Reporting live from Prague, Stephanopoulos was mostly light on details. He did explain that the treaty's goal is to cut "nuclear arsenals by about 30 percent over the next seven years." And while the ex-Democratic aide allowed that "critics call [the treaty] utopian and dangerous," he didn't explain why.

Co-host Robin Roberts announced, "George Stephanopoulos is there in Prague for the historic moment." She later teased, "George is traveling, of course, with the President, who just signed a landmark treaty."

Roberts labeled the agreement a "controversial arms control agreement," a term not used over on CBS's Early Show. Substitute new anchor Betty Nguyen described the treaty as a "new start" between Russia and the U.S.

Early Show reporter Chip Reid just regurgitated White House talking points: "President Obama arrived in Prague Thursday morning to sign what the White House calls a historic agreement with Russia on reducing nuclear arms."

He parroted, "White House advisers say a full year of intense negotiations has also helped foster better relations with Russia and with President Dmitry Medvedev."

On NBC's Today, Meredith Vieira hailed, "And one big step. President Obama and his Russian counterpart sign a landmark treaty overnight to slash both countries' nuclear arsenals." Co-host Matt Lauer proclaimed, "It's a major move in his push for a nuclear-free world."

Unlike Stephanopoulos, Chuck Todd, to his credit, provided more detail in explaining exactly what is in the treaty:

CHUCK TODD: The treaty limits deployed nuclear warheads to 1,550 total for each country, a cut of 30 percent from the last treaty in 2002. Long-range nuclear weapons are limited to 700 for each country. Combined, the two countries account for 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons with seven other countries accounting for the other 10 percent. Experts say this treaty is only be a success if it leads to the Russians agreeing to even more cuts.

But, just as with the Early Show, the reporters and hosts on Today did not hint at any controversy.

A transcript of the April 8 GMA segment, which aired at 7:02am EDT, follows:

7am tease

ROBIN ROBERTS: This morning, breaking news. The President signs a controversial arms control agreement with Russia. George Stephanopoulos is there in Prague for the historic moment.

7:01

ROBERTS: And we know that George is traveling, of course, with the President, who just signed a landmark treaty- there's George- to reduce the two countries' nuclear weapons by a third. It comes almost exactly one year after President Obama pledged to put an end to cold-war thinking. But, it sparked heated debate here at home. And we'll get the latest from George in Prague in just a moment.

7:02

ROBIN ROBERTS: But, of course, we begin with the historic signing of the nuclear arms reduction treaty. George is in Prague, capital of the Czech Republic, where the signing just took place. Good morning, George.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Good morning, Robin. That's right. Except the two Presidents are running late because they had a very long business meeting, dealing with the situation in Iran. Also that unrest in Kyrgyzstan. But, they are here first and foremost to make history, by signing the most significant arms reduction treaty in two decades. The President was welcomed to Prague this morning with pomp and circumstance. After meeting Czech President Vaclav Klaus, Obama got down to business with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. High on the agenda, confronting Iran's nuclear program. Then, the main event. The two Presidents signed a landmark treaty that will reduce their nuclear arsenals by about 30 percent over the next seven years. An important step in the relationship between the U.S. and Russia. And a significant down payment on the ambitious nuclear agenda, critics call it utopian and dangerous, that Obama first outlined a year ago here in Prague.

BARACK OBAMA: So, today, I state clearly and with conviction. America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Now, the President said today that is the work of a lifetime, maybe even beyond. But he's taken important steps. Announcing earlier this week, he would put new restrictions on the use of U.S. nuclear weapons. And he's invited 47 world leaders to Washington on Monday for a nuclear security summit. Robin?

ROBERTS: All right, George. Now, the treaty is signed. It has to be ratified, of course, by the Senate. Expect a fight there at all?

STEPHANOPOULOS: Oh, there's no question there's going to be a fight, Robin. Remember, a treaty takes 67 vote in order to get ratified. That means the President is going to have to get at least seven Republicans. He's already gotten criticism from Republicans who worry that this treaty may restrict U.S. missile defense programs. And the Russians have said that as well. But the White House officials tell us they expect this to get ratified this year.

ROBERTS: This year. Well, you alluded a moment ago to the unrest in Kyrgyzstan. And it's such an important ally in the war against Afghanistan, George.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That's exactly right. The President seems to have been ousted in Kyrgyzstan because he wanted support for a United States base in Kyrgyzstan, that's used to resupply Afghanistan. White House officials say that this base is still running, despite the fact that the President has left the capital. And this interim leader, this opposition leader who seems to have taken over in Kyrgyzstan, says there will not be any interference with the operation of that base.

ROBERTS: Such troubling situation in that region over there. I know you said the President is running a little bit late. But you have some time with him in just a little bit. Much to talk to him about, as always, right, George?

