{"id":13124,"date":"2007-10-05T12:46:31","date_gmt":"2007-10-05T16:46:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13124.html"},"modified":"2007-10-05T12:46:31","modified_gmt":"2007-10-05T16:46:31","slug":"chris-matthews-claims-white-house-leaned-on-msnbc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/chris-matthews-claims-white-house-leaned-on-msnbc\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Matthews claims White House leaned on MSNBC"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just two weeks ago, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric said<\/a> her former employer, NBC, discouraged her from challenging the Bush administration. “I think there was a lot of undercurrent of pressure not to rock the boat for a variety of reasons, where it was corporate reasons or other considerations,” she said.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, Hardball host Chris Matthews took this one step further, telling a DC audience that the Bush administration has tried to lean on his network<\/a> and influence broadcast journalism. (thanks to RK and DOK for the tip)<\/p>\n

After praising the drafters of the First Amendment for allowing him to make a living, he outlined what he said was the fundamental difference between the Bush and Clinton administrations.<\/p>\n

The Clinton camp, he said, never put pressure on his bosses to silence him.<\/p>\n

“Not so this crowd,” he added, explaining that Bush White House officials — especially those from Vice President Cheney’s office — called MSNBC brass to complain about the content of his show and attempted to influence its editorial content. “They will not silence me!” Matthews declared.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is a provocative thing to say, isn’t it? White House officials tried to shape MSNBC news broadcasts? Will Bunch raised the questions<\/a> that Matthews might be so generous as to consider: “What were these attempts by Dick Cheney and other to muzzle him — and more importantly, did they work? Name names, if you’re going to be so brave. You say they won’t silence you? Great! We’re listening.”<\/p>\n

But Matthews was apparently just warming up.
\n<\/p>\n

“They’ve finally been caught in their criminality,” Matthews continued, although he did not specify the exact criminal behavior to which he referred. He then drew an obvious Bush-Nixon parallel by saying, “Spiro Agnew was not an American hero.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s great, but is Matthews telling viewers<\/i> about Bush’s “criminality,” or just DC insiders fortunate enough to get invited to a swanky party?<\/p>\n

Matthews left the throng of Washington A-listers with a parting shot at Cheney: “God help us if we had Cheney during the Cuban missile crisis. We’d all be under a parking lot.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Again, that sure sounds like the kind of insight that might be helpful to share with a television audience.<\/p>\n

On a side note: Matthews was overheard discussing his Tuesday appearance on “The Daily Show,” which featured a heated exchange with host Jon Stewart. According to one source, Matthews was steadfast in his belief that the debate left Stewart crestfallen, and Matthews victorious.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Um, I don’t think so<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just two weeks ago, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric said her former employer, NBC, discouraged her from challenging the Bush administration. “I think there was a lot of undercurrent of pressure not to rock the boat for a variety of reasons, where it was corporate reasons or other considerations,” she said. Yesterday, Hardball host […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}