MSNBC MSNOW

primary 1 26 if only convenience

target pending bannon 11 24

note ad vs fox

see 180 rt to left never trumper bulwark

longwell pollster ex Dr Evil, tim gay dude, michael schmidt, nichole wallace

now ronna

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MS NOW anchor Jen Psaki pulled no punches at the disreputable slate of Republicans facing voters Tuesday night— some of them already toppled by their own voters as primaries extended into the night.

“Former Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell … is important because especially when you look at the Republican races we are watching tonight,’ said Psaki on her Wednesday The Briefing with Jen Psaki show. “Swalwell, as we all know, faced massive pressure to resign from his seat amid a flurry of sexual assault allegations. And even though Swalwell denied those allegations, officials … consider[ed] these allegations serious enough to universally push to show Swalwell the exit. Now, compare that to how it has gone for Republican congressman Cory Mills.”

Mills was running for reelection in Florida’s 7th Congressional district Wednesday, despite the fact that he is being investigated by the House Ethics Committee, investigated for allegations that he assaulted a former girlfriend and allegations of stolen valor for obtaining a bronze star on false pretenses, as well as allegations of financial misconduct.

“Unlike Swalwell, Mills has not been pressured to resign his seat to drop out of the race. None of that. President Trump even endorsed him in February after most of those allegations, I would note, were already public,” said Psaki.

But Trump's endorsement did nothing to help the scandal plagued Mills as the Associated Press projected Mills losing to Republican challenger, Ryan Elijah.

“It's really important to remember that it was not the Republican Party that did that. It wasn't Republican leadership. It wasn't Donald Trump — certainly not. It wasn't [House Speaker] Mike Johnson, wasn't any of them. It was the voters.”

But the Mills race wasn’t the wildest in Florida, said Psaki, referring to the state's 19th congressional district, where 10 Trump loyalists were fighting for the GOP primary Wednesday night.

“Two of them are convicted felons -- I am not making that detail up. And guess what? Both of them were pardoned by President Trump,” said Psaki, referring to John Strand, a J-6 rioter who was photographed pushing past Capitol Police officers to enter the capitol and disrupt the 2020 election. Strand later texted, “we stormed the capitol. It was insane.”

“Thank God the other convicted felon who was pardoned by Trump running in Florida’s 19th district is former New York congressman Chris Collins. And you may remember this guy, because he resigned from Congress in 2019 and pleaded guilty to insider trading and lying to the FBI,” Psaki said.

Trump pardoned Collins a year later, giving the former legislator the opportunity to sell his cozy relationship with Trump to voters.

But then there’s former North Carolina congressman Madison Cawthorn, who was also was running in Florida’s 19th district, even as polling showed him behind Wednesday night.

“A few years ago, Cawthorn faced his own allegations of sexually aggressive behavior from multiple women. Cawthorn denied those allegations, but ended up losing his seat to none other than Chuck Edwards, who just ended his own campaign for Congress this month after he faced his own sexual harassment allegations, which he also denied,” said Psaki.

“What a Grand Old Party,” said Psaki. “Indeed, you cannot make this up.”

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MMA 7 26

What you need to know about John Solomon, the man driving Trump's latest election fraud nonsense

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published 07/16/26 6:00 PM EDT

In a new piece for MS NOW, Media Matters Vice President Julie Millican details the many reasons not to trust right-wing journalist John Solomon, who is reportedly helping orchestrate President Donald Trump's Thursday prime-time speech on election fraud:

Creating “phantom scandals” has made Solomon a key element of the right-wing media’s propaganda machine. He gained prominence for his quest to discredit Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation during Trump’s first administration — first while working for Sinclair Broadcast Group’s Circa News, and later after becoming executive vice president of digital video at The Hill. Many of the “phantom scandals” Solomon pursued served to rewrite history by claiming that it was really Democrats with corrupt relationships with Russia who worked to undermine Trump in the 2016 presidential election — not the other way around.

...

Enter Rudy Giuliani.

As the House Democrats’ impeachment reports found, Solomon was one of the most critical figures in Trump and Giuliani’s plot to extort the Ukrainian government into meddling in the 2020 U.S. election on Trump’s behalf. As I laid out at the time, Giuliani, then Trump’s personal attorney, worked with con men and Trump cronies to pursue an “investigation” into Ukraine that he said showed both Ukrainian collusion with Democrats in 2016 and evidence that then-Vice President Joe Biden acted corruptly in Ukraine to benefit his son.

...

Solomon has also advanced election denial conspiracy theories, which have recently fixated on China. Since March, he has repeatedly claimed that the 2020 election was not secure because China allegedly accessed voter registration data in multiple states. In Solomon’s telling, the Democrats and the so-called deep state hid this information from the public, while China tried to submit fake ballots on Biden’s behalf. (The United States National Intelligence Council, the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security, however, all concluded that there was no evidence of foreign interference in the 2020 election.)

In June, Trump appointed Solomon a “special government employee” to run a “task force” related to declassifying documents about the 2020 election. Around the same time, Trump nominated Bill Pulte — who Solomon has said he knows “pretty well” — to become acting director of national intelligence.

Solomon is now in a position to potentially create a “phantom scandal” directly from the White House, and right-wing media figures like Bannon have suggested such a narrative could be a “predicate” for Trump to declare a national emergency over election security ahead of the midterms.

Read the whole thing at MS NOW.

For more Media Matters coverage of Trump's speech and the unfolding effort by the president and his media allies to undermine the midterm elections, see here, here, and here.

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The new Watch page comes with search and sorting functions that can be helpful.

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AN 3 26

New revelations have emerged in President Donald Trump's classified documents case, per a "damning" memo obtained by MS NOW, showing that he seemingly intended to profit from illegally retaining the sensitive materials.

According to the report published Friday, special counsel Jack Smith determined that Trump had retained "secret documents that related to his worldwide business interests," revealing a key potential motive for his dogged efforts to hang onto them. Trump held the documents, often in questionable places, at his Mar-a-Lago resort, after departing the White House in 2021, later insisting that he had the right to retain them and that he had declassified them with his mind before leaving office. He was indicted on 32 felony counts related to his retention of the materials, and an additional eight charges for conspiracy to obstruct justice, but the case was halted after his reelection.

The revelations about Trump's business motive originate from a January 2023 progress memo produced by Smith's office, though the specific businesses and how they relate to the classified information were not disclosed.

“Trump possessed classified documents pertinent to his business interests — establishing a motive for retaining them,” the memo explained. “We must have those documents.”

As MS NOW's report explained, Trump's motive for retaining the materials had, up until now, been largely uncertain. Trump himself has long insisted that he had every right to retain the documents, likening them to the materials kept on hand by his predecessors for their presidential libraries. Some reports indicated that Trump seemed to show off the documents to impress people who visited Mar-a-Lago, while other critics warned that he may have been attempting to sell the sensitive information.

"Trump’s reason for taking hundreds of pages of classified documents when he left office in January 2021 — and then concealing them when the Justice Department subpoenaed him for their return in May 2022 — has been one of the larger mysteries of the case," MS NOW explained. "FBI agents conducting an unannounced search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in August 2022 discovered hundreds more pages of top-secret records that Trump and his lawyers had failed to return to the government after claiming they had fully returned all classified materials."

Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin cited this memo in a scathing letter to Attorney General Pam Bondion Tuesday, accusing the agency of covering up Trump's misdeeds while scrambling to find incriminating evidence against Smith.

“These new disclosures suggest that Donald Trump stole documents so sensitive that only six people in the entire U.S. government had access to them, that the documents President Trump stole pertained to his business interests,” Raskin wrote “This glimpse into the trove of evidence behind the coverup reveals a President of the United States who may have sold out our national security to enrich himself.”

The congressman further added: "Apparently blinded by the frenzied search to find any scrap of evidence that could be twisted and distorted to level an attack against Special Counsel Smith (despite constantly coming up empty-handed), you have, quite amazingly, missed the fact that some of the documents you provided include damning evidence about your boss’s conduct and may well violate the gag order your DOJ and Donald Trump demanded from Judge Aileen Cannon."

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an 2 26

President Donald Trump, in what appeared to be an attempt to pressure two major cable news networks, warned against booking two prominent former officials from his first administration.

Trump targeted CNN and MS NOW — formerly MSNBC, which he called “MSDNC” — while denouncing attorney Ty Cobb, a former member of the White House legal team who reported directly to the president, and former Department of Homeland Security Chief of Staff Miles Taylor.

The president called Cobb “one of the Worst Lawyers in Washington, D.C.,” and a “WHACKJOB, who I hardly knew,” and said Taylor is “another major Loser … who I have no idea who he is.”

He charged that both “make livings talking about me like they know me well.”

“So, when you watch these two guys on Television, which, fortunately, doesn’t happen often because there’s very little audience at either CNN or MSDNC,” he wrote, “remember, they know nothing about me — Just two DOPES trying to make a ‘buck’ by pretending to know something about someone who turned out to be very famous.”

Trump already was the president when they served in his administration.

“These two Networks are forewarned not to put them on the air again, because they have no knowledge or credibility with respect to anything have [sic] to do with DONALD J. TRUMP.”

Discover moreDiversity inclusion trainingRepublican Party newsLGBTQ rights updates

Last month, Cobb “claimed President Trump is experiencing a ‘significant decline’ in his mental faculties,” according to The Hill.

“I think the dementia and the cognitive decline are, you know, palpable, as do many experts, including many physicians,” Cobb said.

Trump’s social media post came just about the same time that he or someone with access to his social media account deleted what many, including several prominent Republicans, denounced as a racist meme that depicted former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes.

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an 1 26

During his first presidency, Donald Trump's critics often attacked him as an "isolationist" who was uninformed about the rest of the world. But Trump has taken a much more imperialistic turn since returning to the White House, from capturing leftist Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to threatening to take Greenland by force to calling for Canada to become "the 51st state." Libertarian/conservative Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) and MAGA ex-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) believe Trump is betraying the "America First" agenda he once championed.

Trump went from being called an "isolationist" to being called a warmonger with a belligerent foreign policy.

