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David Gregory hits media 'laziness'

David Gregory, the ousted moderator of NBC's "Meet the Press," thinks Washington's political media are too lazy to go against the "narrative."

Moderating a panel at No Labels' National Strategic Agenda meeting on Wednesday, Gregory said journalists often fail to report on anything that fights the set narrative in Washington media.

“[I]n Washington political journalism the narrative gets set, and it gets set early and built on. And things that fight the narrative get harder to report out, I think, often because of laziness in media,” Gregory said. “I think that the media … has gotten very attached to the idea that Washington is so dysfunctional and that the country is so frustrated with it. There is a self-fulfilling part of that.”

(Also on POLITICO: Rand Paul vs. The Washington Post)

“I think sometimes it’s an oversimplication to talk about the speed of the news cycle," Gregory said. "That’s a part of the problem, but what it is is the attachment to narrative."

It was Gregory’s first public event after his unceremonious departure as host of “Meet the Press” last month. Gregory was replaced by Chuck Todd, the NBC News political director and White House correspondent, after months of bad press and ratings declines. Neither Gregory nor the panelists directly addressed his departure from NBC, though Jane Harman, president of the Wilson Center, saluted his “extraordinary career, which will continue.”

Panelists at the event included Harman, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, CNN's Gloria Borger, former Gov. Jon Huntsman and Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), many of whom joined Gregory in chiding the media for their role in perpetuating the idea that Washington can’t work.

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Hadas Gold is a reporter at Politico.