STEPHANOPOULOS: So much to talk to the President about. Of course, coming off the signing, we're going to talk to him about whether he can convince the Russians and the Chinese to really crack down on Iran's nuclear program. We also might get into the situation in Kyrgyzstan, the unrest in Afghanistan. There's so much to talk to the President about. And then Tomorrow, we move on to Russia. We'll talk to the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev. And we'll broadcast from St. Petersburg tomorrow and Moscow on Monday.

Thanks to James Cameron's "Avatar," environmentalists have a whole new way to preach to audiences about their over consumption. Invited on Wednesday's Today show to showcase endangered species, Sea World and Busch Garden's animal ambassador Julie Scardina played on the guilt of viewers as she asked the Today cast if they had seen Avatar and warned them: "You know our world is as amazing and incredible and unique as Pandora and yet a lot of people don't realize it's being destroyed in the same way." As Scardina played with a gibbon NBC's Ann Curry prompted Scardina: "Why is this gibbon's habitat so endangered?" which allowed Scardina to rail against logging, development and "consumption" in general.

The following exchange was aired on the April 7 Today show:

MATT LAUER: We're back at 8:45am with Today's Call of the Wild. This morning protecting endangered animals. The Sea World and Busch Gardens Conservation Fund works to preserve habitats and help save many species from extinction. Julie Scardina is Sea World and Busch Gardens' ambassador or animal ambassador. So Julie good to see you.

JULIE SCARDINA, SEA WORLD AND BUSCH GARDENS: Good morning you guys.

LAUER: Nice to- and you are holding an animal that you described as one of the most incredible on the planet.

SCARDINA: It really is. I mean this little guy is one of the most acrobatic. Now this, this little guy is only eight months old so.

AL ROKER: He's just a baby. 

SCARDINA: He's just, he's just hanging out with us. But these are one of the most acrobatic animals in the forest. 200 feet up!

MEREDITH VIEIRA: Is he a gibbon?

SCARDINA: That's right. There are about 15 species of gibbons and unfortunately all of them are endangered. You know if you guys saw the movie Avatar?

VIEIRA: Yeah.

SCARDINA: You know our world is as amazing and incredible and unique as Pandora and yet a lot of people don't realize it's being destroyed in the same way.

ANN CURRY: Why is gibbons habitat, why is this gibbon's habitat so endangered?

SCARDINA: Well you know only 10 percent of it remains because of conversion to oil palm, conversion to well logging basically for, for wood. There's also development. There's a lot more people on the planet. Competition for resources. So-

VIEIRA: Are they captured also for exotic pets?

SCARDINA: Yes. They absolutely are.

VIEIRA: That's awful.

SCARDINA: So, you know it's, it's, just there are things people can do when they, when they travel or even at home to make sure that we do preserve by not buying exotic hardwoods-

VIEIRA: Exactly.

SCARDINA: -and things like that.

LAUER: Yeah.

SCARDINA: But all over the world there's just, there's a lot of stuff happening. Thirty percent of amphibians are, are endangered.

CURRY: Palm oil production is a major factor.

LAUER: He is really cool.

SCARDINA: Fifty percent of all primates are endangered or threatened with extinction.

VIEIRA: Oh my gosh!

ROKER: Wow!

...

LAUER: And people need to get involved. That's your message.

SCARDINA: That's, that's exactly right. Pay attention. Do the small things. Even the little things. Make sure that we reduce our consumption. Make sure that we're paying attention and saying, "You know do I really need this or can I share these resources with other critters?"

CURRY: Use less.

"The Tower commission did not find Reagan a lousy orator; they found him a lousy president," Rep. Barney Frank said of Reagan to Time magazine in the aftermath of the Iran-Contra Affair in 1987.

And more recently, those on the left, and also some on the right, have declared the era of Reagan over for the Republican Party - a point more rational voices on the right aren't willing to concede.

So why are some supporters of liberal causes attempting to co-opt Reagan to promote their own ideals?

Asking "WWRD?" ("What would Reagan do?") is becoming a trend on myriad issues, including global warming alarmism, health care legislation, attacks on the Tea Party movement and, surprisingly, liberal pundits seeking to put the best face on President Barack Obama's leadership.

Videos Embedded Below Fold

Reagan a ‘Climate Champion'?

Imagine a scenario where former Vice President Al Gore and Reagan would team up for a common cause. Doesn't sound at all plausible, unless you're buying into a campaign that a group called Republicans for Environmental Protection is trying to promote.

On their Web site, ClimateConservative.com, visitors can find a number of radio spots the group is airing during the Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck programs on stations in New Hampshire. These ads suggest Reagan would have been all about combating the so-called threat of manmade global warming.