In a scathing opinion column published on January 18, MS NOW's Paul Waldman (formerly of the Washington Post) argues that Trump is waging a "comprehensive war" — only he isn't talking about Venezuela or Greenland. Trump, Waldman stresses, is declaring "war" on Americans who didn't vote for him in 2024.

"Something important and dangerous is happening," Waldman warns. "The Trump Administration is engaged in a comprehensive war, and its enemy is half of America. This war is being waged in rhetoric and regulation, budget cuts and violence. Its aim is to tear the country in two. There is no precedent in modern times for this; one might make an analogy to Reconstruction in the wake of the Civil War, in which the federal government forced the South to accept democracy. But that was for the best of reasons, and Trump's attempt to bend blue states to his will is for the worst. We're seeing the ugliest face of Trump's plan in Minnesota."

Referring to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in Minneapolis, Waldman laments that Minnesota's largest city is "under siege from roving gangs of masked federal thugs."

"Trump promised a 'DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION' against the city and the state of Minnesota, and he is already delivering," Waldman observes. "Even before an ICE officer shot dead Renee Good, ill-trained and overly aggressive agents rampaged through the community, brutalizing people, lobbing tear gas into crowds and spreading an atmosphere of fear that has everyone in the city on edge. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz wrote on social media this week, 'Minnesota voted against him three times and now he's punishing us,' and it's hard to argue, especially since Trump is openly talking about 'retribution'…. Most remarkably — as in the administration's filings in the case on environmental grants — officials in Trump's administration don’t even pretend they should serve all Americans equally. Trump himself certainly doesn't."

Waldman adds, "Every day he makes clear that if you support him he likes you — and if you don't, you’re his enemy."

Paul Waldman's full column for MS NOW is available at this link.}:

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Tom Homan, a top White House advisor to Donald Trump on matters concerning border security and immigration, appears to have been skipped over for a typical background check while he was under an FBI investigation for bribery, according to an MS NOW report from Tuesday.

Earlier this year, a report found that Homan, who previously served as an acting director for ICE early in the first Trump administration, had been recorded in September 2024 accepting a restaurant to-go bag filled with $50,000 from undercover FBI agents posing as business executives. The understanding was that Homan was soliciting a bribe in exchange for helping them receive government contracts if Trump were reelected.

According to the new report from MS NOW, "a small group of career lawyers at the Justice Department" were compelled to get this information to Trump's transition team following the 2024 election, believing it could "head off potential embarrassment and a security clearance problem before Trump picked his future Cabinet and top appointees." Trump announced on Nov. 10, just a few days after his reelection, that he would be appointing Homan as his "border czar," an informal but highly placed advisory role in the White House.

"Justice officials felt sure Homan would not be able to obtain a security clearance based on the evidence gathered in the corruption probe, which they and FBI agents believed had shown Homan unsuitable for a trusted senior role in government service, according to the sources," MS NOW's report explained.

Despite this, Trump's resistance to submitting names to the FBI for background checks appears to have stalled these efforts. Trump did not agree to provide a list of potential appointees until Dec. 3, nearly a month after the election and much later than has typical for incoming administrations. This list was not complete, however, containing only "picks who required Senate confirmation and a few other members of agency landing teams," meaning it did not include Homan.

According to MS NOW, the "bombshell" revelation about Homan's bribery probe did not reach Emil Bove, a member of Trump's personal legal team who eventually served as acting deputy attorney general at the start of his second term, until "very late in Trump’s process of shaping the future administration," as the concerned DOJ staffers had to wait until he was formally appointed to a post transition team post. Despite this information, Homan was able to obtain a security clearance, and it's unclear if the probe had any impact at all.

"It remains unclear how Homan was eventually granted a security clearance, or whom Bove alerted after being briefed on the Homan probe," MS NOW's report explained.

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7 25 HEARD US AID BODY CT WILL BE 14 MILLION BY 2023?

AI GGL 7 25

Based on a study published in the medical journal The Lancet in July 2025, cuts to the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which was eliminated in early 2025, could lead to over 14 million additional deaths by 2030. This includes an estimated 4.5 million deaths among children younger than five.

The study, conducted by an international research team, estimated that USAID funding had prevented 91.8 million deaths in developing countries between 2001 and 2021. The researchers attributed these averted deaths to USAID-supported programs in various sectors, including healthcare, nutrition, education, water, sanitation, and humanitarian relief.

The elimination of USAID was initiated under the Trump administration with the support of Elon Musk, who served as a close advisor. Musk had previously stated his intention to drastically reduce government spending and headcount, targeting USAID as one of the first departments to be dismantled. This action has been criticized by medical experts and lawmakers who argue that it will have devastating consequences for global health.

MSNBC

Medical experts and lawmakers are denouncing Elon Musk as cruel after a new study predicted that the billionaire’s efforts to help the Trump administration dismantle theU.S. Agency for International Developmentcould lead to more than 14 million deaths over the next five years.

According to the analysis, published Monday in the medical journal The Lancet, programs funded by USAID prevented nearly 92 million deaths worldwide from 2001 through 2021. Researchers found that across 133 countries, the agency helped stop more than 25 million deaths from HIV/AIDS, about 11 million from diarrheal diseases, 8 million from malaria and nearly 5 million from tuberculosis.

Using that data, experts calculated that 14 million people around the globe could die over the next five years because of the USAID cuts, including about 4.5 million children younger than 5.

USAID became an agency of particular interest to Musk, as his so-called Department of Government Efficiency carried out President Donald Trump’s mission to slash the federal budget. In February, Musk bragged on Xthat he “spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”

A month later, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the cancellationof 83% of USAID’s programs, saying they did not serve “the core national interests of the United States.” Rubio’s move had an immediate effect, as NBC News reported:

The action brought many overseas humanitarian efforts to a grinding halt, leading to the closings of food kitchens and health clinics in underserved countries and in some cases delaying or stopping the distribution of lifesaving medications, bed nets to ward off malaria, nutritional packets for starving children and chlorine tablets to disinfect dirty water.

Samantha Power, who led USAID during the Biden administration, told CNN that the effects that Musk’s cuts will have on global health are “not something that any American should tolerate.”

“Efficiency, we’re all for efficiency, but actually taking away programming that is saving lives … that’s just devastating,” Power said.

Timothy Caulfield, a professor of health law and science policy at the University of Alberta in Canada, called the prediction “Sickening. Heartbreaking. Evil.” Rachel Clarke, an English physician specializing in severe illness, seemingly singled out Musk, attributing the estimated death toll to “one man’s cruelty & venality.”

Congressional Democrats also shared their reactions to the study.

“Donald Trump’s legacy: As many as 14 MILLION more deaths over the next five years thanks to USAID cuts made by him, Elon Musk, and his DOGE bros,” Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois wrote on X.“Absolutely shameful.”

“This administration’s cruelty knows no bounds,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington wrote in her own post.

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oops maya w ob dei bs

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an fair 3 25

At a time when the Democratic Party’s opposition to the ongoing right-wing authoritarian assault on US government is failing miserably (FAIR.org, 2/27/25), MSNBC’s recent purge means it is all the more unlikely that the cable news network will have any role in holding Democrats’ feet to the fire.

The news channel has nixed or demoted their most progressive anchors, all of whom are people of color. These are the hosts who have drawn the most ire from Donald Trump’s online warriors, according to Dave Zirin of The Nation (2/28/25). They are also some of the few who were willing to air the network’s rare criticism of Israel. In their stead, MSNBC has elevated Democratic Party apparatchiks and a center-right never-Trumper. This rightward shift reflects the reality that the channel’s corporate ownership has never cared for its left-of-center brand.

The network’s overhaul, led by its new president Rebecca Kutler, cancels Joy Reid’s ReidOut, Alex Wagner’s nighttime spot and Ayman Mohyeldin’s weekend evening show, with Reid fired, Wagner demoted and Mohyeldin’s voice diluted into a co-anchor position.

The ReidOut is getting replaced by a panel show consisting of Symone Sanders-Townsend, the former Biden and Harris advisor; Alicia Menendez, the daughter of disgraced ex-Sen. Bob Menendez; and Michael Steele, the former Republican National Committee chairperson, now a Democrat whose politics symbolize the Democratic Party’s disastrous fetish for centrist triangulation. Wagner’s 9 pm slot will now be anchored by Jen Psaki, another Biden alum.

As an indication of just how disruptive Kutler’s new vision for MSNBC is, even Rachel Maddow—the network’s biggest star with the most popular show—is getting a staff downsizing. The move seemed almost retaliatory, as it came after Maddow aired her grievances during one of her nightly shows (2/24/25). “Personally, I think it is a bad mistake to let [Reid] walk out the door,” Maddow said. “It is not my call and I understand that, but that’s what I think.” She added:

It is also unnerving to see that, on a network where we’ve got two, count ’em, two non-white hosts in primetime, both of our non-white hosts in prime time are losing their shows, as is Katie Phang on the weekend. And that feels worse than bad, no matter who replaces them. That feels indefensible, and I do not defend it.

Bucking the trend

Joy Reid has had her disagreements with the left. Her ardent defense of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential bid veered frequently into baseless accusations, online scolding of Bernie Sanders and promotion of the Russiagate conspiracy theory (FAIR.org, 9/3/16, 6/30/17, 8/24/16). Altogether, that contributed to Democrats’ refusal to conduct a true postmortem of the Clinton loss, the ramifications of which still aid Donald Trump’s dominance.

But during Joe Biden’s presidential tenure, Reid proved to be progressive, relative not just to MSNBC’s other anchors, but many in the corporate media writ large. As New York’s skies turned orange amid historic Canadian wildfires in the summer of 2023, for instance, Reid was one of the few who called out the role of fossil fuels (FAIR.org, 7/18/23).

While other outlets were overemphasizing the inflationary impact of President Biden’s paradigm-shifting economic stimulus in the wake of the Covid pandemic, Reid bucked the trend, drawing the ire of right-wing media (FAIR.org, 7/13/23).

Perhaps most notably, Reid was an outlier in her coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza and its backlash in the US. A FAIR study (8/15/24) found that Reid’s show was the only weekday news program studied to feature students expressing pro-Palestinian sentiment during coverage of the student Gaza solidarity encampments that cropped up at college campuses across the country last spring. The same study found that her show was the only one studied to have mentioned the words “divestment” and “police violence” more than “antisemitism” in relation to the encampments.

