When you’re as in-the-tank for Obama as the folks at MSNBC are, stuff like this doesn’t even seem like a big deal.

Coming on the heels of news about Matthews’ supposedly spontaneous interviews at the RNC convention being pre-scripted, this is a pretty serious lapse.

News reporting influences the public.  When news reporting is choreographed or scripted or is made to appear to be something it is not, like when reporters engage in what appear to be spontaneous interviews that aren’t, it’s deception.

And that has no place in journalism, though these days “ethical journalism” is something of an oxymoron anyway.