"Reagan knew that good stewardship is a conservative value," the announcer says in one ad after a Reagan speech. "Scientists found chemicals were depleting the earth's ozone layer. Reagan pushed through the treaty that fixed the problem. He ignored radio pundits who claimed ozone depletion wasn't real. Today, scientists warn that heat-trapping pollution is dangerously altering our climate. Once again, some want us to ignore the problem, but that would endanger our children's future - contrary to the conservative values Reagan stood for. It's time to ask, what would Reagan do?"

The other two ads convey the same message to suggest Reagan would have been on board reacting to climate change alarmism with domestic policies that wouldn't necessarily translate into solving this supposed problem and would cripple the U.S. economy. However, according to John D. Heubusch, executive director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, that's speculation, and it's hard to imagine a scenario Reagan would be on board an economy-challenging obstacle like cap and trade.

"I know that, particularly in this economic climate, he would want to promote policies that protect our environment in a way that doesn't cost us jobs or place an unfair burden on the U.S. taxpayer," Heubusch said to the April 3 Los Angeles Times, reacting to the ad.

The Gipper Against the Tea Parties? 

Ron Reagan, one of the sons of the former president, is a liberal whose political views that are very different from his father's. For whatever reason, the younger Reagan didn't seem to think his father would have been on board with a movement that advocates for smaller government, one of the fundamental tenets of Reagan-style conservatism.

Back on HLN's Jan. 26 "The Joy Behar Show," host Joy Behar asked Ron Reagan what his father would have thought about the modern tea party movement. Ron said that his father, the conservative icon wouldn't have looked upon the Tea Party movement favorably.

"Oh, I think he would be unamused by the tea partiers with their Hitler signs and all the rest of it. No, I don't think he'd be cottoning to that much at all," Reagan replied.

That curious claim is counter to what the elder Reagan wrote in the Dec. 7, 1973 issue of National Review. In that article, Reagan clearly laid out the stakes as he saw them in the battle against bloated government and massive taxation, writing, "[the idea of limited government] must prevail because if it does not, the free society we have known for two hundred years, the ideal of a government by consent of the governed, will simply cease to exist."

As Reagan's other son, Michael Reagan recently explained to the Business & Media Institute, the 40th president would have been a staunch advocate of the Tea Party movement.

"I think that my father would have been supportive of a grassroots movement, as he was always supportive of grassroots movements, you know, in this country," Michael Reagan said. "I mean, people need to remember without the grassroots, Ronald Reagan probably doesn't become president of the United States of America and he worked the grassroots on a regular basis during his political career, and especially between the years of 1976 and 1980 after the loss in Kansas City."

Obama: The Next Reagan?

Since his death in 2004 - and despite all the hostile coverage he has got from the media during his presidency - Reagan is often compared to his ideologically opposite successor President Barack Obama, who has been shown to be a media darling.

Newsweek senior Washington correspondent and MSNBC regular Howard Fineman spoke glowingly of the similarities between Reagan and Obama in the Nov. 30, 2009, issue of Newsweek:

There are some remarkable affinities, personal and historical. Like Reagan, Obama shares a celebrity's sense of comfort on the (public) stage, a belief in sticking to the script, and a faith in the power of the written word spoken from an imposing rostrum. He also shares Reagan's reverence for the power of a narrative in politics - Reagan, because he was an actor; Obama, because he is a writer. Obama came of age politically when he arrived on the mainland in the Reagan years.

He watched Reagan attack with bold ideas the Carter era's sense of hopelessness and ‘malaise'; saw him and his party get hammered in the first midterm election in 1982; saw him, during a severe economic downturn, rebound to a sweeping second-term ‘morning in America' victory in 1984.Around the White House right now - beset by a weak economy and dire midterm election prospects - the story of the Gipper is uplifting, at least to the man in the center chair at the cabinet table.

And Fineman isn't alone. Ed Schultz, a liberal radio talker and host of MSNBC's "Ed Show" made a similar comparison on his April 5 program. However, Schultz's evaluation was done in an effort to attack the GOP for opposing the extension of unemployment benefits.

"Ronald Reagan was called the great communicator," Schultz said. "There's simply no question that Barack Obama is also a great communicator. He needs to be speaking up aggressively and making it clear that in this moment, what Tom Coburn is doing is not making a point about the deficit. What Tom Coburn is doing is slowing down the economic recovery, because when you stop these unemployment benefits, you squeeze money out of the towns that are hardest hit across this country."

And some have taken it a step further - that Obama is better at being Reagan than Reagan. According to CNN's Soledad O'Brien, the comparison was not only valid but Obama had exceeded Reagan's abilities as a communicator.

"The good news for this president, of course, is that he, like Reagan, is the great communicator, gets very high marks on that," O'Brien said on CNN's Jan. 27 "The Situation Room. "And in fact when we asked in the polls how do you rate him as a communicator, Obama - now 90 percent say he's a great communicator, a good speaker and communicator. Reagan 84 - 84 percent said that President Reagan was a great speaker and great communicator. So he's beating Reagan, who was known as ‘The Great Communicator.'"

