Chris Matthews

An American liberal television commentator, Chris Matthews is the host of the MSNBC television opinion show, Hardball. Previously, he was a general television, and then print, journalist, and then worked in politics and government.

In March 2004, he received the David Brinkley Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism. As a journalist, he covered the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first all-races election in South Africa and the Good Friday Peace Talks in Northern Ireland. In 1997 and 1998, his digging in the National Archives produced a series of San Francisco Examiner scoops on the Nixon presidential tapes. Matthews has covered American presidential election campaigns since 1988, including the five-week recount of 2000. In 2005 Matthews covered the funeral of Pope John Paul II.

Matthews worked for 15 years as a print journalist, 13 of them as Washington Bureau Chief for The San Francisco Examiner (1987 - 2000), and two years as a national columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle, which was syndicated to 200 newspapers by United Media.

Politics and government
He was a speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter as a Presidential speechwriter and on the President’s Reorganization Project, a staff member for Senators Frank Moss (D-Utah) and Edmund Muskie (D-Maine), and was the senior assistant to Speaker of the House Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, Jr. for six years.

Matthews is the author of four best-selling books, including American: Beyond Our Grandest Notions (2002), a New York Times best seller. His first book, Hardball (1988) is required reading in many college-level political science courses. Kennedy & Nixon (1996) was named by The Readers Digest “Today’s Best Non-fiction” and served as the basis of a documentary on the History Channel. Now, Let me Tell What I Really Think (2001) was another New York Times best-seller.

Early life
A graduate of Holy Cross College, Mr. Matthews did graduate work in economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.