Journalist Matt Taibbi argues that MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow has emerged as a prominent cable news personality in much of the way Bill O’Reilly did on his long-running Fox News show, saying both elevated stories that “turned out to have lots and lots of holes.”
Taibbi, in an interview on Hill.TV’s “Rising,” outlined a recent piece in which he said that O’Reilly during President George W. Bush’s administration was one of the primary figures inaccurately arguing that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which eventually served as a prominent motivating factor in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
However, Taibbi pointed out that O’Reilly eventually admitted that he was incorrect in his speculation, while Maddow has not done the same following her intense focus on the Russia investigation, particularly the so-called “Steele dossier” that contained unproven claims of cooperation between former President Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Russian government.
Taibbi argued that while MSNBC may have “thought they were going to ride this forever,” the network’s ratings have “seesawed as the story has gone up and down.”
“So, they were doing great in 2017 and 2018, then they lost a significant amount of market share again, and I think what’s going on now is that rather than have a reckoning, they’re still hoping that the story will bounce back and they’ll be able to throw all their weight behind it,” the journalist explained.
Taibbi suggested that MSNBC instead say, “’Yeah we screwed up on things like the Steele dossier.'”
Watch part of Taibbi’s interview above.
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