Sunday Mornings and the News

Before heading out to church, my Sunday morning ritual is one of strong coffee, the morning papers from around the country, and the network interview shows. I generally watch FOX News Sunday, Meet the Press, This Week with George Stephanopoulos and, if I get up in time Media Matters on CNN. I know that everyone has a bias, and that no matter how hard you try, sometimes you cannot get around it. The best journalists acknowledge that, do their best to mitigate it, and move forward. But this morning I was left wondering what happened to Chris Wallace of FOX News. One of his guests was Republican Congressman Peter Hoekstra of Michigan. Hoekstra is one of the leading GOP foreign affairs voices. I was expecting a good conversation on Iran, and with Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana and Iranian expert Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace contributing, Wallace generally delivered. Except for this. Wallace never asked about Hoekstra about his idiotic comments twittered earlier in the week. In case you missed them, here they are. Iranian twitter activity similar to what we did in House last year when Republicans were shut down in the House. Maybe I missed something, but I am not aware of any House Republicans being killed for talking to the media. I am not aware of any physical beatings the House GOP members received at the hands of the Democrats. I am not aware of any GOP members being called terrorists. So I was waiting for Wallace to ask Hoekstra about these comments and hear his response. And yet there was nothing. Chris Wallace, generally fair and a good journalist, blew it this morning.