The New York Observer’s Felix Gillette writes about Chris Matthews and coverage of Rudy Giuliani…

On Thursday, Jan. 3, the night of the Iowa caucuses, Chris Matthews interviewed Rudy Giuliani live on MSNBC. “I noticed working with a lot of reporters, even mild-mannered reporters from New York,” observed Mr. Matthews, “they don’t like you much.”

That observation set up the question that Mr. Matthews wanted to explore: “Are you being screwed by the press?” he asked.

Was he? Mr. Giuliani demurred to his host, who proceeded to make the case.

As he had a few weeks earlier on his MSNBC show Hardball, Mr. Matthews trotted out Exhibit A—an article that appeared on Nov. 29 in The New York Times, which, as Mr. Matthews put it, was about how Mr. Giuliani “had failed to give an accurate accounting as mayor of the cost of your security detail when you went off to visit your now wife.” And Exhibit B—a subsequent piece in The Times on Dec. 20, which, Mr. Matthews suggested, exonerated Mr. Giuliani but had been buried deep in the paper.

“The New York Times finally came back on page 35 of the national edition and pointed out that they were wrong,” he said. “But none of the papers ever came back and said, ‘Wait a minute we blew it.’”

“You lost 10 points in the polls because of those stories,” Mr. Matthews concluded. “Are you going to be able to get back that 10 points on the basis of a retraction buried on page 35 of The Times?”