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The coverage of the NATO Summit on the 60th anniversary of its foundation was underwhelming. The three newscasts assigned their male White House correspondents to Barack Obama's next stop in Strasbourg. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created to contain the westward march of the Soviet Union's Communist sphere of influence in post-WWII Europe. Not one of the three explained how such an alliance now finds itself engaged in an aggressive war against radical Islamists in Afghanistan. It just does.
ABC's Jake Tapper described the President as "making the case that for the NATO alliance to mean anything, the 28-member nations need to step up and help vanquish al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan." NBC's Chuck Todd saw Obama "trying to convince old allies that an old alliance like NATO has a new mission…the challenge for the President is to convince NATO allies that this is not just America's war." CBS' Chip Reid used outdated Bush Administration rhetoric to characterize Obama's pitch: "In the greater War on Terror, Europe cannot stand on the sidelines."
Why was explaining NATO's current unlikely role not on the correspondents' agenda? Because the President had different priorities. He wanted to talk in broad terms about transAtlantic attitudes. All three newscasts used his soundbite to a hall of students in a town-hall-style meeting: "There have been times when America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive. But in Europe there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual but can also be insidious."
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