MSNBC's Matthews: My New Job is to Make Obama Presidency Work

Chris Matthews has yet again shown us how far he and other "journalists" have moved away from unbiased reporting into liberal slant or even unfettered support of a politician.

On MSNBC's Morning Joe with Joe Scarborough, Matthews told Scarborough that his job is to do everything I can to make this new presidency work.

Matthews was not talking about taking a new job as Obama's press secretary. Sorry, Chris, the job's already taken..

When questioned by a clearly surprised Scarborough: Is that your job as a journalist?

Yeah, that's my job... This country needs a successful presidency, more than anything right now.

More than the truth? More than to know what's really going on in Washington?

How can you not root for the success of a new president? Matthews asks, as if a journalist "rooting" for a politician is standard practice.

I don't understand, he quipped about the hosts' chagrin, unaware of just how true that statement is.

In the same segment, Richard Stengel of Time Magazine quoted Walter Cronkite: Reporters have to be skeptical so that the public doesn't get cynical. Walter Cronkite must be turning in his grave.

We know that Matthews did everything in his power to help get Obama elected; will Matthews now do everything to ensure Obama's success? Does that include spinning negative stories or not covering them at all?

And, how far will his efforts go? Will his new job require him to coddle the Democrats in Congress? Or just continue trashing Republicans?

This seems a far cry from the lofty personal goals Matthews describes on his Hardball website:

My main ambition as a journalist is to cut through the public relations and find the truth in what politicians are saying and doing.

It appears now that his ambition as a journalist is to participate in the public relations of this politician; to promote a politician, rather than find the truth.

No Media Bias Here -- Part III

No Media Bias Here

Well, no there is....

I read this 2002 piece for Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting by some fellows named Steve Rendall and Peter Hart, who come to the studied conclusion that the mainstream media are no more liberal than the conglomerates that own them or the advertisers that pay their bills.

They cite as absolute proof two surveys done by Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting -- their employer! (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting is neither, from what I can tell.)

The article reads like parody. One laughable charge involves a CBS Evening News report on a flat-tax proposal. The story was one-sided, giving no time to flat-tax supporters, but was it really proof of liberal bias?

A story with flat tax opponents and no flat tax supporters is not biased? This is what the writers consider "fair" and "accurate"?

I think I would put more stock in Michael Malone's piece on ABCNews.com:

Meanwhile, I watched with disbelief as the nation's leading newspapers, many of whom I'd written for in the past, slowly let opinion pieces creep into the news section, and from there onto the front page. Personal opinions and comments that, had they appeared in my stories in 1979, would have gotten my butt kicked by the nearest copy editor, were now standard operating procedure at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and soon after in almost every small town paper in the U.S.

Should I take the word of a man who has worked at Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Fortune and Forbes? Or from two guys who wrote books bashing Rush Limbaugh and Fox News' Bill O'Reilly...