(UPDATE: See the video of Matthews’ comments here, along with some discussion of what it all means.)
Reporting from the big cable TV industry event this week, Broadcasting & Cable‘s Andrea Morabito writes (5/22/12):
Hardball host Chris Matthews argued that because of the rise of opinion-based news networks, the non-critical aspect of the media is gone, going as far to say that the reporting that verified the U.S. administration’s claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2002 would not happen today because of cable news.
“I would like to think there would be a reckoning we didn’t have then because of modern media,” Matthews said. “24/7 is good because it’s not only breadth, it’s depth. Without cable, it is just network [television] thinking, embedded thinking, which is dangerous in a democracy.”
Umm… He’s aware of the fact that cable news channels existed in 2002, right?
In fact, here’s some of what he and his cable colleagues were doing:
—MSNBC‘s Hardball host Chris Matthews asks of World Bank/IMF protests in Washington, D.C.: “Those people out in the streets, do they hate America?” Conservative pundit Cliff May responds: “Yes, I’m afraid a lot of them do. They hate America. They align themselves with Saddam Hussein. They align themselves with terrorists all over the world.” Hardball correspondent David Shuster later adds that “anti-Americanism is in the air.”
And elsewhere on MSNBC (3/6/03):
—MSNBC‘s Dan Abrams indignantly defends the Bush administration against critics who suggest the White House isn’t telling the truth about the rationale for war:
“Well, anyone making these allegations better be willing to defend exactly what they’re saying. They’re saying this administration is at the least morally corrupt, lying to the American public and the world about their motives and willing to have Americans die for that lie, and, at worst, that they’re actually abhorrent criminals. That’s absurd.”
A few months later, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough (4/10/03) demanded that war critics apologize:
“I’m waiting to hear the words ‘I was wrong’ from some of the world’s most elite journalists, politicians and Hollywood types…. I just wonder, who’s going to be the first elitist to show the character to say: ‘Hey, America, guess what? I was wrong’? Maybe the White House will get an apology, first, from the New York Times‘ Maureen Dowd. Now, Ms. Dowd mocked the morality of this war….
“Maybe disgraced commentators and politicians alike, like Daschle, Jimmy Carter, Dennis Kucinich, and all those others, will step forward tonight and show the content of their character by simply admitting what we know already: that their wartime predictions were arrogant, they were misguided and they were dead wrong. Maybe, just maybe, these self-anointed critics will learn from their mistakes. But I doubt it. After all, we don’t call them ‘elitists’ for nothing.”
To be fair, there were people at MSNBC pushing back against the pro-war propaganda. Phil Donahue was the most prominent–and he was fired for it. What was Matthews doing at the time? He was reportedly going to management to lobby to get Donahue off the air.
“We would have stopped the drive to war” is probably more comforting than “We helped make the war happen.”
Doug Latimer
Mendacity basks in the limelight
Where history is kept in the dark
Jose Rios
Isn’t this clown advocating for war in Iran? He remembers the past 2 wars with nostalgia when I watch him (which isn’t often) oh wait, a dem is in office, & not just any dem but a dem who consistently gives him “thrills up his legs” especially when talking about “American Exceptionalism” (which normally includes warfare speeches), I can’t imagine if Obama put on a fighter pilot suit..
woodword burnstein
lest we forget:
In July 2002, MSNBC hired Phil Donahue to host a free-wheeling TV talk show. However, eight months later during the run-up to war with Iraq, behind-the-scenes pressure from the Bush White House — and a groundswell of conservative outrage — led the cable channel to give the anti-war TV talk-show host the boot.
MSNBC claimed Donahue’s ratings were too low to justify keeping the show on the air, even though Donahue was the highest rated show on the network at the time it was canceled and beat out Chris Matthews‘s Hardball, which was then on CNBC.
After Donahue was cancelled, AllYourTV.com reported it had obtained a copy of an internal NBC memo that stated Donahue should be fired because he would be a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war.”
http://tinyurl.com/839h5m2
angel macedon
There is little doubt that most news outlets, regardless of political affiliation, was caught up in war fever. There is also little doubt that over the years, many liberals like Mr. Matthews, have from time to time aided and abetted the conservative cause. The war on drugs and the three strikes laws are perfect examples. So, whatever shortcoming Mr. Matthews may have he is not alone.
Danny
And it only took you 10 years to notice,,,
April
we forget when convenient. all of us are revisionist historians.
Jaybob
When France refused to go along with the lies, haters ran a campaign against one of our oldest allies. When Richard Clark wrote about the lies, he was generally discredited as a disgruntled worker, even though he had spearheaded anti-terrorism for decades. ABC fired Bill Maher when he commented on the war. Cable news networks were cheering from the sidelines along with the rest of the corporate media. The networks, including cable, so brainwashed Americans, the majority of Americans did not know that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.