Similarly, as outlets like the New York Times provided Israel cover for its bombing of the densely-populated Jabalia refugee camp that killed and wounded 400 Palestinians, Reid questioned how Israel could justify such a disproportionate attack (FAIR.org, 11/15/23).

The panel of Sanders-Townsend, Menendez and Steele promises none of that nonconformity. Instead, they represent MSNBC’s decision to represent an even smaller sliver of the Democratic elite. By elevating the former Biden and Harris advisor Sanders-Townsend, MSNBC has empowered someone with an interest in defending the current Democratic guard’s rule.

The Lincoln Project–affiliated Steele similarly owes his ascendancy to the sort of Democratic group-think that spurred Kamala Harris’s ruinous gun-touting, Cheney-approved centrist presidential bid. Expect Hakeem Jeffries praise.

Pointing out hypocrisy

Though not fired, Mohyeldin and Wagner are two more MSNBC figures who have elevated criticism of Israel and are now facing a demotion. Following ex-Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s finding that Sudanese military forces had committed genocide against the Sudanese people, Mohyeldin (MSNBC, 1/13/25) took to the airwaves to point out Blinken’s hypocrisy:

The horrific atrocities committed against the Sudanese should be labeled as genocide. But Blinken’s declaration begs the question: Why is the US unable to apply that same standard to Israel?

If the Biden administration is calling out the famine in Sudan, why not also address the ongoing famine in Gaza, which has been condemned by independent experts from the United Nations?

After New York Mayor Eric Adams sicced the NYPD on Columbia and CUNY students who had erected Gaza solidarity encampments, Wagner (5/1/24) brought on Jelani Cobb, the dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, and CUNY journalism professor (and MSNBC contributor) Peter Beinart, a well-known critic of Israel. During the show, Wagner said she agreed with Beinart that it’s “probably a good thing for our national discourse” if the encampment movement is remembered in history as a turning point for debate about US support for Israel. She also suggested that common misrepresentations of the student protestors as treasonous were a “cudgel” to distract from the issue of US foreign policy towards Israel.

Mouthpiece for elite interests

Wagner’s replacement is Jen Psaki. No one is more qualified to execute MSNBC’s crusade to become nothing more than a mouthpiece for elite Democratic interests. As Julia Rock wrote in Jacobin (5/13/22) when Biden’s former press secretary left the administration for her first MSNBC gig:

The skills required to act as a press secretary in corporate Democratic presidencies—saying little of substance, committing to nothing, dispensing snark and scoffs, and never even accidentally challenging power—appear to carry over well to playing pundit on MSNBC, the corporate network that serves as the Democratic Party’s de facto propaganda outfit.

As press secretary, Psaki was known for insensitive and condescending quips in response to the public’s desire for good things. After the Democrats’ John R. Lewis Act, which would have enacted broad voting rights reforms, failed to pass the Senate in January 2022, Psaki suggested the public “go to a kickboxing class” or “have a margarita” to rejuvenate their spirits (Business Insider, 1/21/22).

Then there was the time when Psaki got short with NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson in response to her question asking why the United States, unlike other wealthy nations, couldn’t distribute free Covid-19 test kits to every US household (Jacobin, 12/8/21). Psaki, suggesting the best way to provide tests was Biden’s convoluted plan for reimbursements through private insurance, asked Liasson, “Should we just send one to every American?” Feigning ignorance, she continued, “Then what happens if every American has one test? How much does that cost, and then what happens after that?”

Psaki’s knack for subduing the electorate’s impulse for government to meet their needs will serve MSNBC’s priorities well. Add to that her gig as a “crisis consultant” (Jacobin, 3/20/21) for the Israeli AI facial recognition startup formerly known as AnyVision, whose services were used to surveil Palestinians in the West Bank (NBC, 10/28/19), as well as her consultancy for the ride sharing giant Lyft (Business Insider, 4/1/22), and it’s no wonder she got the primetime 9pm slot.

Ideological thrashing

MSNBC’s rightward tack may come as a surprise to those who think it was born fully formed as Fox News’ liberal opposite. But its ideological thrashing over the years—oscillating between right-wing pundits like Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson and Michael Savage, and liberals like Phil Donahue and Keith Olbermann—before donning its current liberal identity in 2008, with the hiring of Rachel Maddow, shows the network is more akin to a cable news version of John Carpenter’s The Thing (FAIR.org, 8/28/21).

The owners of MSNBC—once Microsoft and General Electric, then GE alone, now the cable giant Comcast—have never held a commitment to its center-left brand beyond its capacity to capture as large a fraction of the market as possible. Now, as other mainstream corporate outlets like CNN are making similar adjustments (FAIR.org, 2/17/22), MSNBC seems to believe its best path to profit is shirking progressives.

The Democratic Party is facing an unprecedented—and justified—crisis in confidence among the public. A recent Quinnipiac University poll showed Democrats with just a 31% approval rating, the lowest since the school began measuring party approval. Meanwhile, a poll by the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project found that “ending Israel’s violence in Gaza” was a top issue for voters who supported Biden in 2020, but cast their ballots for someone other than Harris in the 2024 election.

MSNBC’s firing and demotion of its most progressive ranks, the ones who aired criticism of Israel, means that the Democratic Party—currently America’s sole opposition party in Congress—is all the less likely to be held accountable as the authoritarian right attempts to steamroll through our democracy.

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joy reid msnbc 1 24 ~ MLK hijack quote

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BUSTS SINCLAIR TRUMP bs 6 24

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mma

### Steve Bannon accuses MSNBC producers of being “part of a vast criminal conspiracy against President Trump”

11/15/24

Steve Bannon on Trump's return in January: “We're going to burn some of these institutions down to the ground”

11/15/24

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November 13, 2024 edition of *War Room: Battleground

STEVE BANNON (HOST): Weissmann, you were on TV with MSNBC and all the producers at MSNBC, preserve your documents. Ari Melber and all you hosts, preserve your documents. All of it. You better be worried and you better lawyer up. Some of you young producers, better call mom and dad tonight — hey mom and dad, you know a good lawyer? Lawyer up. Lawyer up.

You tried to destroy Trump, you tried to imprison Trump, you tried to break Trump. He’s not breakable. You couldn’t destroy him and now he is turned on you and he’s put a firebrand in charge of main justice, Department of Justice. And you’re going to have to live it with — Andrew Weissmann and all your kind — McCabe and Comey. Oh my lord.

…

The hunted now become the hunters, yep. With the full apparatus — but here’s the difference, here’s the difference, here’s the difference.

It’s going to be totally transparent. It’s going to start with the mass declassification of all this information we've been keeping back from the American people, shouldn’t keep it back.

American people should understand that, should see it, and see what you’ve done. It’s going to be fully transparent, all of it, and all of the interconnections. Norm Eisen and all these NGOs, and you know, and Reid Hoffman is all worried. You better be worried. You big billionaire donors, you better be worried. You better lawyer up. You should be worried.

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MSNBC, Alex Wagner explains how Fox News fabricates panic about crime waves

06/12/24

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pension is msnbc?!

3 24

NBC insiders upset over Ronna McDaniel hiring as Maddow reaction awaited: report - Alternet.org

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'Outrage' after MSNBC cancels 'vital voice' Mehdi hasan - Alternet.org

11 23

it’s being called a “revamp,” an “overhaul,” and a “shakeup,” but media critics, journalists, and journalism experts are expressing outrage at MSNBC for its decision to cancel the weekend show anchored by Mehdi Hasan, who many see as an important voice against authoritarianism and the far-right.

Calling Hasan an “outspoken opinion host,” and “a cult favorite online for his tough interview style and impassioned monologues,” Semafor‘s Max Tani reported MSNBC “privately announced” the cancellation of Hasan’s show Thursday morning. Hasan “will become an on-camera analyst and fill-in host. The network plans to expand host Ayman Mohyeldin’s weekend program to two hours to replace Hasan’s show.”

MSNBC is also moving Jonathan Capehart’s show to 6 PM on Saturdays and Sundays, and is cancelling Yasmin Vossoughian’s weekend show.

The cable network will launch a new weekend show, “The Weekend,” which Mediaite reports “is billed as a politics and Washington-focused program. It will be hosted from Washington D.C. by MSNBC anchors Alicia Menendez, Symone Sanders-Townsend and Michael Steele on Saturdays and Sundays from 8 to 10 a.m. ET. Both Sanders-Townsend and Menendez will be leaving their weekend programs to join the new show.

“Hasan has come under fire recently over his coverage of the Gaza war, specifically from conservative critics angry over his pro-Palestinian stance,” The Daily Beast adds. “Last month, Semafor reported that Hasan was one of three Muslim broadcasters who had been quietly pulled from the anchor’s desk following the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack. A network official vehemently denied Semafor’s reporting that Hasan and others had been sidelined.”

“The same criticism Hasan has received over Israel-Hamas coverage from media rivals, however, has also followed fellow Muslim-American colleagues Velshi and Mohyeldin, who have retained their shows and even seen their roles expanded. Furthermore, as Confider reported in September, the revamped weekend lineup was already being hashed out prior to the start of the conflict in Gaza.”

Many, including those who have been critical of some of Hasan’s views, are expressing anger and outrage over the cancellation of his show, and concern for the direction of corporate media in general.

“This is an outrage,” declared journalist and media critic Dan Froomkin.

“As the warning signs for authoritarianism are going off, why demote a journalist who is really good on this topic?” asked Don Moynihan, professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy.

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Wesley Lowery, now an associate professor of investigative journalism at American University, wrote on social media that Hasan “is the best on-camera newsmaker interviewer in journalism.” He suggested, “someone give him a livelier version of what Charlie Rose once did. If you vow to measure the impact of your investment based on the quality of the journalism, not ratings or clicks, I’ll EP the first season.”

“Without a doubt,” wrote former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacob, who writes a newsletter on politics and the media, Hasan “has been one of the most incisive anchors on MSNBC. The cancellation of his show is an outrage — and yet another example of how major media are failing us.”