But even where Obama has failed, particularly the economy, pundits have managed to trot out the Reagan comparison to prop up the current command-in-chief.

"If we can just - I've been wanting to share this on ‘Meet the Press' for some time," former "NBC Nightly News" anchor Tom Brokaw said on NBC's March 14 "Meet the Press." "Looking forward beyond the elections this fall about the political future of President Obama, here are some numbers that people may want to keep in mind. These are the unemployment rates in key states in 1982, well into President Reagan's first term. Look at the screen. Michigan, 16.8 percent; Alabama, 14.3; Ohio, 13.9; down through 12 and above. That went on into 1983. Did it spell the end of the Reagan presidency? Not exactly."

And although it's convenient for the left to draw these comparisons for the sake of political expediency, Peter Berkowitz, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, says Barack Obama is hardly cast in the mold of Ronald Reagan.

"One can quarrel about the efficacy and justice of the Reagan tax cuts and the Obama health care expansion, but one thing is plain from the political styles that these presidents have brought to the passage of their signature domestic legislation," Berkowitz wrote for The Weekly Standard on Aug. 10, 2009. "Reagan's forthright approach is more consistent with democratic norms and the presuppositions of a free society than Obama's hide-the-ball tactics."

ABC, CBS and NBC featured 26 stories during Holy Week about Pope Benedict's perceived role in the sex abuse scandal the Catholic Church is now facing. Only one story focused on the measures the church has adopted in recent years to prevent abuse. In 69 percent of the stories (18 out of 26) reporters used language that presumed the pope's guilt. Only one made specific mention of the recent drop in the incidence of abuse allegations against the Catholic Church.

The network reporting has largely appeared to be driven by a series of New York Times articles that have portrayed Benedict as seeking to protect the church at the expense of children's safety in various incidents of abuse in Germany, Ireland and here in the United States. The Times reported that as Archbishop of Munich and Freising, Benedict oversaw the transfer of a priest accused of abuse in the 1970s and 1980s to another parish where he again worked with children after he began therapy for his problems. A March 24 article, since heavily questioned, about a Wisconsin priest allowed to remain in the priesthood even after he abused 200 deaf boys from the 1950s through the 1970s placed the blame squarely on Benedict.  

"The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal," wrote Laurie Goodstein.

These stories failed to paint the whole picture of what occurred, of Benedict's role in the decision-making process about these priests and allowed the media to depict sex abuse in the Catholic Church as a growing problem when all evidence indicates that the reverse is true. Between 2008 and 2009, allegations of sex abuse by clergy members declined by 36 percent. On only six allegations of abuse involving minors were brought forward against the church in 2009, according to a study by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.   

Really, it's not the problem of abuse that's "growing," as all three networks described it on Easter Sunday, but rather the media interest in the story - conveniently giving broadcast networks the opportunity to disparage the Catholic Church during its most holy time of the year.

NBC's Anne Thompson began her March 28 "Today" report by saying, "The Catholic Church begins this Holy Week under a cloud of suspicion, with more claims of sexual abuse by its priests and more accusations that its leaders ignored those claims, accusations that go all the way to Pope Benedict."

This framing of the story was typical for all three broadcast networks during Holy Week.

"Senior church figures may be rallying to the Pope's defense, but his role in dealing with a child abuse issue as the Vatican's main enforcer of doctrine in his pre-pope years and his profile as the church's most visible presence on earth means that he remains the target of those demanding answers and justice," stated CBS's Mark Phillips on the Palm Sunday broadcast of CBS's "Evening News."

ABC's Jim Sciutto claimed in his March 29 "World News with Diane Sawyer" report that, "the pope himself failed to dismiss abusers, including a Wisconsin priest who allegedly molested more than 200 deaf boys."

But just like The New York Times did during the month of March, the broadcast networks failed to provide much background information and instead went forward with the line that the Pope is guilty of covering up heinous abuse claims, despite evidence that does not back up their claims.

Background Sources

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, "the nation's largest Catholic civil rights organization," hit back against the New York Times smears of Pope Benedict in seven press releases published in the last weeks of Lent. The press releases pointed out inaccuracies in the Times reports. Yet, Donohue did not appear in any of the broadcast reports during Holy Week.

In the case of Father Lawrence Murphy, the Wisconsin priest accused of molesting 200 deaf boys over three decades between the 1950s and 1970s, the Catholic League stated in a March 29 press release, "there is no evidence [then-Cardinal Ratzinger] even knew of the case" and "his office officially lifted the statute of limitations ... and began an investigation." The networks ignored the information.

