FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
From the Friday broadcast of the PBS NewsHour (2/4/11) came a discussion about how the U.S. supports dictators–which elicited some chuckles. Remember, Mark Shields is the one who plays the “left” on the program. MARK SHIELDS: Just one little point of personal privilege on Joe Biden, who did take a hit for not being able […]
On yesterday’s Chris Matthews show on NBC, the assembled journalists all seem to agree that Barack Obama’s decision to cut a tax deal with Republicans and come out swinging against the left was great news. Time‘s Mike Duffy: “These liberals may scream, but they’ve been screaming about Barack Obama since the beginning. This isn’t anything […]
MSNBC personality Chris Matthews—who sometimes claims he was opposed to the Iraq War—worked behind the scenes to get anti-war colleague Phil Donahue fired.
On May 4, 2010: What killed President Bush’s credibility? His utter claim that the reason we went to war in Iraq was to search for nuclear weapons. Because he and his people were dishonest enough to make that claim, he ended up looking like an incompetent when we fought our way into that country and […]
…he would have to take a leave of absence to recover from the shame of having heaped ridicule on a guest who tried to explain to him how Congress could and would pass a healthcare reform bill.
On his weekend NBC show, Chris Matthews regularly posts a question to 12 regular pundit/journalists–what he calls “The Matthews Meter.” This Sunday (3/14/10), the question was: “Should Obama Move to the Center Instead of the Left as a Reelection Strategy?” Matthews explained it on the show: Let’s go to the bottom line. We took it […]
A meeting of the minds between NBC host Chris Matthews and Washington Post columnist David Ignatius (Chris Matthews Show, 11/29/09): IGNATIUS: The long period of analysis, very deliberative, robs this of passion. This is–he was going to be a wartime president now, and he has to sell the country on the idea that our young […]
Following the 1992 GOP convention, FAIR’s magazine Extra! (11/92) highlighted remarks made by Rich Bond in which the then-Republican national chair explained the strategy behind the right’s relentless charges of liberal media bias: There’s some strategy to it. I’m the coach of a kids’ basketball team and Little League Teams. If you watch any great […]
“It is difficult to overstate President Obama’s unpopularity in most of Louisiana,” writes Campbell Robertson in a front-page New York Times article (9/11/09). Yet Robertson managed to pull it off. Robertson continues: “He lost handily to Senator John McCain here, picking up only 14 percent of the white vote. (The state is roughly two-thirds white.)” […]
David Gregory, host of NBC‘s Meet the Press (3/1/09): The Obama stimulus package, $787 billion. The housing plan, $75 billion. That’s $2.3 trillion. Seven hundred and fifty billion dollars additional in this document for additional bailout money for the banks. Meantime, what metric do we have to see how people–what people think of that government […]
Blogger Brad Jacobson gives play-by-play (MediaBloodhound, 1/28/09) for an epic attempt by MSNBC‘s Chris Matthews to live down his one-time confession to having “felt this thrill going up my leg” during a Barack Obama speech. Matthews’ reparation strategy: “How about facilitating a discussion about Obama’s proposed stimulus plan with two lawmakers from the same party, […]
Leave it to Forbes to get someone from the Hoover Institution to do an “in-depth” feature on “The 25 Most Influential Liberals in the U.S. Media” (1/22/09). The results are about as bogus as you might imagine, including a number of people who are not only not liberals, but who are actively loathed by the […]
Chris Matthews reacting Bush’s speech (as transcribed by the right-wing Media Research Center): The idea that we have some brand new neo-conservative ideology of freedom that’s going to bring peace over in that part of the world is not true, and he’s still selling it, and that’s the tragedy of the last eight years. The […]
FAIR founder Jeff Cohen and longtime FAIR associate Norman Solomon have compiled their 17th annual list of “P.U.-litzer Prizes” (OpEd News, 12/18/08). Among this year’s “stinkiest media performances”: HOT FOR OBAMA PRIZE — MSNBC‘s Chris Matthews This award sparked fierce competition, but the cinch came on the day Obama swept the Potomac Primary in February–when […]
In “Clout Has Plunged for Automakers and Union, Too,” the New York Times‘ Micheline Maynard makes this curious observation: [GM CEO Rick ]Wagoner and Ron Gettelfinger, head of the UAW, appeared on local TV in Detroit this week, but no Detroit representatives landed spots on the Sunday morning talk shows out of Washington. Senator Levin […]
New York Times TV reporter Jim Rutenberg (11/2/08) tries to make a case that Fox News and MSNBC are (in Tom Rosenstiel’s words) “reverse images of each other.” Here are the actual quotes used by Rutenberg to demonstrate this supposed parallelism—first, Ann Coulter on Fox (10/30/08): I feel like we are talking to the Germans […]
[Note: This piece is a sidebar to The Media’s Mayor.] No national media figure has been more fawning toward Giuliani than MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews. On the Tonight Show in 2006 (7/18/06), more than two years before the national election, Matthews predicted that “the next president of the United States will be Rudy Giuliani.” […]
It’s a fact that labor unions are seldom heard from in the mainstream media. But when MSNBC host Chris Matthews brought up the issue (Hardball, 6/10/05), he blamed the problem on the labor movement. “I watch Sunday television,” Matthews explained during an interview with Bill Moyers. I never see a really good articulate labor leader […]
“Has a country ever won a war by avoiding enemy casualties? Isn’t that what we’re doing? We’re blowing up bridges that are dark and buildings that are empty,”