“They still have a Republican former congressman hosting a show for like six hours every morning though right?” snarked political strategist, writer, and former Media Matters executive vice president Jamison Foser.

“Wow,” exclaimed Max Burns, a Democratic strategist and columnist. Hasan “is easily one of the sharpest, toughest, best-researched interviewers working today. His back-and-forths with politicians both left and right should be models for how to do the job effectively. What a ridiculous decision.”

Burns continued, writing: “I look at bizarre news like this and think to myself, if this industry is tossing aside singular forces of journalism like Mehdi, what hope is there for anyone? Clearly doing the job well isn’t protection from corporate decisions.

Sherrilyn Ifill, the civil rights attorney, professor of law and former Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), wrote that Hasan “has shown over and over again that he is so good at his craft. His is the journalistic rigor we need in this age of misinformation, lies, and wanna be celebrities masquerading as public servants. I cannot imagine not wanting to elevate his platform.”

“Oh no,” declared David Rothkopf, the foreign policy, national security and political affairs analyst and commentator, calling Hasan a “vital voice.”

“This is MSNBC’s loss. This is a cowardly move,” wrote conservative and former GOP congressman Joe Walsh, who said he and Hasan “disagree on plenty, especially with what’s happening in the Middle East. But Mehdi is an important and valuable voice. And he’s damn good at what he does. It’s so important that ALL viewpoints get heard. Bad move.”

In September Hasan “grilled” GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Watch that interview below or at this link.

---

an 5 23

newt memo update? just mirror BS devil term?

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Hopelessly insane' Ted Cruz flattened over Biden 'terrorist' insult

Tom Boggioni and Raw StoryMay 01, 2023

A glib comment about President Joe Biden made by Sen. Ted Cuz while appearing on Fox News on Sunday was hammered by MSNBC analyst Steve Benen, who called out the Texas Republican for his "juvenile nonsense."

Speaking with embattled “Sunday Morning Futures" host Maria Bartiromo – who was at the center of Dominion Voting Systems' defamation lawsuit that cost the network $787 million – Cruz attacked the president over the budget battle as a default deadline looms.

:{:{}:

Cruz offered "advice" to Biden, stating, "Joe Biden from 2011 needs to come back, not the guy they got right now locked in the basement and a White House that’s being run by 25-year-old radicals who figure, ‘Heck, just let it all default, what do we care?’ These are little Marxists with no experience in the real world. We need to bring back the Joe Biden who’s done this before, not the one who is behaving like a terrorist, which is what Biden is doing right now.”

Aside from claiming Biden who just returned from a visit to Europe and told jokes at the televised White House Correspondents' Association Dinner on Saturday evening is "locked in the basement," Benen hammered Cruz over his "unserious" remarks.

"The first is that Biden, during his tenure as vice president, participated in debt ceiling talks. That’s true, he did. But Biden also learned from that experience that such talks don’t actually lead to worthwhile and constructive results, which is one of the reasons he’s opposed to making the same mistake twice," he wrote.

He then added, "The second was Cruz’s contention that the president is 'behaving like a terrorist,' which is so hopelessly insane that it was unsettling to see the senator deliver the line with a straight face."

According to the analyst, this is not the first time Republicans have turned to overheated rhetoric because they aren't getting their way.

:{:{}:

"To hear these Republicans tell it, the heroes of our ongoing drama are those threatening to impose an economic catastrophe unless their ridiculous demands are met, and those being told to pay the ransom are 'behaving like a terrorist,'" he explained before concluding, "Or put another way, Cruz, convinced that many voters will believe garbage talking points, no matter how outlandish, is pitching a painfully dumb plot."

You can read more here.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Newly revealed Ted Cruz tape has him telling Fox host to listen to 'actual facts' in 2020 coverage ›

Kellyanne Conway’s daughter ignites mockery of Ted Cruz and other conservatives ›

Ted Cruz says Democrats harbor 'special' hate for Clarence Thomas 'because he’s a Black man' ›

News shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC ran a combined 27 global heat segments – 37% of them mentioned climate change

From July 16-18, corporate broadcast networks ABC, CBS, and NBC aired 10 mentions of climate change related to extreme heat, and 7 of those mentions were in the context of reporting on the European heat wave.

Climate change was mentioned in 5 of ABC’s 12 extreme heat segments (42%). Four of those segments were in the context of European heat, and 1 in the context of U.S. heat. The latter mention was by meteorologist Ginger Zee on the July 18 edition of World News Tonight and represented the only climate mention in a weather report on corporate broadcast news.

Meanwhile, NBC aired 9 segments covering the extreme heat, with 3 of them (33%) mentioning climate change – 2 in the context of U.S. heat, and 1 in the context of European heat. CBS aired 6 extreme heat segments, with 2 (33%) mentioning climate change – both came in the context of European heat.

The July 18 edition of CBS Mornings included a good example of how extreme weather coverage can benefit from interviews with experts in the field who can credibly communicate the science and urgency of action to viewers. CBS correspondent Roxana Saberi interviewed Kirsty McCabe of the U.K.’s Royal Meteorological Society, who stated that “climate change has everything to do with the extreme weather that we're seeing at the moment – and it's human-induced climate change, it’s not a natural variation.” She later stated that “if we don't do something now and take drastic action, we will continue to see these things happening.

[vid? the July 18, 2022, edition of CBS Mornings

broken down by region, the corporate broadcast networks aired 11 news segments on the European heat, 10 segments on U.S. heat, and 6 that combined both European and U.S. heat.

In June, these same networks mentioned climate in just 9% of combined segments on various extreme weather events happening around the globe. Last week, they mentioned climate in a combined 38% of segments on the Washburn Fire, which threatened Yosemite National Park and its iconic sequoias.

Cable TV networks CNN and MSNBC ran a combined 31 segments on global extreme heat – 10 of them, or 32%, mentioned climate change

MSNBC aired 10 segments on extreme heat, and 7 of them (70%) mentioned climate change – making them the best-performing network reviewed in this time period. Four mentions came in segments about European heat, 2 on both European and U.S. heat, and 1 specific to extreme heat in Texas. MSNBC also featured the only mention by cable news of climate change in a weather report, which occurred while reporting on the European heat wave on the July 18 edition ofKaty Tur Reports.

CNN ran 21 such segments, and only 3 (14%) mentioned climate change. All 3 came in the context of covering European heat. While lacking in climate mentions during its extreme heat coverage, the network featured one segment that did a particularly good job of putting these events within the context of the climate crisis and articulating the high stakes of climate inaction. During the 5 a.m. hour of the July 16 edition of CNN Newsroom, the reporter stated that “the extreme heat and drought fuelling what scientists say is a sign of the effects of climate change,” before going to climate scientist Michael Mann to explain further. Later in the segment, the reporter stated, “As the mercury climbs, scientists again warning [that] without addressing the climate crisis, weather events like this will grow more common and more extreme."

[vid]

broken down by region, these networks aired 19 segments on the European heat, 10 segments that combined both European and U.S. heat, 5 segments on U.S. heat (two of which were specific to Texas), and one segment on the heat wave currently affecting Asia.

In June, these networks mentioned climate in a combined 21% of segments on various extreme weather events. Last week, they mentioned climate in 37% of segments on the Washburn Fire.

Notably, Fox News ran 4 weather reports on extreme heat, and none of them mentioned climate change. Two were specific to U.S. heat, and 2 combined both U.S. and European heat. We did not include Fox’s numbers in the full dataset due to the network's long history of downplaying the severity of climate change.

The heat will only worsen this week (especially in parts of Europe), so these networks have an opportunity to better incorporate climate change in their reporting

Temperatures are expected to remain very high in the U.K. and France through July 19. Numerous record-high temperatures may be set in the Midwestern U.S. as well on this date, giving these networks an opportunity to accurately report on climate change in their extreme heat reporting throughout the rest of the week.

Methodology...

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/fox-news-2653092281/?rs=182

no graf

Fox News possesses an “outsized influence" on the American public, especially among religious viewers.

That was the conclusion of the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute in a report released just after the 2020 presidential election. It noted that 15% of Americans cited Fox News as the most trusted source – around the same as NBC, ABC and CBS combined, and four percentage points above rival network CNN. The survey of more than 2,500 American adults also suggested that Fox News viewers trend religious, especially among Republicans watching the show. Just 5% of Republican viewers of the channel identified as being “religiously unaffiliated" – compared to 15% of Republicans who do not watch Fox News and 25% of the wider American public.

To further explore the relationship between different faiths and the TV news they associate with as part of my research on religion data, I analyzed the result of another survey, the Cooperative Election Survey.

The annual survey, which was fielded just before the November 2020 election, with the results released in March, polled a total of 61,000 Americans over a number of topics. One question was on their news consumption habits. It asked what television news networks respondents had watched in the prior 24 hours.

Percentage of respondents who saw TV news in past 24 hours

Ryan Burge/CES

Some very interesting patterns emerged across religious traditions – and the nonreligious – and the type of media being consumed. For instance, of the the big three legacy news operations – ABC, CBS and NBC – there was no strong base of viewership in any tradition.

In most cases, about a third of people from each religious tradition said that they watched one of those legacy networks in the last 24 hours. PBS scored very low among every tradition. In most cases fewer than 15% of respondents reported watching PBS in the time frame.

graf]

however, the numbers for the three major cable news networks – CNN, Fox News and MSNBC – were much higher across the board. In eight of the 16 religious and nonreligious traditions categorized in the poll, CNN viewership was at least 50% of the sample. This was led by 71% of Hindus who watched CNN and 63% of Muslims.

The least likely group to watch CNN was clearly white evangelicals, at just 23%. In comparison, MSNBC scored lower nearly across the board. In fact, in none of the 16 classification groups was viewership of MSNBC greater than it was for CNN.

Fox News viewership was higher than that of MSNBC, but was not as widely dispersed as it is for CNN. It's no surprise, given its reputation as a conservative news outlet, that 61% of white evangelicals say that they watch Fox News – in the last election, around 80% of white evangelicals voted for Republican candidate Donald Trump. The other three traditions where viewership was at least 50% are white Catholics, Mormons and members of the Eastern Orthodox Church. It should come as no surprise, as those are three groups that consistently vote for the Republican Party. Just 14% of atheists watched Fox, which is just about in line with the share of white evangelicals who watch MSNBC.

