isn’t the ideal place to look for quality political journalism. It’s about soft news and lighthearted features. The quality of its political analysis is more like People magazine than The American Prospect. A viewer’s expectations should be low before tuning in.
But if Lauer is going to tackle these issues, he should probably have a clue. Indeed, reports on morning shows like Today have a major influence on how millions of Americans perceive major stories. If Matt Lauer is on NBC telling the nation that Pelosi has been wrong and irresponsible, then viewers who don’t know better will assume that Pelosi has been wrong and irresponsible.
Given how wrong Lauer is, that’s a real problem.
Indeed, consider Lauer’s proof that somehow Pelosi is in the wrong here: Dick “Mr. Credibility” Cheney unfairly attacked her; the Wall Street Journal’s right-wing editorial board is running trumped up nonsense; and the Washington Post ran a seriously flawed editorial that contradicted the paper’s own reporting.
It led to this gem:
“[I]f you look back at the mid-term elections, clearly some voters in this country were unhappy with the administration’s foreign policy, specifically in Iraq; it’s one of the reasons we think Democrats took control of Congress. But if the Democrats and Speaker Pelosi appear to be acting irresponsibly or incompetently, and let’s face it, a lot of people think she messed up on this one, what’s the impact for Democrats overall?”
This is hackish journalism and Lauer must know better. Consider some of the relevant angles Lauer neglected to share with viewers:
* Lawmakers from both parties visited Syria, but the “lot of people” who are whining are singling out Pelosi;
* Far from “usurping presidential power,” Pelosi, according to a Republican lawmaker who was part of the Speaker’s delegation, said she “reinforced the administration’s positions”;
* Pelosi’s outreach to Syria was not only recommended by the Iraq Study Group, but also reflects American attitudes towards international diplomacy (75% of the country wants to see more direct engagement with Syria).
Maybe Lauer didn’t find these details important enough to mention. Or maybe he doesn’t know enough about this story to report on it well. Either way, his commentary this morning was faulty.
I don’t mean to pick of Lauer; CNN’s coverage has been, on average, considerably worse. But the media seemed to be improving, at least a little, in the first few months of the year, as evidenced by reporting on Walter Reed, Iraq, and the prosecutor purge scandal.
Looks like they’re backsliding.