MSNBC's Matthews Wins Blunder Award

From OneNewsNow
By Chad Groening

MSNBC's Chris Matthews has won the "Quote of the Year" award from a conservative media watchdog organization.

The Media Research Center (MRC) recently released its report on "The Best Notable Quotables of 2008: The 21st Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting." Chris Matthews won the dubious honor of Quote of the Year for gushing over an Obama speech back in February during an exchange with colleague Keith Olbermann.

Matthews: "The feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama’s speech. My -- I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don’t have that too often.”

Olbermann: "Steady."

Matthews: "No, seriously. It’s a dramatic event. He speaks about America in a way that has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with the feeling we have about our country. And that is an objective assessment.”

Tim Graham, director of media analysis at the MRC, says Matthews' quote defined the media bias in 2008. "Chris Matthews was just a little more out there, a little more expressive than the average journalist," he contends. "But these journalists were bringing their children to Obama rallies. They were expressing to each other that they had trouble remaining objective because he was so fantastic -- and that's the kind of year it was."

He credits the media for Obama's election to the office of president of the United States.

In the days immediately following the election, Matthews stated it was his job as a journalist to "make...this new presidency work."