Fracturing right-wing media

But with the fracturing of conservative media sources seeing more competitors vying for viewers among the right, Fox News could see a drop in viewership from the religious right.

In the wake of the 2020 presidential election, Fox News viewership plunged as many Trump supporters believed that the network was not being loyal to their standard-bearer of the GOP.

Given the vast number of news options that people of faith have and the increase in political polarization in the United States, the pressure for networks to deliver the news that people want to hear will only increase as time passes.

Ryan Burge, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Eastern Illinois University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/this-is-how-you-normalize-a-madman-scholars-and-press-watchdogs-urge-corporate-media-to-treat-trump-like-the-authoritarian-threat-he-is/

no lnx twt pix

This is how you normalize a madman': Scholars and press watchdogs urge corporate media to treat Trump like the authoritarian threat he is

Lisa Newcomb and Common Dreams September 25, 2020

Major news outlets failed the American people, critics say, when they chose to bury coverage of President Donald Trump's Wednesday comment that he would not commit to a peaceful transition of power—a statement watchdogs say demanded above-the-fold, front-page headlines that simply did not materialize.

"Newsroom leaders made a considered, intentional decision not to panic after Trump was elected," Dan Froomkin, editor of PressWatchers.org, wrote in a scathing rebuke of corporate media's apparent nonchalant attitude towards the president's rhetoric. "This was an epic, obvious mistake, and everything that has happened since was in some sense entirely predictable."

Froomkin continued, "They should have gone on a war footing—and by that I don't mean a partisan war against Trump, I mean a journalistic war against lies, ignorance, and intolerance."

Critics weighed in on the relative non-importance corporate news outlets assigned—in print and online—to Trump's latest suggestion that he may not cede the office of the presidency should he lose in November:

Some observers balked when Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for the New York Times, attempted to explain away the Times' decision to bury the news by citing print publication deadlines. One pointed to the late-evening news of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death last week, which was an above-the-fold feature in the next day's Times print edition.

Broadcast media also drew rebukes for its lack of emphasis on Trump's veiled threat at the democratic process.

"Wednesday's network evening newscasts on ABC, CBS, and NBC were no better," Eric Boehlert, founder and editor of PressRun wrote. "Not only did none of them lead with Trump's stunning proclamation, none of the broadcasts even reported on Trump's comments. This is how you normalize a madman. (CNN and MSNBC did a much better job covering the transfer-of-power story.)"

At PressWatchers.org, Froomkin explained how the dynamics in corporate newsrooms have led to complacency among journalists tasked with reporting on Trump's presidency:

One overarching problem is that our major newsrooms have simply gotten so corporate and even-keeled that our top editors value unflappability as a signal virtue. (OK, I admit I take this one a little personally, being a flappable person. A top Washington Post editor once called me "hysterical.") Flappable people don't rise through the ranks. Corporate people do.

Journalism to me is about crusading for the truth. But the notion that a serious, major news organization would pursue a crusade on behalf of its community is considered hippy shit by the people in charge these days. So is consistently standing up to a lawless con man. They've gotten used to printing lies. They barely squawk when Trump calls them the "enemy of the people." They have their algorithms, and they won't give them up no matter what. They just continue to "do the work."

So yeah, their news souls are dead. There, I said it.

Lawmakers and progressive advocates called out the dangerous threat to democracy uttered by the commander-in-chief—and the corporate media for treating it like any other day in Trump's scandal-laden presidency.

"Great (not) to watch journalists reporting Trump's latest direct attacks on the republic as if it's all just a regular press conference," longtime journalist Dan Gillmortweeted Wednesday. "Historians will see Big Journalism's business as usual in this emergency as one of the proximate causes of the American republic's death."

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) gave a speech Thursday denouncing Trump's declared refusal to commit to a peaceful transition of power, saying: "This is not just an election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. This is an election between Donald Trump and democracy—and democracy must win."

Sanders also outlined steps necessary to prepare the American public and lawmakers for chaos of election night and beyond, calling on the news media specifically to "prepare the American people to understand there is no longer a single election day and that it is very possible that we may not know the results on November 3."

Froomkin pointed out that corporate media's opinion pages are more accurately depicting the real danger of Trump's recent rhetoric than front-page headlines.

"But as usual, to capture the real drama of what's going on, you have to go to the opinion writers—and the editorial cartoonists," he wrote, sharing a link to an op-ed by Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent.

"What really matters here is that Trump is making an actual declaration of intent," Sargent wrote, "not just to refuse to respect the outcome, but rather to try to cancel and override it, if he is able to get away with it."

Boehlert issued a more dire warning:

Trump isn't running for re-election in the sense he's hoping to accumulate more voter support than Biden. (His campaign keeps taking down ads in swing states.)Trump's running to maintain power. He's signaling that he'll refuse to give it up and will not accept his defeat as being legitimate. He's trying to steal an election. In reality, he doesn't care what the results are—he has no intention of abiding by the nation's will, and thinks he can count on the corrupt support of the GOP, the Department of Justice, and the United States Supreme Court to win his lawless battle in the days and weeks after the election.

"Our democracy is at stake," Boehlert concluded. "Trump is trying to steal an election, and the press should say so, every day until Election Day."

---

Sanders campaign manager: Fox News has been ‘more fair than MSNBC’

Matthew Rozsa / Salon

“It feels like they’re covering progressives from an elitist perspective.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/why-are-establishment-dems-afraid-of-the-hard-left/

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Why are establishment Dems afraid of the ‘hard left’?

Written by Paul Rosenberg August 25, 2019

In my interview last week with political scientist Rachel Bitecofer, who predicted a 42-seat “blue wave” four months in advance, she also discussed the groundbreaking campaigns of Stacey Abrams and Beto O’Rourke, even though neither was elected. Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, offered a curious response on Twitter: “Stacey Abrams and Beto ran liberal campaigns, not hard left campaigns.”

As Bitecofer replied, “I don’t advocate hard left campaigns, that’s not what my research argues.” She later added that “my thesis IS the Beto/Abrams turnout model, not something else.” Ideology wasn’t the issue she focused on — mobilizing base voters was.

Tanden’s response is both curious and troubling because literally no one argues for “hard left” campaigns. As retired intelligence analyst James Scaminaci tweeted in the ensuing conversation:

“Hard Left” is Marxists, Marxist-Leninist, Trotskyists, Leninists, Stalinists, Maoists, Spartacus League, Guevaras. Bernie, AOC, DSA, Warren, FDR ain’t “hard left.” If you use “HL,” you are grossly misinformed about left-wing politics. You might have missed the Cold War.

In short, “hard left” is a bogeyman term so far as American politics is concerned — one meant to put Democrats constantly on the defensive, either cowering or fighting with each other. It recalls the worst days of McCarthyism. Which is why I responded:

Whenever someone says, “hard left,” I hear “brainwashed.”

Sorry.

Repeating right-wing frames is a no-no. It’s as simple as that. Tanden’s hardly the only one to do this, but she’s the president of the Center for American Progress, and closely associated with the leadership of the Democratic Party. CAP’s Think Progress blog has caught right-wingers using this attack phrase for years — like this entry, noting Newt Gingrich using it to smear legendary PBS journalist Bill Moyers. Tanden should know better. Not in spite of being a close ally and longtime supporter of Hillary Clinton, but because of it.

After all, the right-wing media has used the “hard left” label to attack Clinton since August 1992, when the American Spectator ran a tone-setting attack story: “The Lady Macbeth of Little Rock: Hillary Clinton’s hard-left past and present.” The term had no discernible content — there was nothing that it meaningfully pointed to — and that lack of content continues to this day. Yet it connoted something sinister and unyielding, something foreign, close-minded, intolerant and hidden. [AGENDA] Those connotations continue to this day, even while simply denoting something conservatives strongly dislike. Its meaninglessness is a feature, not a bug: It can tar anyone, for any reason — or no reason at all.

Conservative media critic Brent Bozell (William F. Buckley’s cousin), called NPR “hard left” as part of “the MSNBC-NPR Alliance,” typified by Terry Gross interviewing Rachel Maddow.Conservative Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin used it to describe MSNBC’s evening opinion show lineup, three years before joining the network as a contributor after her movement’s bankruptcy gave us Donald Trump. (Maddow, targeted on both occasions, has repeatedly encouraged moderates Claire McCaskill and Amy Klobuchar to run for president, so they’re probably fair game, too.)

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/06/27/anti-abortion-ad-aired-democratic-debate-was-fueled-right-wing-media-talking-points/224077

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Anti-abortion ad aired before Democratic debate was fueled by right-wing media talking points

Blog ››› June 27, 2019 5:12 PM EDT ››› JULIE TULBERT

Melissa Joskow / Media Matters

MSNBC aired an ad from the anti-choice group March for Life Action before the first Democratic presidential debatethat repeated inaccurate right-wing media talking points about abortion, alleging Democratic candidates are “extreme” for supporting abortion access. In reality, the ad cited polling data that was not only commissioned by an anti-abortion group, but that has also been soundly criticized by other polling experts as misleading.

March for Life Action, the political arm of the anti-abortion group March for Life, ran a “six-figure ad-buy” starting on June 26 to promote a common right-wing media talking point that “the American pro-life consensus, and even the pro-life consensus among Democrats, contrasts sharply with the official position of every Democratic candidate involved in the debate.” In the ad, March for Life Action relied on February polling from the Marist Institute for Public Opinion commissioned by the anti-abortion group Knights of Columbus to claim that “8 in 10 Americans agree abortion should have” legal restrictions and that “6 in 10 pro-choice Americans support limiting [abortion] to at most the first trimester.”

These anti-abortion talking points match the messaging strategy being deployed by right-wing media and prominent conservatives ahead of the 2020 election to paint Democrats and those who support abortion rights as “extreme” and out of touch with voters -- despite considerable evidence showing support for affirmative abortion polices. Right-wing media and other outlets have cited polling commissioned by Knights of Columbus in the past to criticize or draw attention to the Democratic Party’s stance on abortion. The March for Life Action ad also received substantial right-wing media attention, with Fox News host Laura Ingraham airing excerpts from the ad and interviewing March for Life President Jeanne Mancini during a segment with this chyron:

Knights of Columbus has previously faced significant pushback on the claims made by their abortion-related polling due to the explicit anti-choice stance of the organization -- something that is often reflected in the framing of their polling questions. In particular, the February poll garnered criticism from pollsters and data analysts who pointed to the ideological bent of the Knights of Columbus, the relative stability of voters’ views on abortion, and the fact that the findings of the February poll in particular seemed to be an outlier when compared to similar assessments.