Larry Polsky
Any word on Beyonce and how she is progressing with her infant. Bryan Williams concluded his NBC News broadcast a short time ago with a segment announcing
Beyonce was pregnant. I wrote asking him for an update but never received a response. This is certainly more newsworthy than some stupid war we may be conducting over there. Democracy is at work so let it be – there ain’t no draft to worry about like during Vietnam – although Romney got a nice deferment at that time so he could spend 2 years in Paris recruiting for the Mormon Church. Come to think about it – Cheney got 5 deferments and “w” just disappeared while flying around Texas for a stint with the Guard….
Frank Gilroy
This is the most annoying clown on TV. Hardball my foot. The only hardball I see is the one between his ears. When he stated that he was “on the Israelis side” when they attacked the Gaza Aid ship in international waters, killing nine unarmed civilians, he did so with all the solemnity of someone siding with their favorite basketball team. The guy is a frigging joke. But then if he really was any good he would probably have been fired from MSNBC long ago.
J Rolin Stone
The pun that says it all; what they count on and why it works so well:
“Memory is a thing of the past…”
R Morris
Matthews sure has a short memory. What a dope. I was against that B.S. from the get-go and didn’t believe the lies Bush and his cronies were spitting out. FAUX news was all over the place telling everyone how great “Our Commander in Chief” was for going to war. Matthews and the all media are as guilty as the war criminals who instigated that horrible debacle. Shame on them all.
By the way, we’re still in debt and paying for this horrendous blunder. Thanks, media.
Mike Munk
On Memorial Day when we consider the blood, fortune and honor lost in our current wars, we need to remember that, whether it was cable or broadcast TV, whether it was the New York Times or neo fascist bloggers, whether it was Hillary Clinton or Colin Powell, the warmongers united to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, and they united to attack those of us who saw through the bullshit and said so. Iraq told the truth when they insisted they didn’t have WMDs and Afghanistan told the truth when they denied they attacked the US on 9/11
David Morf
Hmm – now you can see the difference between journalists and reporters. Journalists look for what’s real behind the mask, money bargains truth for big-name access hoping for gold in the reflected glory, reporters read what money wants, mothers and fathers mourn alone their dead daughters and sons, and the public is the last to know.
Rebecca Wolfe
For years now I’ve been aware of the shallowness of Chris Mathews. When SNL did a sketch mocking Mathews, he was so flattered that he showed it on his program more than once. He is easily impressed by beauty, money, power, and such. He does not think creatively. His self-obsession becomes very evident when he interrupts a guest before the guest can complete a thought so that he (Mathews) can give his own opinion on the subject. My final criticism of him is that he does not enunciate clearly; he sort of swallows the ends of words without finishing them.
Keith Olbermann was one of my favorite war critics and he, too, got the boot.
ajamu chaminuka
just saw the clip of chris mathews on the cable show and it was hilarious, i loved it. i could have closed my eyes and imagined it was really amy goodman. is this guy for real? i think he’s sold his soul to somebody for a lot of money, that’ s what i think.
Jean Clelland-Morin
Television has power. There is so much good it could do for the planet. But like our congress, it is owned by Special Interests. The planet is being destroyed by mindless greed.
Jim H
Chris Matthews’ rise to fame started with the Monica business. He was totally repulsed by the amoral nature of Clinton’s private behavior, and so his MSNBC was the same as FOX, the same as CNN: they all revealed in the gossip, the dish, and regular news in the public morality: what the president was doing as public policy. On that score, Clinton was always an effective president. They decided not to give the kill shot, and Clinton survived them. But his presidency could have been more effective.
On the other hand, Bush was treated with kid gloves in the first “honeymoon” period, and then came 9/11. And Matthews was a cheerleader. He dropped his initial objections to Iraq, and seemed to thrill to Bush’s “masculine power.” Eventually, he seems to have woken up, but for large parts of 2000-2008, Matthews was very deeply in the tank for Bush.
William Terry
i remember when thousands of thousands of people took to the streets to’protest the invasion of iraq,yet the infotainment networks refuse to cover the protest
Robert Charron
I recall the last time I listened to Chris Matthews when he interviewed Tony Blair. It was pathetic. Matthews groveled before Blair and throughout the interview expressed his admiration for Blair. He let Blair babble on about how much he was for goodness and peace. Matthews has the microphone, his story gets on the air. He knows that his lies will go unchallenged, so he paints whatever picture he wants to paint. Citizens of communist russia realized that all Pravda printed was propaganda, american citizens have been conned into believing that our press is a free and independent source of news. And for heaven’s sake the press is beating the drums for war against Iran now. Recent polls off Americans revealed about 70% of Americans believed Iran now, today, has nuclear weapons, when all our intelligence agencies agrees that Iran does not now have any nuclear weapons. Matthews reveals his abject ignorance once again.
