Another case of amnesia hits as 'Hardball' host Chris Matthews forgets his show began in '99

(Caricature by DonkeyHotey) Hardball host Chris Matthews offered quite the analysis this week on a panel at The Cable Show 2012 in Boston. Andrea Morabito reported:

[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. "Twenty-four/seven 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."

Riiiiiiiight. Just one problem with that ... uh ... theory. Matthews's cable show began on MSNBC in 1999. Were he and all the others on MSNBC asking the tough questions about weapons of mass destruction? Challenging the Bush administration on alleged yellowcake buys by Iraq? Ferreting out secret CIA prisons?

Not exactly.

As the folks over at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting make clear with some contemporary citations, MSNBC reporters were digging out the truth by demanding somebody else do it. Here's Dan Abrams on March 6, 2003:

"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."

Matthews, notorious for his incessant interrupting, didn't interrupt guests saying antiwar protesters were unAmerican and hated America. And he let Ann Coulter deliver her patented, below-the-belt sucker punches.

And while the most renowned of the MSNBC hosts, Phil Donahue, was one of the few pushing back against the coming war, Matthews was working successfully behind the scenes to get him fired.

From Matthews via digby:

"We're all neo-cons now."
(4/9/03)

"Why don't the damn Democrats give the president his day? He won today. He did well today."
(4/9/03)

And from here:

"[T]he 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."
(5/1/03)

And:

"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."
(5/1/03)

Such talk from Matthews didn't stop then. Before Bush delivered his Nov. 30, 2005, speech at the U.S. Naval Academy, Matthews used "brilliant" and "brilliantly" twice to describe it, while castigating Democratic critics of the Iraq war as "carpers and complainers." A month later, he was saying Bush belonged on Mount Rushmore.

There are a few terrific diggers and verifiers and debunkers on the cable news shows. Chris Matthews ain't one of them.