A Letter to NBC’s Matt Lauer

November 15, 2005

Mr. Matt Lauer
NBC, “Today”
30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10112

Dear Mr. Lauer-

Thank you for taking the viewing public along on your recent whirlwind tour around the world. The “Where in the World is Matt Lauer?” segment on “Today” was no doubt popular and especially insightful for those who are not able to travel to the far corners of the globe.

I’ve been to a few interesting spots myself, but you went to cities and countries that clearly highlight the growing diversity of this complicated and beautiful planet. Dubrovnik, Croatia, Shanghai, China, Innsbruck, Austria, The Panama Canal, and Easter Island read like an Olympic lineup and not like a week’s itinerary. I’m sure you know how fortunate you are to have access to NBC’s budget and aircraft.

While I appreciate your travels and the video blog to accompany them, I am dismayed that you continue to highlight places of wealth and excess. You no doubt have a choice where you will spend this magical week every year, and I understand that these locations are chosen based on a variety of factors, such as travel logistics, access, and market value. However, I would hope and encourage you to consider traveling next year to places of extreme poverty, unfortunate disease, and horrific violence. I feel that if you used your week to show Americans the work that needs to be done around the world, instead of the resorts most of us can never afford to visit, perhaps some real solutions to earth’s worst problems can be found.

A sample itinerary could be as follows:
- Monday in tragically-malnourished Haiti
- Tuesday in genocide-ridden Darfur, Sudan
- Wednesday in still-rebuilding Bam, Iran
- Thursday in brothel-dependent Moldova
- Friday in the tsunami-cleared land of Sri Lanka

A simple visit and a hard day’s work will not fix or end any of the above crises. But exposing couch potato Americans to the realities of the third world may get some of us motivated. Please help a generation of us see that American media is about more than covering celebrity gossip and fad diets. Help us to get the news that we need, not the news that sells. Travel, visit, and tell the stories that need telling, Mr. Lauer. Millions are waiting.

Sincerely,

Sam Davidson

*This letter was mailed today. If I get a response, I will post it here.*