Tweety: if we had cable news, the Iraq war might not have happened

[Enrique]

http://www.fair.org/blog/2012/05/24/chris-matthews-and-the-awesome-power-of-cable-television/

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:

September 25, 2002

—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."

more...


(...)

[Skittles]

1. isn't Tweety the guy who swooned over Bush's codpiece???

[Confusious]

7. My first thought too

MSNBC is cable.

[Art_from_Ark]

11. Tweety's adulation of bu$h was downright sickening

'Matthews’ monologue is unsurprising, however, given his long record of hero worship for Bush and his supposedly “powerful” presidency:

– “We’re proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who’s physical.” (5/1/03)

– “Sometimes it glimmers with this man, our president, that kind of sunny nobility.” (10/25/05)

– “I like him. Everybody sort of likes the president, except for the real whack-jobs, maybe on the left.” (11/28/05)

– “A little bit of Lincoln there, I think,” referring to Bush finally admitting that telling Iraqi insurgents to “bring it on” in 2003 “sent the wrong signal to people.” (5/25/06)'

http://thinkprogress.org/media/2007/08/09/15370/matthews-bush-monologue/?mobile=nc

Tweety is the textbook illustration of the word "sycophant"

[pam4water]

32. Good quote thanks for posting. n/t

[butterfly77]

2. Lying bastard!

at the time we talked about him and the rest of the media and how they were going along with the bullshit,some wrote him all of these liars in the media are trying to rewrite history.

[immoderate]

3. A bit delusional, isn't he?

--imm

[elehhhhna]

18. DEMENTIA. No other possible explanation.

He pushed for that frikkin war. He had a crush on Prezzydent Butch.

[Orsino]

29. How about mere corruption?

The lies propagated by corporate media are for us. Matthews isn't required to believe a word he says.

[immoderate]

30. I think it's more that he doesn't have a belief. His quirkiness comes from him.

I think it's his internal "corn ball" that keeps him on the reservation.

(Hope I don't get juried out for using the bigoted term, "corn ball." )

--imm

[underpants]

4. We DID have cable news but you followed Fox News (as usual)

and you personally Chris had Ben Ginsberg on your own show for the last THREE MONTHS leading up to the 2004 election. You personally have blood on your hands.

[Enrique]

5. "our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity"

that is not a Tweety quote, but Tweety did play a part in firing Donahue:

Chris Matthews' Role in MSNBC's Donahue Firing

http://www.fair.org/blog/2010/10/08/chris-matthews-role-in-msnbcs-donahue-firing/

Gabriel Sherman's piece in New York magazine (10/3/10) on the cable news wars includes a bit of history on MSNBC's firing of progressive host Phil Donahue in 2003; an internal memo at the time worried that the showwould be "a home for the liberal anti-war agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity." Sherman focuses on MSNBC personality Chris Matthews–who sometimes claimshe was opposed to the Iraq War–and his desire to get Donahue fired:

Donahue's problems only increased when Chris Matthews let it be known that he wanted Donahue off the air. Matthews was a rising force at the network, with a reported salary of $5 million. He cultivated former GE CEO Jack Welch and had the ear of NBC CEO Bob Wright. (The two summered together on Nantucket.) Matthews saw himself as MSNBC's biggest star, and he was upset that the network was pumping significant resources into Donahue's show. In the fall of 2002, U.S. News & World Report ran a gossip item that had Matthews saying over lunch in Washington that if Donahue stays on the air, he could bring down the network.

After the item was published, Matthews showed up at Donahue's office and apologized. "He didnt deny it," Donahue remembers. With the war looming, Sorenson and Griffin decided to take him off the air to make way for 24/7 war coverage.

[freshwest]

15. Exactly. Tweety is lying his ass off here. And he got his start with the Clinton fiasco.

Wonder who is threatening to pull his plug now, that he's been caught going half-way progressive?

And cable news faciliated the Iraq war and played cheerleader for the whole thing..

Thanks for that reference, Enrique.

[otohara]

6. WHAT? Selective Memory Syndrome - Phil Donahue

did his best to expose the lies and was fired

[Jamaal510]

8. Um...isn't Hairball with Chris Matthews an opinion-based show? And wasn't cable news around in '02?

Plus, he happens to work for a network that is notorious for its opinion shows. It sounds to me as if Tweety is telling people animal cruelty is wrong, while he still kills ants.

[freshwest]

16. Makes you wonder who's yanking his chain now, to join the liars' circus again.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

9. Matthews published anti-war articles in the run-up to the war

He attacked the motives of the Neocons and questioned the wisdom of going to war at all in this March 2002 article in the San Francisco Chronicle titled The Road To Baghdad, one of several anti-war articles he wrote in that paper.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/03/24/IN164155.DTL

Matthews was never a supporter of the Iraq War but he didn't have the guts to go on TV to express his true opposition once our troops were in there. As I recall, Keith Olbermann was the only guy with courage on commercial television to do that.