All three networks featured Archbishop Timothy Dolan speaking in defense of the pope on their March 29 evening news programs. "No one has been more vigorous in cleansing the church of the effects of this sickening sin and crime than the man we now call Pope Benedict XVI," Dolan told the networks. However, none elaborated on that cleansing.

The networks could have reminded viewers, as did George Weigel, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, in a March 29 First Things article, of "recent hard news developments that underscore Pope Benedict's determination to root out what he once described as ‘filth' in the Church."

Weigel continued on to explain that the pope "mandated an Apostolic Visitation of Irish dioceses, seminaries, and religious congregations" after allegations of abuse against Irish priests made news. Weigel also noted that it "was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger who, as prefect CDF, was determined to discover the truth about [Father Marcial] Maciel," the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, who violated his priestly vows by, among other things, committing sexual abuse and fathering several children.

Father Thomas Brundage, who was the Judicial Vicar for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee from 1995-2003, the time in which Murphy's case was supposedly brought before then Cardinal Ratzinger, could have also provided a pertinent defense of Benedict, but he was neither quoted nor featured in any of the broadcast reports about the scandal.

Brundage set the record straight about the Murphy case in a March 29 column for The Catholic Anchor, and explained, "the competency to hear cases of sexual abuse of minors shifted from the Roman Rota to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith headed by Cardinal Ratzinger in 2001." He continued:

Until that time, most appeal cases went to the Rota and it was our experience that cases could languish for years in this court. When the competency was changed to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in my observation as well as many of my canonical colleagues, sexual abuse cases were handled expeditiously, fairly and with due regard to the rights of all the parties involved. I have no doubt that this was the work of then Cardinal Ratzinger.

Brundage also noted the particulars of Benedict's response to and efforts to rid the Church of abusive priests:

Pope Benedict has repeatedly apologized for the shame of the sexual abuse of children in various venues and to a worldwide audience. This has never happened before. He has met with victims. He has reigned in entire conferences of bishops on this matter, the Catholic Bishops of Ireland being the most recent. He has been most reactive and proactive of any international church official in history with regard to the scourge of clergy sexual abuse of minors. Instead of blaming him for inaction on these matters, he has truly been a strong and effective leader on these issues.

In the case of the pope's alleged cover up in Germany, the networks failed to report that the then-Cardinal Ratzinger followed the dominating theory behind rehabilitation of sex offenders. No psychologists or psychiatrists were featured to discuss the treatment given to offending priests.

As recently as 2004, treatment was offered as a reasonable course of action for abusive priests. Dr. Thomas Plante, a professor of psychology at Santa Clara University and adjunct clinical associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine, co-authored a study that listed "Treat offending clergy" as direction for the Catholic Church to follow in the future.

"Promising treatments have been developed for offending clergy and should be utitilized," wrote Plante. "Specialized programs at treatment facilities such as the St. Luke Institute in Maryland, Southdown Hospital in Toronto, and the Institute of Living/Hartford Hospital in Connecticut have developed impressive programs with encouraging treatment outcome results as of this date. Treatment programs that have developed successful approaches should share their experiences with others."

Changes in the Catholic Church

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops released its 2009 annual report on abuse by clergy on March 23, and should have provided much-needed balance for the broadcast networks' Holy Week reporting about the scandal, but aside from one brief mention on ABC, about allegations dropping by a third between 2008 and 2009, this news went unreported, as did other important findings from the study.

Data indicated that allegations of sex abuse by clergy members reached its lowest point since 2004, allegations dropped by 36 percent between 2008 and 2009, and in 2009 only six allegations involved minors.

The report also found 71 percent of the allegations were about abuse that began between 1960 and 1984.

One story - the only one to give attention to the church's efforts to combat the problem - on ABC's Apr. 2 "World News with Diane Sawyer," focused on the changes in seminaries to weed out potentially problematic priests.

ABC's Jim Sciutto visited the North American College in Rome, Italy, and reported that "the often difficult questions of sex and celibacy aren't kept in private" but that "they're discussed very openly, as an integral part of the education and the screening process for priests."

"Today, candidates face a battery of tests, from Rorschach ink blots to a recently introduced sexual addiction questionnaire, with deeply probing questions, such as ‘were you sexually abused as a child,' ‘do you watch pornography on the Internet,' and ‘have you been sexual with minors," stated Sciutto.

Father David Songy, director of counseling services at the school, told Sciutto, "If a guy had a real problem where they were acting out in some way, we would say, you need to go, that's it."

CBS's March 29 "Evening News" briefly covered the "prevention and awareness" programs now in place in U.S. Catholic Churches, programs that correspondent Elaine Quijano noted, "that the church says demonstrate a clear break from the past practice of turning a blind eye to the abuse."

She also noted, "The church reports, since 2003, more than 7.5 million adults and children have gone through the church's sex abuse awareness program."

