Here’s the video of MSNBC host Chris Matthews speaking at a cable industry conference this week. We noted here the odd notion that, as Matthews argues, 24-hour cable news would have stopped the Iraq War lies—despite the fact that 24-hour cable news had been around for more than 20 years at the time of the invasion. But watching the video is rather jarring:
Matthews’ passionate critique of embedded, what-officials-say-is-OK-with-me journalism sounds like Amy Goodman. It’s so fundamentally at odds with Matthews’ actual work that you have to wonder whether he believes any of it.
Of course, Matthews was speaking at an industry conference, so praising the business—”Thank God for cable!”— is precisely what he’s expected to do.
But let’s dig a little deeper.
Matthews can’t believe George W. Bush—”a president of limited rhetorical and intellectual skills”—was able to sell the Iraq War. He was sure able to fool people like Chris “We’re-All-Neocons-Now” Matthews.
Matthews has had trouble keeping some of this straight. In 2010, he was adamant about Bush’s failure:
The incompetence became downright staggering when the commander in chief pranced on to an aircraft carrier with that “Mission Accomplished” banner flying overhead. The bozos couldn’t even get the PR right.
But that PR sure worked on Matthews at the time.
Nonetheless, Matthews is sure that things are different today: “We are a critical media today.” And that’s apparently because of cable television:
24/7 is good because not only its breadth, its depth and depth of argument.
This from the guy who’s hosted the show Hardball all these years. Has he ever seen his show?
Matthews also doesn’t seem to know much about U.S. history, because he believes the Iraq War was fundamentally different: “the United States has never been the aggressor before.” Uh, no.
It is striking to watch a journalist with so little awareness of the foreign policy history of his own country—or, for that matter, self-awareness. There is little to no reason to believe that cable news would perform differently in a time of war now than it did in 2002. All of the admirable qualities that Matthews suggests would be present now could have been present then—and were present in show’s like Phil Donahue’s.
Since Chris Matthews will never get a chance to re-report the Iraq War and challenge an incompetent administration—what about now? If you believe that the fear-mongering about Iran bears some resemblance to the run up to the Iraq War, then people like Matthews are devoting long stretches of their show to debunking pro-war propaganda, right? Well, there was this:
“As if Afghanistan were not enough, now there’s Iran’s move to get nuclear weapons,” declared NBC‘s Chris Matthews (10/4/09).
Of course, there is no evidence that Iran is pursuing such weapons; treating such allegations as fact was precisely the problem with Iraq coverage.
Or you can watch this 2009 interview with Reza Aslan.
Or consider a more recent comment from Matthews (2/6/12) :
Is there something worse than Iran having nuclear weapons? Think about that. And if there isn’t anything worse, strike ’em.
Thank God for cable news, where substantive discussions of war can challenge the official line.
Chris sits astride
The extremes of hate,
But fails to hide
His lightness of weight.
Self-awareness isn’t a long suit in narcissists. It’s kind of the opposite of narcisssim.
Media savvy test here.
He’s mad as hell and:
a) He’s not taking it anymore.
B) He’s as mad as the Mad Hatter.
Didn’t you know? It’s TV, it’s all made up. All of it…
These guys all get their orders. They all have their parameters they can’t overstep, or else… Look at what happened to Olbermann, Dan Rather.
Chris Matthews is a hack. Cable News is full to the brim with them. 24 hours, but little time for depth, going beyond he said, she said journalism, or even fact checking! A local news station could do a better job of investigative journalism, and they also suck.
Rome had bread and circuses, America in the 21st century has sports and cable news. And cable news is the circus!
Disappointing to hear Chris talk about the educational and redemptive power of current cable tv, which is in direct contrast to the overall state of cable programming today and to his own show. I hope he has a take-away moment after reading FAIR’s veritable assessment of his little speech. I deplore FOX News, but even as a progressive I must say some of the stuff they cook up on MSN’s liberal lineup is disingenuous–if not as patently false as FOX, at least as petty, frequently too hawkish with the general exception of Rachel, and with that tired ‘he said, she said’ formula that offers viewers no hope of intellectual redemption.
Manifest Insanity EPITOMIZED! He’s Nuking FUT$!
i have to wonder if matthews understands what google and youtube let anyone interested in a little research and fact checking actually do.
“the internet….how does it work?”
I have to admit that I agree with J Rollin Stone (haha) that this is TV and it is all fabricated. The goal should be to wean Americans off of the phoniness that is television, as it is in this nation, and get them to demand factual reporting.
Kudos to FAIR for this attempt.
“24/7 is good because not only its breadth, its depth and depth of argument.”
a new fairleigh dickinson university poll noted:
NPR and Sunday morning political talk shows are the most informative news outlets, while exposure to partisan sources, such as Fox News and MSNBC, has a negative impact on some people’s current events knowledge.
People who watch MSNBC and CNN exclusively can answer more questions about domestic events than people who watch no news at all. People who only watch Fox did worse. NPR listeners answered more questions correctly than people in any other category.