[Art_from_Ark]

10. But once the war started, he was gushing all over bu$h

"Calling Bush “powerful” on three separate occasions, Matthews marveled at the president’s defense of his foreign policy:

'We were given a rare opportunity to hear the real philosophy of this administration with regard to the war in Iraq. A powerful rendition by the president of why we’re there. When he talked about the fact that we can support emerging democracies in the Middle East, and that’s the only way we can prevent future 9/11?s, you’re getting to the heart of why this administration is fighting that war in Iraq.[\b]

'This president is ready to fight like a rock through the rest of his term,” Matthews proclaimed. “He made it clear that he’s going to fight as long as it takes to develop a democracy in Iraq. There’s not going to be any change come September.”

http://thinkprogress.org/media/2007/08/09/15370/matthews-bush-monologue/?mobile=nc

[ForgoTheConsequence]

12. What an asshat.

Cable news was part of the machine that manufactured consent for the war in Iraq. After 9/11 there were American flags and jingoism on every cable news channel including MSNBC which was conservative and a rival of Fox News at the time. They only went to the left because they failed at being another Fox News. Fuck the corporate news media including Fox and MSNBC. Think for yourself and don't let Comcast, Time Warner, and Rupert Murdoch do your thinking for you.

[grasswire]

13. I remember it clearly.

MSNBC had paid "analysts" from military ranks. MSNBC had "cheerleaders" among its female talent who handled a daily segment where faces of KIA soldiers were honored. MSNBC had embedded reporters such as the one who was killed by a blood clot after riding along in cramped vehicles with the troops.

CNN was even worse. I remember a live late-night wild ride with an embedded reporter and a crew -- out in the desert.

Oh, and who can forget the faked footage of the fall of Saddam's statue in Baghdad?

Geez.

Tweety must have had a blood sugar swing.

[sandyshoes17]

14. I will never forget

In the 2004 election he had the swift boaters on every night for a whole week, that did it for me. I like what he's doing lately, but don't trust him at all. Who knows what his real values are?

[Surya Gayatri]

28. Shape-shifting, sycophantic blowhard...

Never trust Matthews to be first in line to do the right thing; look for him following behind, kissing the butts of whoever's in front.

[NRaleighLiberal]

17. Revisionist history bullshit from a worthless narcissist.

[Mosaic]

20. Few can tell, but you are spot on

I watch him often for entertainment, not news. You're completely correct and it's not mean to state plain facts.

[Hissyspit]

24. Man you could tell how annoyed he was when he badly lost Jeopardy a few weeks ago.

[Politicalboi]

19. Good ole

Larry Mondello.

[90-percent]

21. Mathews quote from the 2002 war selling era

"WE ARE ALL NEOCONS NOW"

I don't think the landscsape of news coverage on cable has changed that much since 2002.

I also think that more and more people that don't want to be ill informed or LOW INFORMATION VOTERS are turning to the internet for their news, because they know that all of American Main Stream Media that comes through the TV machine is fascist corporate propaganda. It's bullshit manufactured by the sociopaths that have captured all our institutions.

The most galling recent item in modern MSM is the selling of per-emptive war against Iran so as to keep them from getting the bomb.

Americans will enjoy TEN TIMES the casualty rate of Iraq and Afghanistan and the reinstatement of the draft if that future fiasco gets sold. We'll get to repeat the failure lessons of Viet Nam for the second fucking time in my lifetime! 58,000 on the Wall. We can beat that this time!

-90% jimmy

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

22. Gee, I wonder what Phil Donahue thinks?

Seeing as he was fired from MSNBC for being antiwar (and Tweety had a hand in it)

[harmonicon]

23. I forget things when I'm really really drunk...

but never things like... I don't know... my entire career/adult life.

[PA Democrat]

25. MSNBC fired Phil Donahue, the only anti-war voice on the network

BECAUSE of his views on Iraq, despite having the highest rated show on MSNBC.

While "Donahue" does badly trail both O'Reilly and CNN's Connie Chung in the ratings, those numbers have improved in recent weeks. So much so that the program is the top-rated show on MSNBC, beating even the highly promoted "Hardball With Chris Matthews."

Although Donahue didn't know it at the time, his fate was sealed a number of weeks ago after NBC News executives received the results of a study commissioned to provide guidance on the future of the news channel.

That report--shared with me by an NBC news insider--gives an excruciatingly painful assessment of the channel and its programming. Some of recommendations, such as dropping the "America's News Channel," have already been implemented. But the harshest criticism was leveled at Donahue, whom the authors of the study described as "a tired, left-wing liberal out of touch with the current marketplace."

The study went on to claim that Donahue presented a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war......He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration's motives." The report went on to outline a possible nightmare scenario where the show becomes "a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity."

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0226-11.htm

[davidwparker]

26. Unbelievable. A big reason that I avoid his show today is because of his cheerleading

the Iraq war.

[marmar]

27. Tweety must be smoking that good sh*t......

[KurtNYC]

31. Am-news-ia: (noun) the act of cable news forgetting what it said yesterday

It's very conveeeeenient.

[pam4water]

33. What the hell is he talking about? We did have cable news when this started. He

and the rest of them egg on the war.