During the past week, several correspondents and newscasters have presented slanted information and have overtly withheld details regarding Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Syria. White House correspondent Susan Malveaux has engaged in pejorative rhetoric labeling the visit as a “political stunt” and stated that Speaker Pelosi was not acting in official capacity. Lou Dobbs ran a segment entitled “Pelosi’s Bad Trip,” while Anderson Cooper featured a segment entitled “Talking with Terrorists.”

Aside from countless oversights of media fairness and equality, the instances listed above ignore the fact that a delegation led by Rep. Frank Wolf, Republican of Virgina, preceded her visit. Also, Speaker Pelosi’s trip to Damascus was followed by a visit from Rep. Darrell Issa, Republican of California. Why was this information not included in the off-hand defamatory commentary?

While journalistic integrity may not be an objective of CNN, allowing such partisan reporting and juvenile remarks (Malveaux’s “big wet kiss to President Al-Assad” comment) reduce the network to accurate Fox News comparisons.

In the future, CNN should consider the growing hand of the Internet and blogosphere and the availability of information to the general public. The news media market was once dominated by a select few networks and print ventures, but this share has been decreased by competition. It is a shame that in order to return to its previous market capitalization, CNN engages in destructive slander at the expense of truth and the stability of geopolitics. If it is merely bottom line revenue and industry dominance CNN is after, try a differentiation method. The market is saturated with yellow journalism, while the blogs have achieved growing traffic rates and publicity. Instead of being another mudslinging outlet, why not try actual journalism and reporting? After all, America has been exhausted and stunted by the movement of categorical nonsense.

-Joshua Grgas

Dear CNN Bigwigs,

During the past week, treading on a treadmill at my local gym, I’ve been sweating and watching Suzanne Malveaux dis Nancy Pelosi for doing what the Bush administration should have been doing lo, these past 4 years: talking to our enemies. I’ve been fuming and sweating watching Lou Dobbs doing the same thing (BTW, Lou is mostly right making a stink about immigration policy)

How about giving the Speaker credit for being states-person-like and far wiser than the cypher in the oval office. Personally, I prefer her representation. It’s smarter and less encumbered with attempts at lethal reputation salvaging coming from the tiny Texan and his malevolent entourage.

Pelosi is attempting to find a way out of the train wreck created by those anti-bermensches, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, etc.

Can’t CNN report another side of Pelosi’s endeavor: the possibility that she may be right? God knows you did that for Bush leading up to this catastrophe. Make amends, please.

Jim Culleny

FDL friends: having worked for a few corporate behemoths (you can boo and hiss later) I can tell you that a well written letter can do wonders. I’m talking about the sponsors. One letter equals 500 unwritten ones and that’s the kind of math that makes them shit their corporate britches. Tell them you have always bought their crap products but since you saw their ads on CNN you are starting to re-think your brand loyalty.

Believe me, their corporate balls shrivel when they read that kind of stuff. It does work.

By all means, write the letters (I spent years writing letters to the Post before finally cancelling my subscription). But they’ve undertaken this Pelosi smear with the full understanding that it is journalistic malpractice approaching libel. This one is too important to them to bother listening to the complaints of conscientious viewers, and even if they respond in some way the horse is out of the barn. This requires some kind of forensic analysis to determine who placed the calls to CNN and the Post (credit to Knut at #158 for this inference).

Actually, Knut at #158 takes this further:
“Don’t miss the big picture. This is orchestrated from the White House. They are trying to Swift Boat Pelosi.”

He unleashed a cyber-warrior — just in time for the 2004 election. I haven’t stopped since, although I still don’t know shit about how this stuff actually works.