Worst “journalism” of the year so far.

[Chiyo-chichi]

I came to despise Katie Couric because she was a Bush shill. Examples of her going out of her way to criticize Democrats and try to prop up Dubya are well documented on this site and others.

This morning, Meredith Vieira may have outdone Couric.

She asked Chris Matthews the single most idiotic question I have ever heard. Period.

Speaking of the troop surge in Iraq, Matthews made the point that the November election was a referendum on the war and that voters of all stripes rejected it. “It seems like (the surge is) coming and I must say it runs completely against American public opinion,” said Matthews. “I expect it will be treated the way Richard Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia was reacted to. The American people aren’t going to like it.”

Meredith Vieira replied, “Well, the American people, when they went to the polls in November, said they wanted a change. So I’m President Bush and I’m sitting in the White House. For a year, I’ve been listening to my Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld, and my key commander on the ground in Iraq, Casey, say to me that we should begin the gradual withdrawal of troops and beef up Iraqi security. That didn’t work. So you want a change? I’m giving you a change.”

What the hell was that? Seriously. Somebody tell me. What is Vieira asking here and why?

Allow me to attempt to paraphrase. Matthews says that the war is unpopular and the increase in troop numbers is going to be unpopular and of great significance. Vieira asks, “Well, if the American people wanted a change… more of the same… isn’t that a change?”

I’m still at a total loss. Of course the American electorate did not throw the Republicans out because they want more troops in Iraq.

Is this just a lousy attempt to deliver a very lame White House talking point? Are these segments heavily scripted? If so… by whom? Is this simply another example of defense contractor General Electric, which owns NBC, trying to tell us that war is good?

It might help if you watch the video. Go here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12065856/ and click on “Matthews discusses Saddam hanging.” They talk about the surge first.

Aside from the content of the things she used to say, one thing that bothered me about Couric was that she seemed to relish those opportunities to back Bush. She once nearly put her hand over Jim Cramer’s mouth when he refused to go down the path she was leading him and say that good economic news would turn Bush’s poll numbers around. Here, Vieira seems to recite this paragraph pretty quickly. My impression is that she had to read it – so she did it quickly. Katie would have done it more slowly and with more relish.

Perhaps I am completely off base. Perhaps it was a perfectly good journalistic question and Vieira was just “trying to present both sides.” Maybe I’m the idiot.

But this kind of thing bugs the crap out of me.

[gratuitous]

1. Oh but it's a big change

See, the way out of a clusterfuck is more clustering and harder fucking. Vieira, an important television personality who makes way more money than you and I put together, understands this in a way that no regular person (you and I again) ever could. We're so lucky to have her insights!

Probably unnecessary, but :sarcasm:

[KittyWampus]

2. You've captured #1. WH talking point #2. Mediawhore in action #3 subpar mediawhore

so i have no choice but to recommend this post.

[underpants]

3. So the votes against the war and how the war was being run were really

votes FOR sending in more troops....right???

Wow is that a stretch. It's like you have to go out the Earth's atmosphere suffer oxygen deprivation and then come back in for that to even come close to making any sense.

What does it say there on her paycheck? Oh it says "G.E."

[blm]

4. I see it as their often 'clumsy' attempts to bend over backwards to appear anti-liberal

because they KNOW that facts have a 'liberal' bias - as per Colbert. Bullshit to realists always comes off clumsy and beyond belief no matter how you dress it up.

[still_one]

5. The MSM is irrelevent, they have been replaced with the internet

who the hell needs them

You may not agree with everything that is posted throughout the internet, but at least ALL SIDES ARE PRESENTED

That is why the corporate media MUST NEVER CONTROL THE INTERNET

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

6. She's doing what all the morning...

...corporate owned, smiley face, media whores do -- protecting her job.

[closeupready]

7. Meredith doesn't seem that partisan to me.

And she's careful with her words. So you may be reading a bit into it. who knows.

[Chiyo-chichi]

9. I have always liked Meredith in the past.

I want to like her on the Today Show (although I only have my NBC affiliate on in the mornings because I like the local weather people and I only hear snippets of Today since I'm getting ready for work.)

But was that not an idiotic question?

[closeupready]

11. Yeah, I agree - it's like, "what did you just ask me?" LOL

I mean, it's like Condi Rice-speak - stop trying to sound so smart, and just spit it out, people! And also, it's aggravating (and a little offensive) that viewers are the ones left to figure out exactly what it is she's asking.

But I like her, too. :)

[Wickerman]

10. I thought it was a softball for Matthews

and he didn't, imho, swing.

[closeupready]

12. In this situation, I feel Couric would have been more direct.

In Meredith's attempt to strike a balance, she just got clumsy with her wording.

[Chiyo-chichi]

15. That also occurred to me

and I was of the same opinion.

[SteppingRazor]

8. Well, I wouldn't say you're completely off base...

You write at the end of your post "Perhaps it was a perfectly good journalistic question and Vieira was just “trying to present both sides.” Maybe I’m the idiot."


Perfectly good journalism does not necessarily present both sides. If you're doing a segment on the Holocaust, do you need to interview Holocaust deniers? Of course not! It's rubbish. So, too, with many of the issues that are innocently presented as having two sides by the media today. There is not "another side" to global climate change. It is happening, and it is the fault of environmental changes caused by humanity. There is not "another side" to evolution. Evolution is demonstrable scientific theory, and intelligent design is not.

This idea that good journalism provides two sides to every issue, no matter the issue, is a colossal fallacy, and one of the chief problems with media today. Sure, there are issues that are still too complex, and still too new, for one factual truth to be known. In these cases, there's three sides -- your side, my side, and the truth. But after it's all congealed into the truth, there's no going back and insisting on revisiting proven fact by presenting two separate realities.

Journalism fearing to tell the truth, blinded by the dogma of so-called objectivity, is destroying American journalism -- not partisanship, not right- or left-wing bias. If anything has ruined American journalism, it is a bias toward sensationalism and a tendency to sidestep the truth by presenting two sides of an argument that has already been settled.

[Chiyo-chichi]

16. Very well said.

That's what was in the back of my mind when I put the phrase "trying to present both sides" in quotes, but you said it much better than my facetious quitation marks.

[SteppingRazor]

17. As a journalist myself...

this tendency to vapidly present two sides of an already-decided argument makes me want to slam my head into a brick wall. Good have mercy, but it is excruciating to watch.

[Batgirl]

13. that's just a damn ignorant comment she made

and it doesn't even make sense. She's saying that the message delivered by voters in November wasn't directed at the actual Bush stay-the-course policy in Iraq -- it was actually because voters were disgusted that some of Bush's advisors were urging him to begin troop reductions? So what the voters did was a defensive reaction to make sure Bush gives us not only more of the same, but even an enhanced version of stay-the-course, i.e. voters rejected all those Republicans as a statement of support for George Bush?

I just can't make sense of it any way I look at it.

Never underestimate the vapidity of the modern tv journamalist.

[Chiyo-chichi]

18. I'm glad I'm not the only one who can make no sense of her question.

We might expect something like this to come from a Jeff Gannon or a Les Kinsolving at a WH presser, but even they would have made more sense!

[Der Blaue Engel]

14. Maybe she was trying to demonstrate the colossal stupidity and arrogance

of blivet's thought processes? Did she add "heh-heh-heh" at the end?