But those programs weren't enough to sway anchor Katie Couric from the idea that the Catholic Church is a danger to children. "Now to a different threat to children, bullying," she stated as she introduced the next story.

On Wednesday's Today, reporter Mike Viqueira enthused, "...It was Prague about a year ago when the President made a speech outlining his vision for a world with no nuclear weapons. Well this is a start in the right direction."

On GMA, Jake Tapper alerted, "The pledge fueled conservative outrage across the air waves." He then played a clip of Rudy Giuliani and one of Rush Limbaugh slamming the President for "announcing to every regime out there, under circumstances they can nuke us."

In contrast, CBS's Early Show only discussed the story in a news brief on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the program skipped covering it completely. On NBC's Today, Viqueira featured no conservative or Republican voices to express outrage, despite calling the policy "controversial."

GMA co-host George Stephanopoulos, who asserted that conservatives are "lashing out" over the deal, will be in Prague on Thursday to cover the treaty signing. On Friday, the former Clinton operative turned journalist will interview President Obama.

On Monday, he will talk to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev about the nuclear weapons policy. Will Stephanopoulos adopt the balanced tone of Tapper and ask the tough questions of Obama and Medvedev?

A transcript of the April 7 segment, which aired at 7:11am EDT, follows:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: We're going to shift gears now to the big story in Washington. Conservatives are lashing out at President Obama's change in U.S. nuclear policy, including a new pledge not to ever use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states that comply with the non-proliferation treaty, even if those states strike first with chemical or biological weapons. Jake tapper is in Washington with more.

ABC GRAPHIC: New Era in Nukes: President Policy Faces Criticism

JAKE TAPPER: Good morning, George. Well, that's right. President Obama says the policy will limit the use of nuclear weapons while keeping the U.S. safe and secure. But conservatives and Republicans have their doubts. President Obama is pledging to not use nuclear weapons against any country that has assigned and is abiding by the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, even if they attack the U.S. with chemical or biological weapons. This pledge has Republican critics up in arms.

REP. MICHAEL TURNER (R-OH, Armed Services Committee): It does, overall, diminish our operations. And, I think, certainly, that the American people should be concerned.

TAPPER: In a statement, Senators John McCain and Jon Kyl expressed concerns that "the Obama administration must clarify that we will take no option off the table to deter attacks against the American people and our allies." The pledge fueled conservative outrage across the air waves.

FORMER MAYOR RUDY GIULIANI: Seems to me, he has got his eye off the ball.

RUSH LIMBAUGH: Announcing to every regime out there, under circumstances they can nuke us.TAPPER: But, the Obama administration says the new approach is aimed in many ways at Iran and North Korea. By not complying with the non-proliferation treaty, by pursuing weapons, they will now be less safe.

ROBERT GATES (Secretary of Defense): If you're not going to play by the rules, if you are going to be a proliferator, then all operations are on the table in terms of how we deal with you.

TAPPER: And former Bush State Department official Nicholas Burns agrees.

NICHOLAS BURNS (Fmr. Under Secy. Of State for Political Affairs): The President is clearly signaling that we're decades away now from the end of the Cold War. That the real threats are terrorist groups. And they're the renegade states like Iran and North Korea.

TAPPER: And, George, as you know, this announcement was the first part of a week devoted to nuclear weapons. Tomorrow, President Obama will sign that disarmament treaty with Russia in Prague. And next week, he'll host a 47 nation nuclear security summit here in D.C. George?

STEPHANOPOULOS: Okay, Jake, thanks. And we're going to have a lot more on this in the days ahead. Tomorrow, I'll be in Prague for that treaty signing. On Friday, we'll have an exclusive interview with President Obama. That will be followed on Monday, another exclusive interview, this time, with the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

Not that the first quarter of 2010 was all peaches and cream. Last week, Media Bistro noted that ABC's "World News Tonight" had "its lowest-rated first quarter ever."

But the results for the first week of the second ratings quarter are beyond awful. The total audience for all three evening news shows came in under 20 million. For context, recall that during a traditionally low-audience summer week in 2006, Drudge headlined ("TV's Lowest Week") a disastrous drop -- to 21 million viewers. Now it appears that what was once considered a really bad summer week four years ago (noted at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) might be a typical week during 2010's prime spring viewing season.

Here's how last week's audiences compare to the same week a year ago:

There are double-digit drops across the board. The overall decline is even worse in the 25-54 demographic.

Perhaps the decades-long, slow-motion audience revulsion at the networks' insufferable bias is being aided and abetted currently by their more recent efforts at demonizing Tea Partiers, i.e., ordinary Americans. If that's so, their springtime audience crash may accelerate.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

The networks ignored Jennings' controversial record -- how he wrote about counseling a teenaged boy to use a condom before meeting an adult man in a bus stop restroom, and how his group the Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) counseled high school students in dangerous sexual techniques like "fisting." But Saturday's NBC Nightly News publicized him in a Jeff Rossen story on bullying and the teen suicide of Phoebe Prince.

