MSNBC is showing its true colors by refusing to correct a serious fact error made on Monday’s broadcast of Hardball. Instead, Hardball host Chris Matthews and correspondent David Shuster are compounding the error nightly by repeating false information in their reports on the administration’s use of pre-war intelligence.

On Monday, Nathan Goulding pointed out three errors in David Shuster’s report. Shuster could plausibly argue that two of these errors are matters of interpretation. But one of them is indisputably incorrect.

Shuster said that the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate did not contain the words “vigorously trying to procure” regarding Saddam and uranium. In fact, the passage appears on page 24 of the NIE. That’s a major fact error, and MSNBC has not made any attempt to correct the record.

Tonight, Matthews and Shuster discussed Patrick Fitzgerald’s mistake and subsequent correction, but they didn’t follow Fitzgerald’s example and correct their own mistake. Instead, Shuster continued to churn out falsehoods regarding the NIE:

DAVID SHUSTER: Last week, Patrick Fitzgerald fingered vice-president Dick Cheney and said that Cheney’s chief of staff Scooter Libby was authorized to leak certain intelligence documents to try to undermine critic Joe Wilson. What was put out last week was a clear indication that this intelligence was mischaracterized by Libby and that Cheney knew it. What Patrick Fitzgerald is doing now, however, is that he is saying that when Fitzgerald said that when Libby talked about the national intelligence estimate and that a key judgment of the intelligence community with Iraq was “vigorously trying to procure uranium,” Fitzgerald is now saying that “I got that citation to Libby’s grand jury testimony incorrect.” It’s all very complex. It does not change anything about the case against Scooter Libby and whether he testified truthfully or not to the grand jury.
MATTHEWS: And nor does that change the fact that according to the testimony we have gotten from special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald now, what happened here — and it’s so clear to people who have followed this issue on this program — is that before the war with Iraq, a case was made that we faced a nuclear threat from Iraq. It turns out that the C.I.A., the Defense Department, in fact many of the interagency groups that handle intelligence, including the U.N., did not see a nuclear threat from Iraq, and that case that there was a nuclear threat from Iraq continued to be made by Cheney and his office after we went into the war.
SHUSTER: Right. And the key language here, Chris, which is referred to in these documents, these agencies said the claims were “highly dubious.” Well when Scooter Libby had his conversation with Judy Miller, he didn’t say, “Hey, these claims are highly dubious.” He just said there are claims and left out that other part.

Shuster uses the term “agencies,” plural, to imply that all the agencies involved in compiling the NIE judged the uranium claims to be “highly dubious.” In fact, only one agency — the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) — called the claims “highly dubious.” This language was found in an annex to the document in which the INR registered its dissent from the other agencies.

So what did the other U.S. intelligence agencies — the CIA, DIA, etc. — write in the key judgments of the report?

We judge that Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs in defiance of UN resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade. (See INR alternative view at the end of these Key Judgments.)
We judge that we are seeing only a portion of Iraq’s WMD efforts, owing to Baghdad’s vigorous denial and deception efforts. Revelations after the Gulf war starkly demonstrate the extensive efforts undertaken by Iraq to deny information. We lack specific information on many key aspects of Iraq’s WMD programs.
Since inspections ended in 1998, Iraq has maintained its chemical weapons effort, energized its missile program, and invested more heavily in biological weapons; in the view of most agencies, Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.

The only thing more annoying than Shuster’s nasally whine is his inability to get simple facts right. But his — and MSNBC’s — refusal to correct his errors is beyond annoying. It’s unethical.

Video here.

ALSO: I usually don’t do this, because I think a lot of times these campaigns are counterproductive. But this case is so clear-cut and egregious, I’m urging you to contact the show and ask Matthews and Shuster to correct their reporting. It’s simple. News organizations issue corrections all the time. I don’t understand why it’s so difficult for these two journalists to just admit they were wrong.