Great point that Thos Paine was not a reporter but a pamphleteer, and a skilled one at that.

trust him like people trusted Walter Cronkite

Did Walter drool on himself ...?

'This Country Was Built on Biased Reporting'

Well that was a major understatement. Look where we are today in the US. Sad.

Matthews is in love with the sound of his own voice and the odor of his own flatulence.  'Incessant Bloviation' is too kind as a description of him.

Everyday, the Left is further emboldened to come out of the closet and let their freak flag fly.  This will come back to bite them in their posterior.

Patience, grasshopper.

That's right, Chrissy...you're just following the great American news tradition...bias. That's what made journalism great in this country. Then please explain why Journalism schools try to teach objectivity...notice I said try...obviously it doesn't always take. Are they against the Great American Tradition of Biased Reporting?

You're really stretching there to try to justify your bias. Do you plan to speak out next in favor of the great American tradition of mudslinging in elections? After all, this country was built on some pretty ugly political and personal attacks, back in the day....

Matthews himself was never a journalist. He was a political operative and is now a political commentator. But at no time was he ever a journalist.

Neither was Thomas Paine. Paine was a lot of things including an author and intellectual. But he was at no time a journalist.

Regarding Matthews and his repugnant comment that “this country was built on bias reporting.” I would refer him to two definition:

Journalism: the discipline of gathering, writing and reporting news by:

• Using original sources of information and citing those sources.
  

• Fully attributing information gathered from other published sources.
  

• Checking every fact reported.
  

• Find and report every side of a story possible.
  

• Report without bias.
  

• Approach researching and reporting a story with a balance between objectivity and skepticism.
  

Yellow Journalism: To exploit, distort, or exaggerate the news to create sensations and attract readers

Talk about spin! Talk about justification and rationalization! The liberals have been and are wrong on just about everything. From government, to education, to "jounalism", to families and child rearing, to drug use, to sexual relations, to the justice system, and more--- it all turns to crap once modern liberalism gets involved. Just today there is an article about the various individual, ethnic graduation ceremonies taking place on campuses in California. No more unity left there. And, of course, plenty of resentment and hostility. So much for "multiculturalism". Matthews is a typically screwed-up liberal who probably never had his bottom slapped. He's been spitting ( literally ) his garbage out for years and refuses to accept that he is ever wrong. He's a poster boy for adolescent liberalsim.

NEVER,NEVER trust a liberal

Dear Mr. Matthews,

Apparently in your ignorance and associating with people suffering from brain atrophy called liberals, you do not quite understand due to your college liberal uneducation what reporting or news was which built America.

In the chaotic days of forming the United States, there were many yellow journalists like yourself and Moveon.org who printed absolute lies about Thomas Jefferson fathering a black child to Andrew Jackson's beloved wife being an adulteress. That all though responsibly disappeared, except for embers in the Indian rebellion when leftists who were making money selling Indians guns "took up their cause" to make money off of them until they are money sucked dry.

It resurfaced again in leftist attacks were leveled at General Patton in World War II from communist and nazi agents who knew Patton was the greatest general in perhaps history they would have to face.

In responsible news then, the bias was always pro United States, pro United States government and pro the virtues of God, family and morals. That is a bias which was good for America in a world of European press printing all sorts of horrid lies about Americans.

See Mr. Matthews, George Washington and every founding father according to the British was a traitor, but American news did not call him nor any of the founders a traitor.

See Mr. Matthews, Abraham Lincoln was a tyrant according to Europeans bent on the destruction of the United States for trampling on southern states rights.

That was their bias as they hated America for the reason of it's liberty of citizens and self government. The current media with only your lifetime of office space experience became all anti American under Walter Cronkite which is NOT building America, but tearing down and apart the United States.

Your ideas Mr. Matthews have caused almost 7 million American babies to be destroyed in aborticide. Your ideas Mr. Matthews now have illegals imported to do the dirty jobs you don't want to do so you can keep your money instead of paying a good wage to Americans. Your ideas Mr. Matthews has borders so undefended that terrorists are pouring into the United States.

Your ideas Mr. Matthews are liberal and are going to foment an attack upon the United States by our enemies, to which you will blame a Republican, call for a massive crackdown as riots by illegals ensue and destroy the rights all Americans hold just because you want to keep safe in your million dollar home.

You are ignorant Mr. Matthews of the facts as much as the entire NBC and MSNBC corporations are ignorant. You should have been fired over a 100 things you have ranted upon in being rude to Michelle Malkin to this lie that Walter Cronkite and your bias built the United States.

You Mr. Matthews are destroying the Republic of the United States. You Mr. Matthews are the complete problem in using slander to gain power instead of abiding in fairness of choosing a government by the ballot box instead of by "propaganda coup".

Shame on you Mr. Matthews.

With all disrespect intended as John Wayne would say, LC

*HIC IACET ARTORIVS REX QVONDAM REXQVE FVTVRVS

Matthews is right, to a point.  Early newspapers in this country were biased, but openly so.  They didn't pretend to be objective.  Also, the media outlets of the time were not nearly so concentrated.  There weren't any national media outlets dominating journalism the way today's media does.

The First Amendment encourages opinion journalism.  But it depends on the freedom to express a wide range of opinion.  Right now we have a number of politicians, most (but not all) Democrat, actively working to silence opposing points of view.  From the Fairness Doctrine proposal to Democrats refusing to debate on Fox News to actors refusing to be interviewed by Fox News to cities refusing to run emergency information by a Rush Limbaugh affiliated radio station, there is a concerted effort to neutralize so-called "right wing" media outlets.  The more they try to silence the right, the louder the right needs to be.

When you put the clowns in charge, don't be surprised when a circus breaks out.