Tweety Revisionism

by digby

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?

I just don’t know what to say. The article at FAIR has some good examples of the “embedded thinking” of cable news during that period.

I’ll add these:

“We’re all neo-cons now.”
(MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)

“We’re proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who’s physical, who’s not a complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who’s president. Women like a guy who’s president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It’s simple. We’re not like the Brits.”
(MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, 5/1/03)

“Why don’t the damn Democrats give the president his day? He won today. He did well today.”
(MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)

“He [Saddam Hussein] actually thought that he could stop us and win the debate worldwide. But he didn’t–he didn’t bargain on a two- or three week war. I actually thought it would be less than two weeks.”
(NBC reporter Fred Francis, Chris Matthews Show, 4/13/03)

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.