When the press prefers theater criticism to reporting

That's the path Time takes as it sizes up the Beltway's favorite process gotcha story; Pelosi vs. the CIA. The Jay Newton-Small article at first suggests it's going to examine the facts of the case:

Self-Inflicted Wound: How Pelosi Got into the CIA Mess

But no such luck. Instead, the Time piece is a basically a theater review of Pelosi's press conference. She's a “bumbler” who “fumbled through her notes, departed the podium, returned to the podium, departed again.” That's right, according to the Time, the press has devoted the last ten days to skewering Pelosi because she (gasp!) departed the podium at a press conference.

Don't people understand that kind of action demands press attention because it was “a disastrous public performance”?

What's telling is that at no point does the Time article examine the facts of the dispute between Pelosi and the CIA regarding long-gone intelligence briefings. That's of no interest to Time. But the fact that Pelosi “fumbled through her notes,” and won't take media training classes (I kid you not), is all the proof Time, and the rest of the Beltway press corps, need to confirm that a major scandal continues to unfold on Capitol Hill.

UPDATE: Politico takes the exact same course as Time: This entire Polosi saga only exists because of Pelosi's crummy press conference. And like Time, in its analysis of the process gotcha story, Politico never bothers to examine the facts, which have been flushed down the memory hole.

Meaning, in this she said/he said, only Pelosi is being held accountable. Nobody, it seems, within the press corps, caress about whether the CIA's version of events regarding seven-year-old briefings is accurate or not.