Despite general attitudes about abortion legality remaining relatively stable from poll to poll, critics have argued that the results of abortion-related polling are highly dependent on the language used in framing or asking the questions. For example, polling firm PerryUndem replicated a question asked in the February Knights of Columbus poll to demonstrate the impact that question framing can have on results. When initially using the Knights of Columbus language, PerryUndem’s results showed a similar level of support for abortion restrictions. However, when “asked a follow up to clarify” if “voters want lawmakers to pass new laws that reflect their responses” on the legality of abortion, the firm found that “a majority of voters (68%) think it’s better if lawmakers stay out of the issue” -- contradicting the Knights of Columbus results and the explanations of the data's meaning by right-wing media.

It’s not surprising that March for Life Action would run an anti-abortion ad, or that the group would want to target Democratic debate viewers. But those viewers should know that the data behind this poll -- and the widespread deployment of its findings by right-wing media -- are part of a larger effort by abortion opponents to inaccurately suggest that support for abortion access is “extreme” when there is substantial evidence to the contrary.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/new-report-details-failure-of-cable-and-network-outlets-to-accurately-describe-climate-emergency-call-it-a-crisis/

no lnx twt

Name and shame.

That’s the dual directive from a new report that calls on news organizations to use appropriate language when discussing the climate crisis—even as the report calls them out for inaction.

The report—titled “‘Call It a Crisis’: The Role of U.S. Network News in Communicating the Urency of Climate Change” (pdf)—analyzed the coverage of ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News to determine just how much urgency the influential outlets bring to their reporting.

https://www.citizen.org/wp-content/uploads/public-citizen-call-it-a-crisis-report-april-29-2019.pdf

According to David Arkush, managing director of Public Citizen’s Climate Program, the specific words that journalists and news anchors use—or choose not to use—matters.

“The words we use to characterize an issue make a difference in how it is perceived and prioritized politically,” said Arkush.

When outlets with massive nightly audiences like the ones the report studied “consistently fail to use language that conveys that climate change is a crisis or emergency,” Arkush added, “they unwittingly put a heavy thumb on the scale in favor of complacency and inaction.”

Fox News was the worst offender,with the use of “climate crisis” coming in for only five mentions during the coverage period—all of which, as Public Citizen noted, were efforts to “minimize the issue with false logic, mockery or misinformation.” But other news networks weren’t much better than the conservative channel.

The only network to use the term in double digits was CNN,and only 16 of the 26 mentions were by a host. Van Jones, whose eponymous show ran every other Sunday during the survey period, accounted for six of those mentions.

Public Citizen

@Public_Citizen

NEW REPORT: In 2018, only 50 of 1,429 national TV news segments used the word “crisis” or “emergency" when discussing climate change. That's a measly 3.5 percent.

Here's how the networks stack up:

MSNBC: 7%

NBC: 6%

CNN: 3%

CBS: 3%

ABC: 2%

Fox: 2%

http://pubc.it/2XTXQEE

12:23 PM - Apr 29, 2019

50 people are talking about this

Twitter Ads info and privacy

Networks should name the problem clearly to avoid confusion, said Allison Fisher, outreach director for Public Citizen’s Energy Program.

“Climate coverage on broadcast and cable television news is still at best spotty and at worst riddled with misinformation,” Fisher said. “Calling it a crisis indicates that the stakes are high and that the issue is urgent. Most of all it signals to viewers that the time to act on climate is now.”

How to report on the climate crisis has long been an issue for news organizations. In July 2018, MSNBC host Chris Hayes said on Twitter that while he was personally invested in the story, the topic was “a palpable ratings killer.”

“So the incentives are not great,” said Hayes.

Chris Hayes

@chrislhayes

Replying to @elongreen

almost without exception. every single time we've covered it's been a palpable ratings killer. so the incentives are not great.

526

7:08 AM - Jul 24, 2018

Twitter

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In a welcome change, MSNBC had a town hall directly related to climate change. Chris Hayes talked with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) about the Green New Deal, and debunked a lot of right-wing smears. Fox News has already had a meltdown about it. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez made the sensible point that America had a massive response to thousands of Americans dying on September 11, 2001, but has not had much of a response at all to thousands of Americans dying in Puerto Rico as a result of climate-linked Hurricane Maria. Fox & Friends was furious at the comparison, with a guest even calling her "shrill" and then declaring that man-made climate change is a hoax. This entire episode matters: Fox News is driving conversation around the Green New Deal because other news outlets generally are sitting out the discussion. So it's important to call this out and have a real, serious discussion about climate change.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/trump-and-his-party-do-not-have-a-monopoly-on-the-political-absurdity-that-stalks-the-cable-news/

intro rw shutdown etc absurdity, then

...

A president of the United States proudly proclaiming his readiness to cripple essential national services like air-traffic control, coastal protection, food safety inspectors and much more is nearly as outrageous as the U.S. Coast Guard telling its workers to take dog-walking and babysitting jobs and have garage sales to pay their bills. Or expecting air-traffic controllers to focus properly on their stressful and momentous duties while worrying about making their next rent or mortgage payment.

But Trump and his party do not have a monopoly on the political absurdity that stalks the cable news.

Top Democrats’ claim to find Trump’s wall “immoral” is a case in point. Their party’s leaders have long championed expensive and draconian “border security” measures, including fencing. Wall-building at the border increased dramatically under Bill Clinton, who feared an influx of Mexican farmers displaced by his arch-neoliberal North American Free Trade Agreement. Fence construction also continued under the record-setting “deporter-in-chief” Barack Obama.

One recent morning, I tuned into “liberal” MSNBC, the cable news headquarters of “progressive neoliberalism,” that curious mixture of corporate-financial allegiance and metropolitan identity politics that holds sway atop the Democratic Party. There I beheld morning MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle speak passionately against the human costs of Trump’s “ridiculous” shutdown. Ruhle mocked the president’s pretense of empathy with unpaid federal workers. Then, right before a swath of drug commercials, she said that her next segment would turn to “Wall Street, my favorite place.”

That’s right, the same Wall Street that has been screwing over working-class people of all kinds (federal workers included) in service to the nation’s unelected dictatorship of capital for as long as it has existed.

MSNBC talking heads can cry all they want about the plight of working people and the poor. Their network, most of its hosts and the top Democrats they support are every bit as allegiant (if not more so) to that dictatorship as Fox News and the Republicans.

Ruhle wasn’t kidding about the world’s leading financial district being her }. Before entering the corporate media universe via Bloomberg Television, the MSNBC host spent six years in global hedge fund sales. Ruhle was vice president of Credit Suisse First Boston, where she “became the highest producing credit derivatives salesperson in the United States.”

“In 2003,” her Wikipedia page boasts, “Ruhle joined Deutsche Bank as a credit salesperson covering hedge funds. She ended her eight-year career there as a managing director in Global Markets Senior Relationship Management.”

With a fortune built on financial weapons of mass destruction that helped ruin working-class lives, Stephanie Ruhle enjoys a net worth of $5 million and receives $1 million a year from MSNBC. Evidently she feels for working people while inhabiting a lavish $7.5 million townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

Now that she’s lost her Senate seat, the right-wing corporate Democrat Claire McCaskill should fit into her new position as a regular commentator at MSNBC, where neoliberal centrism privileges the servicing of corporate sponsors over social justice and even over the winning of elections by Democrats.

Along the way, “MSDNC” talking heads join not-so-progressive neoliberal brethren at CNN (where liberal hosts regularly invite and applaud anti-Trump commentary from former top national spymasters and generals) in doing their best to manufacture consent to the American Empire. As Glenn Greenwald notes, MSNBC has become “reflexively pro-war in the name of stopping President Donald Trump, and [is] now the prime propaganda instrument of the War Machine’s promotion of militarism and imperialism.” Thanks to what Greenwald calls “NBC/MSNBC’s all-consuming militarism”:

An entire generation of Democrats paying attention to politics for the first time is being instilled with formerly right-wing Cold Warrior values of jingoism, über-patriotism, reverence for security state agencies and prosecutors, a reckless use of the ‘traitor’ accusation to smear one’s enemies, and a belief that neoconservatives embody moral rectitude and foreign policy expertise has long been obvious and deeply disturbing. These toxins will endure far beyond Trump, particularly given the now full-scale unity between the Democratic establishment and neocons.

How ridiculous: A cable news network commonly said and thought to represent the positions of “the Left” functions as perhaps the leading propaganda organ of the War Party, opposing Trump on the grounds that’s he’s bad for the supposedly noble U.S. global empire.

Sadly, as Greenwald observes, Democrats are now more globally interventionist and imperial than Republicans. MSNBC and CNN’s relentless promotion of the national security state and the military-industrial-complex in the name of #Resistance played no small part in the party’s transformation.

An MSNBC roundtable last Sunday morning ended with a “Democratic strategist” offering curious commentary on what’s happened to the right- and nationalist-leaning U.S. and Europe over the last two years. Things were going great, the strategist said, under the leadership of Barack Obama, who embodied the best of enlightened Western civilization. Then Vladimir Putin came along and single-handedly ruined it all by passing Brexit, electing Donald Trump and fueling “populism” across Europe.

The suggestion begs a darkly interesting question regarding the nation’s reigning “corporate-managed democracy,” as _{Alex Carey}_calls it. Who’s more absurd: those who blame corporate-ruled America’s continuing systemic decline on a mythical invasion of Mexican and Central American rapists or those who point the finger at the supposedly all-powerful president of Russia?

