Chris Matthews: My Goal is to Make Obama Presidency a Success
In what would once be considered a highly irresponsible and unprofessional thing to say but which is now seemingly reasonably accepted in the United States, ‘journalist’ Chris Matthews told Joe Scarborough on his show at MSNBC, “Morning Joe,” that he considered it his responsibility to make an Obama presidency successful.
“I want to do everything I can to make this thing work, this new presidency work,” Matthews told Scarborough.
Scarborough then interrupted asking: “Is that your job? You just talked about being a journalist!
“Yes that is my job,” the former journalist turned partisan hack responded. “My job is to help this country.”
Watch it:
Matthews’ words indicate that he has no longer any understanding of what a journalist’
job is. It is not to make a presidency successful. That’s the job of the president, his aides, staffers, and cabinet members. Matthews’ job is to function as a check on Obama and other politicians, and to inform the public about it, about the issues, and to make sure that politicians do not cross the line and, when they do, that they are held accountable.
Notice how Matthews calls president-elect Barack Obama. Not “Obama,” not “president-elect Obama” or “Senator Obama” but Barack. That too is a sign of an unprofessional attitude.
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So like matter and anti-matter, if we somehow put FOX News and MSNBC together will we end the universe as we know it?
Finally watched the clip. That was uncomfortable. A Time editor lecturing Chris Matthews on the responsibility of the press. Hardball?
My take on the clip is that Matthews initially was careless on how he phrased his position, by saying he wanted to make Obama successful.
After criticism, he clarified that he meant only that he did not think it was in the best interest of the country to criticize Obama over unimportant issues (such as how his potential chief-of-staff attempted to dodge a question that wasn’t appropriate for him to answer), but that we should question him on more important matters such as policy issues. Whether Matthews was really clarifying or changing his position to save face, is a matter for speculation.
But assuming that is his real position, I think he (and the Time reporter which put it much better than he did) is correct. The media should report what is important, and not get caught up in distractions. Of course what is important and what is a distraction is a matter of discretion as well, but we certainly don’t expect our media to just discuss everything, no matter how insignificant, just in case someone might think it is important. The media does have to his some discretion on deciding what is and what isn’t important. So Matthew’s is right that it is not in the interest of our country for the media to quibble of things that aren’t important, just for the sake of trying to make Obama look bad.
Although the other guy had a point at the end: that the media hardly showed the same respect to Bush.