They promoted how Jennings and the Department of Education were pouring "hundreds of millions of dollars" into a federal anti-bullying campaign:

ROSSEN: In Springfield, Massachusetts, a young boy hanged himself last year after being teased about his size. In Ohio, Jessie Logan hanged herself after a nude photo was spread around her school. Experts say warning signs are often there.

BARBARA COLOROSO: They hang up from their phone and they're sad or sullen, they get off the Internet and they look a little frightened, these are all clues that you and I as parents need to be clued in to.

ROSSEN: And education officials are worried, too, worried bullying is causing a drop in the graduation rate. Now the federal government is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into a new anti-bullying campaign.

KEVIN JENNINGS, U.S. Department of Education: What keeps me up at night, and everyone in the U.S. Department of Education, is the idea that out there there are children who'd rather die than go to school.

ROSSEN: The desperate choice that's left this Massachusetts town grieving.

Unidentified Woman: I hope people will get a lesson out of it.

ROSSEN: A lesson that came too late for Phoebe Prince.

Jennings' group GLSEN had a reading list that not only explicitly promoted homosexual activity, but explicitly boasted of sexual activities in grade school and sex between adults and children below the age of consent. How this man represents a "safe schools" agenda is a mystery.

The following is the full segment with Maddow as it was aired on the April 5 Today show:

ANN CURRY: Let's bring in Rachel Maddow, she's the host of The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. Rachel, good morning.

RACHEL MADDOW: Hi Ann, nice to see you.

CURRY: Thanks for getting up early for us.

MADDOW: Sure.

CURRY: Let's talk about this news that Chuck just mentioned about. The Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who leads, by the way, as you well know the, of course, liberal wing saying, quote, he will surely step down during Barack Obama's presidency. Given the acrimony and, and essentially the gridlock of the moment, what does the White House face if this has to happen before, soon, before the November election?

MADDOW: Well I think that whether it happens before or after the election, it's gonna be acrimonious. I think that the climate in Washington right now is very partisan, very acrimonious. But when Senator Kyl, this weekend, talked about not wanting it to be an "overly ideological pick" he also threatened to filibuster. And, I mean Justice Stevens is a liberal. He's going to be replaced by another liberal justice. You can't really expect this president to move the court dramatically to the right by picking somebody who's not a liberal.

CURRY: The question I'm asking is, you know, given how important the Novembers [sic] are deemed to be and given how difficult health care was, if it happens before November could that spell trouble for the Obama administration? Are they gonna have to steel themselves for a bigger fight?

MADDOW: Well I think that a Supreme Court nomination can be difficult. It can be acrimonious. I can also give somebody a lot of political capital. I think it helped President Obama when he got Sonia Sotomayor confirmed. If Jon Kyl, though, is saying that he is going to filibuster any nominee who's considered ideological, I mean that, that, that would be almost unprecedented. It's been almost 50 years since there's been a filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee. So, if they say, "We don't want a liberal justice and we'll filibuster if there is one," I think that's probably a big enough deal it might mean the end of the filibuster. I think the Senate rules might change. I think that might be a really big deal in Washington.

CURRY: Let's move on to the jobs numbers that came out, we, Chuck just talked about them. The unemployment rate is holding steady at 9.7 percent. The President said, quote, "The worst of the storm is over" and he trumpeted that the news that the economy has gained 162,000 jobs in March. Now Republicans are reacting to that much like liberals reacted to Bush calling the Iraq war "Mission Accomplished." Because we have House Minority Leader John Boehner saying, "A 9.7 unemployment rate is no cause for celebration and any politician who takes a victory lap for it is out of touch with the struggles working families and small businesses are facing." Is the White House out of touch on this economy?

MADDOW: I think when you look at the monthly jobs lost versus jobs gained. I mean it was going like this (points down) during Bush administration, it's going like this (points up) in the Obama administration. It's going the right direction overall. Now is the unemployment rate unacceptable? Absolutely. Nobody is saying that it isn't. I think the White House has been pretty much downplaying their economic success.

CURRY: Well has the White House done enough to increase jobs in this climate?

MADDOW: Well I mean what can - the White House doesn't, they don't have a magical wand. They can't do anything magical. But job numbers are going in the right direction. The economy is growing, job numbers are going in the right direction. It's a very deep recession. And they've, really, in terms of the tone, they do have a very fine line. They've really got to just titrate it exactly right to make people feel like that they're not being insensitive, even while they are talking about the progress that's being made.