MSNBC Has Done 455 Stormy Daniels Segments in the Last Year — But None on US War in Yemen

By Adam Johnson, FAIR

Why is the supposed network of the anti-Trump #resistance totally ignoring the president’s most devastating war? READ MORE»

http://www.alternet.org/media/msnbc-cans-only-cable-tv-host-who-extensively-covered-tpp

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https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/they-make-it-all-nicolle-wallace-tears-her-notes-she-exposes-trump-jrs-blatant

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https://www.alternet.org/media/liberals-cheering-same-old-media

When the “War on Terror” was launched in 2001, mainstream media – especially cable TV news – started a parade. It was a narrow parade of hawkish retired military and intelligence brass promoting war as the response to the crime of 9/11, predicting success and identifying foreign enemies to attack.

We can look back at this parade and laugh at the total nonsense dispensed. But the more human response is to cry – over the toll, still mounting, of hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths from Afghanistan to Iraq and beyond, and violent instability across the region, including countries that were relatively stable and prosperous on Sept. 10, 2001. (Not to mention militarization and loss of civil liberties at home.)

I witnessed the parade of disinformation from inside cable news, where I worked as an on-air contributor at Fox News and MSNBC at the beginning of the War on Terror. In fact, this parade eventually knocked me off the air – and out of my job at MSNBC, three weeks before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

It’s now the 15th anniversary of the tragic invasion of Iraq. The huge mainstream media failure in the run-up to the invasion is taught in college journalism courses, including mine.

Who can forget CNN’s Chief News Executive boasting that, before the Iraq invasion, he’d sought prior approval and received “a big thumbs up” from the Pentagon on the ex-generals that CNN featured as allegedly independent analysts?

Who can forget David Barstow’s 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning expose for the New York Times – based on 8,000 pages of internal Pentagon emails and transcripts – showing that network TV’s hawkish retired generals were not only being paid by big military contractors, but were being spoon-fed talking points and spin by the Pentagon month after month as they paraded on TV?

Who can forget that NBC/MSNBC’s top military analyst, ex-Gen. Barry McCaffrey, relentlessly pushed for war based on falsehoods (“thousands of gallons of mustard agents, sarin, nerve agent VX still in Iraq”), offered continuously ridiculous punditry (like praising Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s advance-planning of the Iraq occupation), and famously crowed on MSNBC, “Thank God for the Abrams tank and the Bradley fighting vehicle” – without mentioning his role at military contractor IDT that made millions for doing God’s work on the Abrams and Bradley?

Who can forget all these things?

I turned on the “progressive” news channel a few nights ago to see Chris Hayes politely interviewing Gen. McCaffrey. Did Hayes – during the week marking the 15th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq – press McCaffrey on his role in that disaster? Perhaps demand an explanation or an apology? No. The topic was Trump’s weird attraction to Putin. That’s a worthy topic. But Barry McCaffrey as expert and arbiter! Still?MSNBC, apparently.

Just as they did in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, MSNBC and CNN now serve up a steady parade of war-hawks, spies and liars, presenting them as credible and almost heroic as long as they criticize the despicable man in the White House.

...

http://mediamatters.org/research/2015/11/17/pro-koch-cbs-analyst-received-15-million-from-t/206918

MSNBC reported that former House Benghazi Select Committee investigator Brad Podliska, is suing the committee for defamation after allegedly facing retaliation for claiming the committee was "hyper-focus[ed]" on Hillary Clinton.

Podliska was fired in late June after working for almost ten months as an investigator for the committee partly for, according to Select Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-SC), mishandling classified information. On October 11, during an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper on State of the Union, Podliska called the committee's investigation "partisan" and claimed the focus shifted almost exclusively to Clinton after it was reported that she utilized a private email serverwhile serving as Secretary of State.

Gowdy and the committee denied the allegations, and said Podliska was "terminated for cause." A committee spokesperson issued a statement accusing Podliska of his own bias in his work, claiming he participated in an effort to direct committee resources to create a "'hit piece' on members of the Obama Administration, including Secretary Clinton." The statement said the committee would not be "blackmailed into a monetary settlement for a false allegation." Gowdy also issued his own statement, claiming he never spoke directly with Podliska and was confident no one on the committee instructed him to focus on Clinton. This occurred just weeks after HouseMajority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) bragged to Fox's Sean Hannity that Clinton's "numbers are dropping" because of the Select Committee's work.

The Benghazi Select Committee is largely a creation of Fox News and other members conservative media, who endlessly called for Congress to investigate Clinton over the Benghazi attacks. After McCarthy acknowledged the partisan nature of the committee, Fox News hosts Bret Baier and Bill O'Reilly and Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume conceded that the purpose of the investigation was political.

MSNBC reported that Podliska is not seeking monetary compensation from the defamation suit, but rather for Gowdy to release a statement admitting his allegation Podliska mishandled classified information was false. He is also asking for an injunction to prevent Gowdy from repeating the claim:

Science or Spin?: Assessing the Accuracy of Cable News Coverage of Climate Science

Accuracy varies significantly across major cable news outlets. All of them can take steps to improve their coverage of climate science.

DOWNLOAD: Science or Spin? Assessing the Accuracy of Cable News Coverage of Climate Science (2014)

CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC are the most widely watched cable news networks in the U.S. Their coverage of climate change is an influential source of information for the public and policy makers alike.

To gauge how accurately these networks inform their audiences about climate change, UCS analyzed the networks' climate science coverage in 2013 and found that each network treated climate science very differently.

Fox News was the least accurate; 72 percent of its 2013 climate science-related segments contained misleading statements. CNN was in the middle, with about a third of segments featuring misleading statements. MSNBC was the most accurate, with only eight percent of segments containing misleading statements.

The public deserves climate coverage that gets the science right. Media outlets can do more to foster a fact-based conversation about climate change and policies designed to address it, rather than contributing to a broken and inaccurate debate about the established facts of climate science.

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/fight-misinformation/cable-news-coverage-climate-change-science.html

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AlterNet [1] / By Max Blumenthal [2]

'Witch Hunt': Fired MSNBC Contributor Speaks Out on Suppression of Israel-Palestine Debate

July 22, 2014 |

MSNBC contributor Rula Jebreal’s on-air protest [3] of the network’s slanted coverage of Israel’s ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip has brought media suppression of the Israel-Palestine debate into sharp focus. Punished for her act of dissent with the cancellation of all future appearances and the termination of her contract, Jebreal spoke to me about what prompted her to speak out and why MSNBC was presenting such a distorted view of the crisis.

“I couldn’t stay silent after seeing the amount of airtime given to Israeli politicians versus Palestinians,” Jebreal told me. “They say we are balanced but their idea of balance is 90 percent Israeli guests and 10 percent Palestinians. This kind of media is what leads to the failing policies that we see in Gaza.”

She continued, “We as journalists are there to afflict the comfortable and who is comfortable in this case? Who is really endangering both sides and harming American interests in the region? It’s those enforcing the status quo of the siege of Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank.”

Jebreal said that in her two years as an MSNBC contributor, she had protested the network’s slanted coverage repeatedly in private conversations with producers. “I told them we have a serious issue here,” she explained. “But everybody’s intimidated by this pressure and if it’s not direct then it becomes self-censorship.”

With her criticism of her employer’s editorial line, she has become the latest casualty of the pro-Israel pressure. “I have been told to my face that I wasn’t invited on to shows because I was Palestinian,” Jebreal remarked. “I didn’t believe it at the time. Now I believe it.”

An NBC producer speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed Jebreal’s account, describing to me a top-down intimidation campaign aimed at presenting an Israeli-centric view of the attack on the Gaza Strip. The NBC producer told me that MSNBC President Phil Griffin and NBC executives are micromanaging coverage of the crisis, closely monitoring contributors’ social media accounts and engaging in a “witch hunt” against anyone who strays from the official line.

“Loyalties are now being openly questioned,” the producer commented.

The suppression campaign culminated after Jebreal’s on-air protest during a July 21 segment [4] on Ronan Farrow Daily.

“We are disgustingly biased on this issue. Look at how much airtime Netanyahu and his folks have on air on a daily basis, Andrea Mitchell and others,” Jebreal complained to Farrow. “I never see one Palestinian being interviewed on these same issues.”

When Farrow claimed that the network had featured other voices, Jebreal shot back, “Maybe for thirty seconds, and then you have twenty-five minutes for Bibi Netanyahu.”

Within hours, all of Jebreal’s future bookings were cancelled and the renewal of her contract was off the table. The following day, Jebreal tweeted: [5] “My forthcoming TV appearances have been cancelled. Is there a connection to my expose and the cancellation?”

Jebreal is the author of Miral, a memoir about her coming of age in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Her former partner, Jewish-American filmmaker and artist Julian Schnabel, adapted the book into full length film. A widely published journalist and former news presenter in Italy, Jebreal was a vocal supporter of the now-extinct peace process and a harsh critic of Islamist groups including Hamas. Her termination leaves NBC without any Palestinian contributors.

According to the NBC producer, MSNBC show teams were livid that they had been forced by management to cancel Jebreal as punishment for her act of dissent.

At the same time, social media erupted in protest of Jebreal’s cancellation, forcing the network into damage control mode. The role of clean-up man fell to Chris Hayes, the only MSNBC host with a reputation for attempting a balanced discussion of Israel-Palestine. On the July 22 episode [6] of his show, All In, he brought Jebreal on to discuss her on-air protest.

In introducing Jebreal, Hayes took on the role of the industry and network defender: “Let me take you behind the curtain of cable news business for a moment,” Hayes told his viewers. “If you appear on a cable news network, you trash that network and one of its hosts by name, on any issue — Gaza, infrastructure spending, sports coverage, funny internet cat videos — the folks at the network will not take kindly to it.”

In fact, MSNBC Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough has publicly attacked [7] fellow MSNBC hosts and slammed the network [8] for its support for the Democratic Party.

“I did not think that i was stepping in a hornet’s nest,” Jebreal told me. “I saw Joe Scarborough criticizing the network. I thought we were liberal enough to stand self criticism.”

Yet when she appeared across from Hayes, Jebreal encountered a defensive host shielding his employers from her criticism. “We’re actually doing a pretty good job” of covering the Israel-Palestine crisis, Hayes claimed to her. “I think our network, and I think the New York Times and the media all around, have been doing a much better job on this conflict.”

