Deconstructing a Media Matters Post

Suze issued the challenge and I'm taking it. I am posting this as a new post because I need the full-text editing features. So let's start:

On the June 28 edition of NBC's Today, guest host and NBC News chief White House correspondent David Gregory uncritically repeated the false claim made by right-wing pundit Ann Coulter on the June 26 edition of MSNBC's Hardball that Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards received "big money to speak in front of a poverty group." Gregory used the claim during an interview with Edwards' wife, Elizabeth, to argue: "If you strip away some of the inflammatory rhetoric [by Coulter] against your husband and other Democrats, the point she's trying to make about your husband ... is in effect that he's disingenuous, especially on the signature issue of poverty, whether it's a $400 haircut or taking big money to speak in front of a poverty group." Gregory asked, "[I]s that a real point of vulnerability that you have to deal with in this campaign?"

What's wrong here? Gregory is asking a question, as a journalist, about the effect of what Coulter says and he paraphrases her. What's he supposed to do, say "What are the effects of what that woman said?" He's not supposed to editorialize.

And what's with the stilted, Pravda-esque phrasing, "uncritically repeated the false claim". If MM takes itself seriously, why use the hyperbole? It destroys the objectivity of their claim.

Let's continue. I'm having fun here. The next paragraph is truly a theater of the absurd:

However, as Media Matters for America noted, in claiming that Edwards "charge[d] a poverty group $50,000 for a speech," Coulter appeared to be distorting the earlier disclosure that Edwards received $55,000 for a January 2006 speech at the University of California-Davis. While Edwards reportedly "chose to speak on 'Poverty, the great moral issue facing America,' " there is no evidence that he was speaking to a "poverty group" at the university. Furthermore, as Media Matters documented at the time, the widely repeated claim that Edwards "charged" UC-Davis for the speech ignored the fact that there was an admission fee to the event, which, combined with sponsorships, offset Edwards' speaking fee, according to his campaign.

MM is right that he wasn't speaking to a poverty group, apparently his speech was part of a Distinguished Speakers program sponsored by Western Health Advantage. But it's really funny that they're critical of Coulter's claim of $50,000 when it was actually $5,000 higher.

And I'm reasonably sure they are essentially correct about where that $55,000 came from, why use "charged" in quotations. $55,000 was charged for the affair. That's not a lie - it's the damn truth.

So, to conclude:

Gregory uses a legitimate interviewing technique as a reporter. MM goes insane because Coulter makes an off-hand comment that was, in important particulars, was pretty close to the truth. The important takeaways are that Edwards charges (or is offered) a helluva lot of money to speak at a college and gets $400 haircuts. These are legitimate things to question for a journalist.

So MM tries to paint the scoreboard as Coulter - Bad, Gregory - Bad, Mrs. Edwards - No Opinion, John Edwards - Good.

The true scorecard is Coulter - Bad, Gregory - Doing His Job, Mrs. Edwards - No Opinion, John Edwards - Questionable.

And that, dear friends, is propaganda.