Filing his report from the North Lawn of the White House on Monday's Erin Burnett OutFront, CNN's Jim Acosta uncritically parroted President Obama's falsehood regarding 47 Republican senators' open letter to the government of Iran. For her part, anchor Erin Burnett used similarly misleading language and failed to fact-check President Obama's charge (see video below).
Introducing his videotaped story, Acosta noted that "senior administration officials say Iranian negotiators brought up Sen. Tom Cotton's letter to the Ayatollah in those sensitive nuclear talks that are currently underway." Acosta added that "in new material from his interview with Vice... the president made it clear he is furious."
In his 108-second long videotaped story, Acosta gave 32 seconds of air time -- 29.6 percent of the story -- to soundbites of Obama's Vice.com interview wherein the nation's chief executive groused about Cotton's "close to unprecedented" action of "address[ing] a letter to the Ayatollah, the Supreme Leader of Iran, who they claim is our mortal enemy." Acosta showed Obama lamenting that the argument of letter was "you can't trust [the American president] to follow through on an agreement."
Of course, those charges are grave distortions of what the actual letter said. But rather than fact-checking the president's statements, Acosta sought to hit Cotton as a hypocrite by playing a soundbite of the freshman senator from early January wherein he hit Obama for his correspondence with the Ayatollah:
JIM ACOSTA: But Cotton is gaining critics who point out he once mocked the president's own communications with Iran's leadership.
Sen. TOM COTTON: Like a lovestruck teenager, he has sent four secret letters to Ayatollah Khamenei.
A skeptical journalist might point out that there's a marked difference between President Obama's reported multiple secret letters to the Ayatollah versus one open-letter by 47 senators which was addressed not to the Ayatollah Khamenei but rather the "Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran." Nothing that the Republican signatories of that letter did was done in secret.
Of course, opening up dialogue and negotiations with foreign heads of states is perfectly within the constitutional prerogatives of the presidency, so there's nothing unconstitutional or illegal about the president's corresponding with the Ayatollah Khamenei. That said, it is perfectly proper to note that this reported correspondence was done in secret so as to avoid public, media, and congressional scrutiny.
As regards President Obama's slam of Republicans about sending a message to Iran that the United States cannot negotiate in good faith, a journalist doing his proper homework would note that ANY agreement inked between Iran's president and the president of the United States would be at risk of being torn to shreds by the real power center in the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Ayatollah. Elected presidents and elected parliaments in Iran are not true power brokers in the sense that the Congress and the president are in the United States.
