Chris Matthews: Poster Boy for Pseudo-Journalism – A Rant

[Time for change]

This may be my first rant post on DU – or anywhere.

There are three inspirations for this rant: 1) My belief that fraudulent journalism poses one of the greatest threats to our democracy, perhaps a little behind election fraud and a little ahead of the corrupting influence of money in politics – though of course all of these threats are closely related; 2) My long standing contempt for Chris Matthews, stemming from his coverage of the 2000 election season; 3) Last Sunday’s episode of Macho Balls – I mean “The Chris Matthews Show”.


The threat of pseudo (fraudulent)-journalism to our democracy

As far as I know, nobody said it better than Bill Moyers in his book chapter, “The Fight of Our Lives”, which I describe in this post. I won’t dwell here on that issue, since this post is mainly a rant against Chris Matthews, except to include this one great quote by Moyers, which notes the great threat to our democracy posed by the cozy relationship between our current administration and our Corporate Media:

Consider the situation. Never has there been an administration so disciplined in secrecy, so precisely in lockstep in keeping information from the people at large and -- in defiance of the Constitution -- from their representatives in Congress. Never has the powerful media oligopoly ... been so unabashed in reaching like Caesar for still more wealth and power. Never have hand and glove fitted together so comfortably to manipulate free political debate, sow contempt for the idea of government itself, and trivialize the peoples' need to know.

And while I’m on the subject of Bill Moyers, I must say that the difference as journalists, between Chris Matthews and Bill Moyers, is like the difference as evolutionary scientists between Pat Robertson and Charles Darwin, or the difference in integrity between a snake and …. well, Bill Moyers.


The origin of my contempt for Chris Matthews – The 2000 election cycle

My contempt for Chris Matthews dates from approximately December of 2000, when Al Gore conceded the presidency to George Bush, at which time it occurred to me that Matthews was as responsible for Gore’s “loss” as anyone I could think of.

Of all the great amount of unfair Gore bashing that I had heard on television over the previous several months, it seemed to me that I had heard far more from Matthews than anyone else (Of course that begs the question of why I watched his stupid show so much – to which I can only plead guilty to having been sucked in by it). Most disgusting of all were the repeated false and contemptuous references by Matthews about Gore claiming to have “invented the internet” and about Gore being “willing to do anything to be President”. The former was simply untrue, and the latter was simply an opinion, but coming from a supposedly unbiased journalist with millions of television viewers, those statements must have influenced at least a tiny fraction of the electorate to change their vote – and a couple of hundred Floridians is all it would have taken.

To graphically make his point, Matthews would repeatedly say things like “Al Gore would lick the bathroom floor to be President”. Where did he ever come up with such bullshit? Of course, Matthews or anyone else certainly has a right to their opinions. But as a journalist who has the responsibility of communicating news to millions of Americans, this kind of editorializing seems to me to be the height of irresponsibility. At least when Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter do this kind of thing they are doing so as an admitted right wing ideologue. But Matthews makes it sound like news. Can you imagine any journalist from the left spewing out such bullshit about a prominent right wing figure?

And then there was the controversy over the Florida recount, when Matthews had Mary Matalin on his show, attempting to explain why the hand counting of ballots was a terrible thing to do. She enlightened us all by explaining that the mere handling of a ballot caused chads to form, thereby invalidating the results of any hand recount. Without thinking, Matthews asked her to demonstrate how this could occur, with the ballot that she had brought to the show. I thought to myself, “Great move Chris”. But then, after a few seconds of extremely awkward embarrassment on Matalin’s part, as she tried to demonstrate the impossible, Matthews came to her rescue by saying (I’m paraphrasing from memory here) “That’s ok, don’t worry about it, let’s move on to another subject”.


April 9, 2006 – Matthews tries to take his viewers “Through the Looking Glass”

That brings us to last Sunday. My wife convinced me to violate my pledge never to watch Chris Matthews again by informing me that he was talking about Libby’s testimony on Bush’s approval of the Plame leaks. I suppose that Matthews discussed Libby’s testimony because he had no choice if he wants to continue to be viewed as a balanced journalist. But then he needed to do something to cancel out the damage done to Bush’s credibility.

So out of the blue he mentions a poll that he claims showed that Bush and Cheney won the 2004 election because they were seen as more “presidential” than Kerry and Edwards! He gave no details on the poll, not even to say who conducted it or what the poll asked. But he did provide some video clips to make his point.

First he shows a clip of Cheney making a presidential sounding (if one can overlook the fact that Cheney is a tyrant) speech. Then he says that Kerry was seen as almost “depressed” because his campaign was so negative. And to illustrate that point he shows a video of Kerry saying, “W stands for wrong”. Then he shifts to Bush speaking a six word macho sounding sentence without any bungling or grammatical errors! And then he introduces Edwards’ speech by saying, “and for the most feminine …”

What world does that moron live in? Does he really believe that Kerry’s campaign was more negative than Bush’s? Oh yes, I forgot, Bush didn’t do the swift boat ads himself, so he was able to look “presidential” while his minions were spreading lies about his opposition. And if “W stands for wrong” is the best evidence of negative campaigning by Kerry that Matthews could find, then his point totally escapes me.

And I have to hand it to you Chris, that was one helluva journalistic feat, finding a six word sentence that Bush delivered without any bungling or grammatical errors. Maybe you’re a decent journalist after all.

And as far as John Edwards sounding feminine, well I must admit that I didn’t see any of the macho chest thumping that accompanies the speeches of real men such as yourself. So you have a good point there Chris.


Chris Matthews in summary

If there were previously questions about his integrity as a journalist, this disgusting display of ass kissing of Tom Delay, recently posted on DU by DemMother, offers further evidence of Matthews’ motives. In short, he appears to be a full-fledged member of the Republican message machine, though considerably more dangerous than most other members because of his perceived bi-partisanship, enhanced by his previous work for the Democratic Party.

He doesn’t much care how stupid or undocumented are the things that he says. He knows that if he repeats his asinine remarks enough times a lot of people will believe them. That’s the nature of humans. Hell, I must admit that I used to have a strong tendency in that direction myself. If people continually hear that John Edwards’ soft and humble style of speech is feminine then that’s the way that some will see it, and of course we don’t want a feminine sounding male President, because that’s not Presidential! Or, if we’re continually told that the sports that Kerry engages in are “elitist”, then some will believe that too. Or, if we’re continually told that George Bush is firm and unwavering (as Matthews is fond of saying) and likeable and down to earth (because he rarely publicly speaks a sentence of more than three words without bungling it), or that he’s plain spoken and honest, then people will believe that also.

People like Chris Matthews will always exist. I can handle that. But what is so upsetting to me is the power and influence that he and others like him have in our country. The fact that someone like him can continue to host a regularly scheduled television show while someone like Bill Moyers is let go from PBS is a profoundly sad commentary on our society.

Thank God there are still real journalists out there, like Keith Oberman, Helen Thomas, Paul Krugman, Eric Alterman, and Seymour Hersh, who manage to function in our corporate environment without selling out their integrity. And thank God as well for the numerous excellent alternate news and opinion sites, such as the DU. Maybe some day enough people will wisen up and get their news from such sources that we’ll be able to bring a decent government back to our country.