Doug Roth
Would have known about the non-existence of WMD? That’s a laugh. To know that, a network would need spy/reporters in the field. MSNBC doesn’t have spy/reporters; it doesn’t even have reporters; only pundits. how you gonna suss out the truth with them?
Carol Ann Crown
Cable has news?
Vic Anderson
WTF? Anymore, they Just LIE. The tiny turlitzer TintinnabulatOn. OH! – Big Chris !!
Anklejive
Unfortunately, most Americans would say, “There was a war? What war?”
Dan Martin
Yes, the press needs to bear responsibility for the invation of Iraq. After 9/11 the US concentrated on Osama bin laden and his refuge in Afghanistan. Iraq was a harder sell. It took the lies and misdirection from Powell to convince the american people that there was even a reason. The press needs to own up and make sure it doesn’t happen again. What we saw then and what we see now is world events through a corporate filter.
Alan Bickley
It was ever thus. In 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon, the nominal reason being that the Abu Nidal group had attempted to assassinate the Israeli diplomat Shlomo Argov. The following year, as an anchor at the CBS-owned WBBM in Chicago, I was directed to add to my newscast a wrap in which a wire service voice memorialized the invasion. I did so, setting up the piece by noting some incontestible facts that bore upon the Israeli action, including that (1) the Lebanon border had been almost devoid of Palestinian-initiated actions against Israel for a year or more, and (2) an invasion on the scale of that mounted by Israeli air and ground forces cannot be organized in a day or even two days, and that the business of Israeli vengeance over Argov was a pretext for a well-planned offensive action. Histories of this event are, to the best of my knowledge, uniform in their acceptance of these assertions. Nevertheless, in spite of speaking the truth about the behavior of untouchable Israel, I was described in a management memorandum as an anti-Semite who had committed an act that was the antithesis of journalism. History supports me, but regrettably it has not given the late Joe Durso – the manager at that time – the rebuke he deserved.
squander n. blunderbush
Just wanted to quote Mr. Matthews at his silliest…and then wonder why he has not historical memory?
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.
Night-Gaunt
One thing Matthews has is a motor mouth. He constantly out talks his guests. In fact many times he doesn’t let them talk much at all. As we know most of the people on corporate news are conservative and goes with the corporate military flow. The few who don’t aren’t on or are on late night like Rachel Maddow. But her show is top notch.
buck challenger
Chris Mathews is not someone FAIR should be targeting. So what if his views have “evolved” over the years. He is a strong progressive voice today and with the likes of all those right wing nut-jobs out there, let’s focus on the real problem of who distorts the news. MSNBC allows both sides and while I’ll take Mathews over Scarborough any day, at least MSNBC allows both sides. Don’t know what all the prison crap is about though.
tishado
It seems that a short memory and a penchant for being wrong are qualifications for the punditocracy…
Sylvia Hampton
These are the people who could have stopped the neocons from invading Iraq:
Colin Powell and Hillary Clinton.
Maldis
In “the beginning” of the build-up to Iraq (mid-late 2002), I remember that Matthews was one of the few voices seriously questioning the evidence and the warmongers (remember his shows with college student audiences when he challenged them to identify themselves if they were willing to go to war?), but he seemed to fold in early 2003. And yes, Colin Powell will ever be remembered for his falsehoods; he could have stood up and said no, but he folded too. Hillary too, but she has “apologized” (somewhat). The real criminals: GWB, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and that ilk.
Thom
I find Mr. Matthews to be a blowhard who doesn’t bother to listen to anyone he is interviewing. He knows how to act as if he is listening or moderating a compelling conversation, however, listening to him closely reveals he is not listening, just asking questions and waiting for people to stop talking.
He’s a sellout and he knows it.
buck challenger
Everybody knows Chris Mathews is a totally-wired motormouth. That’s his thing and he can be funny if you have a sense of humor. Who’s next to be targeted? Jon Stewart for taking himself too seriously? The qualifications for this “punditocricy” seem to be those of a circular firing squad. If that’s what FAIR is about, I must be supporting the wrong organization.
Pace D. Fering
Good job & Mission Accomplished, Mathews. And Good Luck on your run for the Senate – you have lots of support in Florida and Ohio, and big donors in the voting machine business – should be a slam dunk!!
Dean Poirier
As Stewart said: “One drink away from being Ron Burgundy.”
Thomas Langley
Mattthews’ remarks are particularly hilarious given that he’s been parroting the current Administration’s lies to justify an attack against Iran.