Category: Verbatim

Flipping back and forth between the two legitimate cable news outlets, MSNBC and CNN, last night, I saw what I hope will be the low point in election night coverage on television.

The coverage on MSNBC was nothing less than a train wreck. The source of the problem was Chris Matthews, the disgruntled former Democrat who hosts the network’s Hardball program.

His co-anchor was Keith Olbermann, host of MSNBC’s Countdown, and the only professional newscaster on the set. Olbermann succeeded in keeping the coverage on track when he was on camera alone — and did his best not to wince when he was forced to engage in colloquies with Matthews, whose analysis grew increasingly off the wall as the evening progressed.

The lowest point in the evening started just prior to Matthews’ interview with Democratic Party chair Howard Dean in an exchange between Matthews and Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman from Florida, who hosts MSNBC’s Faux Fox News shout show, Scarborough Country.

The topic was Hillary Clinton — a subject that never fails to make Matthew spew spittle. But this time it was Scarborough who said, almost off-handedly, that Sen. Clinton, a conservative Democrat, represented the “far left” of the Democratic Party.

Matthews let the comment go as went immediately into his interview with Chairman Dean, but Dean, who was not in the studio and could not see a monitor so did not know Scarborough had made the statement, stopped the interview to say, “I don’t know who said [Clinton represented the “far left”] but whoever he is is not being objective.”

Matthews agreed, “No, he’s not.”

After the Dean interview, Scarborough took the floor and did what seemed like a five minute rebuttal. He went on at length about his own purported newfound fairness when looking at politics — how he has spent months trashing his own party and praising Democrats. To prove he point, he wrapped up — finally — by admitting that what he’d said about Sen. Clinton was inaccurate, that her voting record as been moderate and that she is a very fine senator. Matthews apologized to Scarborough for characterizing him as less than a down-the-middle newscaster, which just added to the absurdity and wasted more air.

That outburst, coupled with the fact that Matthews has had a half dozen instances over the past few months in which he can’t remember the names of the politicians he’s discussing — counterposed by the polished neutrality of Olbermann’s presentation last night — make it clear that MSNBC needs to replace Chris Matthews with a professional broadcaster to pair with Olbermann, who was criminally under-utilized last night.

My nomination would be Phil Donahue, who was fired by MSNBC one month before the U.S. invasion of Iraq because of his vocal opposition to the war.

Things were a bit better at CNN where there were more professional newscaster on the set, including emcee Wolf Blizter, commentator Jeff Greenfield and poll expert Bill Schneider. (Later, Anderson Cooper took over, who performed with his usual polish. There was also a segment with Larry King that literally put me to sleep.)

The panel of partisan experts on the set is getting very tired. I am biased, admittedly, but I do like Paul Begala and admire James Carville but the rightwing pundits, Bill Bennett and J.C. Watt, usually simply spout talking points faxed to them by Karl Rove’s office but apparently had not gotten their marching orders last night.

The worst idea of the evening, however, was CNN’s “blog party” at the restaurant Tryst in D.C. They invited big name bloggers from both the left and the right to Washington but then apparently did not have a plan for what to do them when the broadcast began.

As anyone who has tried it will tell you, live blogging at a party is practically useless and the coverage last night on the blogs of the folks who were at the CNN party generally suffered because they were distracted.

My recommendation is to ditch both the old partisan pundits and the blogger party idea and instead bring a handful of bloggers from both sides onto the set where they can cover the news on their sites, argue with each other and discuss their coverage with Blitzer, Greenfield, Schneider and the rest.