The results of the poll also controlled for partisanship. MSNBC, Fox and talk radio consumers answered more questions correctly when their political views aligned with those of the outlets they preferred.
Moderates and liberals who watched only Fox did worse than conservatives who watched it. This mirrored the results at MSNBC, where a conservative viewer could be expected to answer an average of .71 international questions correctly, for example, and a liberal viewer could be expected to answer 1.89 questions correctly.
“None of the other news media had effects that depended on ideology,” says the report.
Media sources have a significant impact on the results. The largest effect is that of Fox News: all else being equal, someone who watched only Fox News would be expected to answer just 1.04 domestic questions correctly—a figure which is significantly worse than if they had reported watching no media at all.
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/174826/survey-nprs-listeners-best-informed-fox-news-viewers-worst-informed/#more-174826
I’d be kind in saying Chris Matthews is like a nervous child caught lying. He’s so pathetic he thinks more lying will let him off the hook. His gushing is worse than Rush Limburg.
I’d be kind to couch this lightly or with humor. I am feed up with kind where responsibility in now inorder.
The corporate media chiefs and anchors, selling toxic news products, are criminals with the protection of unconstitutional immunity. This is in no way different to the Wall Street collapse criminals who caused destruction and pain but remain in top finance and government mafia-style positions.
Lets be clear, these inter-connected media mouths steal and defile the most fundamental intellectual property of our Commons: the truth. That is no small matter in willfully conspiring to manipulate mass perceptions so as to command persons to kill and be killed. Lets hope Chris Matthews is insane, otherwise he is an anti-Christ.
The USA must face 150 years or more of war crimes.
MATTHEWS: Do you think this role, and I want to talk politically […], the president deserves everything he’s doing tonight in terms of his leadership. He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics. Do you think he is defining the office of the presidency, at least for this time, as basically that of commander in chief? That […] if you’re going to run against him, you’d better be ready to take [that] away from him.
[…]
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you, Bob Dornan, you were a congressman all those years. Here’s a president who’s really nonverbal. He’s like Eisenhower. He looks great in a military uniform. He looks great in that cowboy costume he wears when he goes West. I remember him standing at that fence with Colin Powell. Was [that] the best picture in the 2000 campaign?
[…]
MATTHEWS: Ann Coulter, you’re the first to speak tonight on the buzz. The president’s performance tonight, redolent of the best of Reagan — what do you think?
COULTER: It’s stunning. It’s amazing. I think it’s huge. I mean, he’s landing on a boat at 150 miles per hour. It’s tremendous. It’s hard to imagine any Democrat being able to do that. And it doesn’t matter if Democrats try to ridicule it. It’s stunning, and it speaks for itself.
MATTHEWS: Pat Caddell, the president’s performance tonight on television, his arrival on ship?
CADDELL: Well, first of all, Chris, the — I think that — you know, I was — when I first heard about it, I was kind of annoyed. It sounded like the kind of PR stunt that Bill Clinton would pull. But and then I saw it. And you know, there’s a real — there’s a real affection between him and the troops.
Time to hang these guys out to dry. They disgust me. Start with Rupert Murhochand watch them all go away. Editors and journalists should have our respect in the community. Instead they are paid trolls. Dont they care about self respect! I want to know if the global position of Murdoch is on the agenda at the Bilderberger meeting, Chantilly, May 31-June 4.
Matthews is a ranting hack who, because of his ability to gush gibberish at speedy pace, is given the ‘benefit’ of much doubt. People and audiences who are particularly uniformed on issues may be impressed by the fast talk, but in the long run, Matthews is superficial, and keeps the pace up in hopes that no one will call him out.
He’s like all the others on corporate funded shows (including Maddow and FOX); bought and sold to the highest liberal or conservative bidders.
I would say he knows exactly what he is doing, and he is doing his job perfectly.
We think that the B.S. he spews is ‘the news’. Nothing could be further from the truth…..
ah… em… excepted Chris himself and his reporting. He is putting up a smoke screen and it works beautifully. Maybe not those folks who come here, but for sure the rabid right cast of the Fux Snooze network. They can’t hear or see anything and start attacking anything that gets close to them. It’s a smoke cloud designed to goad the “Budgerigars of war” into peeping non-stop, and not listening.
So he is doing precisely what they are paying him to do; goad the people into not listening to anything and then parade the dumbest piles of refuse across the news. When they finally realize they are being Screwed, Blued and Tattooed, it’s too late and if they peep “You didn’t tell us” they peep back “yes we did and present the ‘evidence’.
I can only say that these people bring to mind passages about “Zaphod BeebleBrox” in the Late Mr Adams Book, H2G2. He is not there to wield power, he is there to draw attention away from the happening of power, and let those people who do make the decisions (all 6 of them) make the decisions with out all that fuss about debate.
Chris is not the sharpest tool in the shed.That said, he has a voice and balls.I suppose he has worked long and hard to get where he is.The power of his voice will be measured against how intelligently he uses it.To often , that grade is a D