Pelosi trip


It would seem to be a fundamental rule of journalism that one of its primary roles is to expose official hypocrisy, particularly that of those in high places.

We get three newspapers every morning, which we attempt to speed read in the course of about half an hour. Today I looked at all three to see how they did on exposing Bush's hypocrisy on Nancy Pelosi's trip to Syria. As you may know, according to him it endangers the Republic when a Congressperson talks to the Syrians. Somehow, though, the statement is inoperative when it comes to Republican Congresspeople, who have gone to Syria on similar trips with nary a presidential whimper.

Of the three papers, only the Day printed an article (from the Associated Press) that mentioned the fact:

Visiting neighboring Lebanon on Monday, Pelosi shrugged off White House criticism of her trip to Syria, noting that Republican lawmakers met Assad on Sunday without comment from the Bush administration.

The article in the Courant doesn't say a word about the Republican trips, even though its focus is more on the Presidential complaints than the article in the Day. The Courant's article is by another Associated Press writer.

The Times article also contains nary a mention of the Republican trips, but you'll have to take my word for it. The article has been edited since the morning paper was printed, so the web article actually does make note of the trips:

Even so, three Republican congressmen — Robert Aderholt of Alabama, Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania and Frank Wolf of Virginia — visited Syria separately and met with Mr. Assad on Sunday. And a senior American diplomat, Assistant Secretary of State Ellen Sauerbrey, held talks in Damascus last month with Syrian officials about an influx of Iraqi refugees. Mr. Bush did not mention those visits in his remarks yesterday.

The web article lists the authors as Hassan Fattah and Graham Bowley, the print article lists only Mr. Fattah.

The Courant's website now has a number of news service articles that contain the information too.

For what it's worth, this is another indication that the internet has had a positive affect on news coverage. I'm too lazy to supply the links, but the reaction in the blogosphere was immediate and strong to the initial failure of the media to cover this obvious hypocrisy. There's no question in my mind but that the reaction was the cause for the changes to the article in the Times.

The hypocrisy, by the way, is even deeper than the fact that Bush didn't protest the Republican trips, he appeared to help arrange them.
Posted: Wednesday - April 04, 2007 at 07:36 PM          

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