CURRY: Meantime the President's approval rating is now just 47 percent. New York Times columnist Frank Rich wrote on Sunday, "Not since Clark Kent changed in a phone booth has there been an instant image makeover to match Barack Obama's, in the aftermath of his health care victory." So if they're has been, do you agree there's been a makeover, and if you do, what do you think the President would use his momentum for first?

MADDOW: I think winning works. That's the best political tonic in any administration. When you win something, when you're seen as having an accomplishment, it gives you political capital and you get to decide what to do with it. And so I think you saw that when people decided, as soon as health reform passed, it seemed like a better idea than before it passed. And had it failed people would've thought it was a worse idea than they had thought before that was decided. And so winning does work. The question, as you zoom in on, is, is whether or not, what it is he's gonna decide to spend that on? Some people are talking immigration reform. I think it is more likely that we will see him put that into Wall Street reform, Wall Street regulation.

CURRY: He has more chances of winning Wall Street reform maybe-

MADDOW: More chances of winning and honestly it's better politics. It boxes Republicans in, makes them take the side of the big Wall Street banks and insurance companies in a way that Democrats would like to run on in November.

CURRY: Alright Rachel Maddow. We could talk some more but we're out of time. Thank you so much this morning.

MADDOW: Thank you, thanks.

CURRY: And you can catch The Rachel Maddow Show weeknights at 9pm Eastern on MSNBC.

It's been more than nine months since President Obama has held a prime time press conference, and you would think those that cover him would be outraged by it.

Well, think again, for that's certainly not what came out of a panel discussion about this issue during this weekend's syndicated "The Chris Matthews Show."

Quite the contrary, rather than criticize the Commander-in-Chief for refusing to face them in an unscripted environment that he couldn't control, NBC's Chuck Todd, MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell, the New York Times's Helene Cooper, and the Washington Post's David Ignatius actually made excuses for him (video embedded below the fold with transcribed highlights and commentary):

HELENE COOPER, NEW YORK TIMES: That last press conference was terrible. It's, we all remember it for the Skip Gates incident, but if you, if you look at it, he was getting a lot of criticism at the time of that press conference that he had had too many, he was overexposed. He was out there too much. And you look at that press conference, and when you go back and you replay it, you see it was a lot of econ, it was a lot of just in the weeds stuff. It got really boring. I thought.

Got that? His last press conference stunk -- of course, she's right about that!!! -- it was REALLY boring, so why should he give another one?

What do you think, Mr. Matthews? 

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: I think he was tired. I'm not sure he's in his best at 9 to 10 at night in prime time. 

Wow! What, he needs a nap, Chris?

How about you, Ms. O'Donnell? 

NORAH O'DONNELL, MSNBC: What we see is this president favors the one-on-one interview. I think because he doesn't like the press conference because he doesn't want to be a pinata for the press, and in some way the journalists in prime time have a lot more control.

Well, shouldn't you WANT that control? Shouldn't it bother you that -- as a journalist, I mean, and not one of his ardent supporters, of course -- that this president is REFUSING to give it to you?

Apparently not.

How about you, Mr. Todd? 

CHUCK TODD: Well, look I can tell you what they think at the White House why they don't do these.

Hmm. What a surprise. Todd can tell us what THE WHITE HOUSE thinks. Sadly, talking points were all this NBCer was willing to give: 

TODD: Number one, they feel oddly constricted. The president is a, likes to give long answers. He hates the short formats in general. So, a prime time conference, you really make the networks mad if you go outside of an hour. So, already you, he has in his own mind restrictions that he doesn't like.

All together now: Aaaaaawwww. The most powerful man in the world doesn't want restrictions when he faces the press.

Is he president or King?

How about you, Mr. Ignatius?

DAVID IGNATIUS, WASHINGTON POST: I don't think he's very good at this. I don't think he's comfortable at it. In truth, I sometimes wonder if the hurlyburly of politics in general, you know the Washington scene, and these press conferences compress that, that really makes him, makes him comfortable. I think, I think other forms of communication work better for him, they know it, you know, so why go with something that you are not very good at it?

Well, David, because it's traditional for presidents to give prime time press conferences, and it's your job, and everyone else's job on that panel, to grill the president at such events.

Or would that be too much like journalism?

Exit question: How much different would this panel discussion have been if George W. Bush or John McCain was in the White House instead of a man these so-called journalists helped elect? 

Kaiser Family Foundation, New England Journal, FDL, Digby, and other bloggers were great throughout the reform process. They provided important, insightful coverage and analyses, but bloggers have to acknowledge that they are still a fraction of a fraction of the populace. Misinformation and shoddy coverage still dominate the mainstream media. Unfortunately, these great moments of true muckraking journalism were few and far between. Though Pollack's VIP list worked diligently for many months, their readership is minuscule when compared to the audience of hate radio and the major networks.