Jebreal appeared on screen as a “Palestinian journalist” — her title as a MSNBC contributor had been removed. When she insisted that American broadcast media had not provided adequate context about the 8-year-long Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip or the roots of Palestinian violence, Hayes protested that he had wanted to host Hamas officials alongside the Israeli government spokespeople he routinely featured but that it was practically impossible.

“Not all Palestinians are Hamas,” Jebreal vehemently replied.

“Airtime always strikes me as a bad metric,” Hayes responded. “I mean there are interviews and then there are interviews. I had [Israeli government spokesman] Mark Regev on this program for 16 minutes, alright? That’s a very long interview but there was a lot to talk to him about.”

The NBC producer remarked to me that the network’s public relations strategy had backfired. Hayes’ performance was poorly received on social media while Jebreal appeared as another maverick journalist outcasted by corporate media for delivering uncomfortable truths.

For her part, Jebreal told me she was disturbed by Hayes’ comments. “I admire that Chris [Hayes] wanted to have me on but it seems like he was condoning what happened to me,” she said. “He was saying, ‘What do you expect? We rally around our stars.’ Well, I rally around reality, if that still matters in media.”

Jebreal continued: “I didn’t tell him this on air but I said, ‘I hope you don’t condone other things the network did, like what happened with Ayman.’”

Jebreal was referring to NBC correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin and his sudden removal by the network from the Gaza Strip. Mohyeldin, a rising star in the network and its only Arab-American reporter in the region, was an eyewitness to the Israeli killing of four young boys who had been playing soccer on a beach near Gaza City.

Moments after the killings, Mohyeldin relayed intimate accounts of the scene through Twitter, then released harrowing footage of the boys’ mother wailing as she learned of their deaths. Oddly, NBC correspondent Richard Engel was summoned [9] to deliver Mohyeldin’s package that evening.

The NBC producer told me that the network was deluged with angry letters and phone calls from pro-Israel activists about Mohyeldin’s reporting.

Hours later, Mohyeldin’s summary of the US State Department’s statement defending Israel’s actions disappeared [10] from his Facebook and Twitter accounts. He had apparently been forced to delete the postings. Next, NBC removed Mohyeldin from Gaza, sending him out of the area on the first plane available.

To replace Mohyeldin, NBC dispatched Engel, a veteran foreign correspondent well-liked by top brass and regarded as the network’s “star.” Engel was the keynote speaker [11] at a 2013 event at the Newseum in Washington DC honoring journalists killed that year. Under Israel lobby pressure, the Newseum had removed [12] the names of three Palestinian journalists killed in targeting Israeli strikes during the November 2012 assault on Gaza, accepting claims by anti-Palestinian groups like the Anti-Defamation League that their employment by Hamas-affiliated outlets rendered them enemy combatants. During his speech, Engel carefully avoided condemning the Newseum for its capitulation.

The removal of Mohyeldin sparked an international backlash, with tens of thousands from around the world protesting the decision through viral Twitter hashtags like, #LetAymanReport and #FreeAyman. Two days later, an apparently chastened NBC returned Mohyeldin to the Gaza Strip, but the damage had been done.

Unwilling to explain its unusual actions, NBC left it up to media critics to guess at its motives. CNN Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter chalked up [13] the removal of Mohyeldin to “infighting and bureaucracy,” claiming that NBC was concerned primarily with ratings. Glenn Greenwald, the editor-in-chief of the The Intercept, wrote [14] that Mohyeldin was ordered out of Gaza by David Verdi, a top NBC executive, for political reasons — his reporting was deemed too sympathetic to Palestinians.

The NBC producer insisted that Greenwald’s account was the more accurate one. “Greenwald was right,” the producer told me. “And I hate to say that.”

For her part, Jebreal does not expect to be welcomed back on MSNBC again. “I’m done there,” she told me. “It’s not happening any more. My contract is over. I’m fine with it. I’m not complaining.”

She cited the distorted coverage of Israel-Palestine in American broadcast as the central reason behind the American public’s support for Israel’s assault on Gaza.

“I believe this is a shifting moment in history and we need to make a decison,” Jebreal said. “It’s easier when there’s Bridgegate but there is another gate: This is Mediagate and we need to begin to challenge our responsibilities.”

Israel [16],

nbc [17],

palestine [18]

---

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/media/witch-hunt-fired-msnbc-contributor-speaks-out-networks-witch-hunt-and-suppression-israel

Links:

[1] http://alternet.org

[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/max-blumenthal

[3] http://www.mediaite.com/online/msnbc-guest-who-slammed-israel-coverage-claims-upcoming-tv-appearances-cancelled/

[4] http://www.alternet.org/www.mediaite.com/tv/msnbc-guest-scolds-network-for-lack-of-palestinian-views-disgustingly-biased

[5] https://twitter.com/rulajebreal/statuses/491329071800778752

[6] http://www.mediaite.com/tv/msnbc-guest-who-called-out-israel-coverage-returns-for-heated-talk-with-chris-hayes/

[7] http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31648.html

[8] http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/joe-scarborough-mika-brzezinski-morning-joe-95280.html

[9] http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/ayman-mohyeldin-witnesses-gaza-airstrike-but-richard-engel-reports-on-nightly-news_b232276

[10] https://twitter.com/RaniaKhalek/status/489820440014372864

[11] http://www.newseum.org/programs/2013/0513-special-program/journalists-memorial-rededication-ceremony.html

[12] http://mondoweiss.net/2013/05/pressure-cameramen-journalists.html

[13] http://money.cnn.com/2014/07/20/media/ayman-mohyeldin-nbc-news/

[14] https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/17/nbc-removes-ayman-mohyeldin-gaza-coverage-witnesses-israeli-beach-killing-four-boys/

[15] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on 'Witch Hunt': Fired MSNBC Contributor Speaks Out on Suppression of Israel-Palestine Debate

[16] http://www.alternet.org/tags/israel-gaza-conflict-casualties-timeline

[17] http://www.alternet.org/tags/nbc

[18] http://www.alternet.org/tags/palestine

[19] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

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MSNBC is far more reliant on opinion coverage than any of its cable news rivals, a new study found.

The Pew Research Center's annual "State of the Media" study was released Monday. One section of the report — which, when taken in its totality, makes for very gloomy reading — deals with changes in the television news landscape over the past five years.

The study's authors found that, since 2007, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC have all cut back sharply on the amount of actual reporting found on their airwaves. Cheaper, more provocative debate or interview segments have largely filled the void. MSNBC, though, stands out from the pack, Pew said:

CNN, which has branded itself around reporting resources and reach, cut back between 2007 and 2012 on two areas tied to that brand—in-depth story packages and live event coverage. Even so, CNN is the only one of the three big cable news channels to produce more straight reporting than commentary over all. At the other end of that spectrum lies MSNBC, where opinion fills a full 85% of the channel’s airtime.

Pew found that Fox News spent 55 percent of the time on opinion and 45 percent of the time on reporting. Critics of that figure would likely contend that the network's straight news reporting tilts conservative, but it is true that Fox News has more shows that feature reporting packages than MSNBC does. The network's straight news hours — hosted by Chris Jansing, Thomas Roberts, Tamron Hall and Andrea Mitchell — are usually filled with interview segments or pundit debates.

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hayes google plus hangout http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MoMpkGphm4

mma http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/08/19/chris-hayes-climate-coverage-towers-over-his-pr/195463

mrc // variety

coll http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3036750/ns/msnbc-documentaries/vp/52765845#52765845

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http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/21/phil_donahue_on_his_2003_firing

Phil Donahue on His 2003 Firing from MSNBC, When Liberal Network Couldn’t Tolerate Antiwar Voices

In 2003, the legendary television host Phil Donahue was fired from his prime-time MSNBC talk show during the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The problem was not Donahue’s ratings, but rather his views: An internal MSNBC memo warned Donahue was a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war," providing "a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity." Donahue joins us to look back on his firing 10 years later. "They were terrified of the antiwar voice," Donahue says. [includes rush transcript]

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Phil, I’d like to bring in another subject in terms of this whole issue, the—what happened to you, directly, as a host on MSNBC in the midst of the run-up to the war, and the responsibilities of the press in America and its—the mea culpas that have rarely been uttered by the pundits and by the journalists over what the American press did in the run-up to war.

PHIL DONAHUE: Well, I think what happened to me, the biggest lesson, I think, is the—how corporate media shapes our opinions and our coverage. This was a decision—my decision—the decision to release me came from far above. This was not an assistant program director who decided to separate me from MSNBC. They were terrified of the antiwar voice. And that is not an overstatement. Antiwar voices were not popular. And if you’re General Electric, you certainly don’t want an antiwar voice on a cable channel that you own; Donald Rumsfeld is your biggest customer. So, by the way, I had to have two conservatives on for every liberal. I could have Richard Perle on alone, but I couldn’t have Dennis Kucinich on alone. I was considered two liberals. It really is funny almost, when you look back on how—how the management was just frozen by the antiwar voice. We were scolds. We weren’t patriotic. American people disagreed with us. And we weren’t good for business.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, I had this unusual experience, Phil, in July of 2006. It was the 10th anniversary of MSNBC, and I was invited on Hardball by Chris Matthews to celebrate the 10th anniversary. I think first Brian Williams was on the show, and then the Israeli ambassador, and then I was on the show. And we were standing outside 30 Rock. It was a big deal. All the execs were on the top floor of 30 Rock, and they were all about to have a big party. And we were just coming out of a commercial.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to congratulate you, Chris, on 10 years of MSNBC, but I wish standing with you was Phil Donahue. He shouldn’t have been fired for expressing an antiwar point of view on the eve of the election. His point of view and the people brought on were also important.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: I don’t know what the reasons were, but I doubt it was that.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we have the MS—the NBC memo, that was a secret memo—

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Oh, OK, good.

AMY GOODMAN: —that came out, that said they didn’t want him to be the face of this network, an antiwar face, at a time when the other networks were waving the flag.

MICHAEL SMERCONISH: Could I answer the question? I’d love to answer that question.

AMY GOODMAN: Phil Donahue is a great patriot.

AMY GOODMAN: I said there, Phil, you were a great patriot. We did have the NBC memo, the secret memo that said they didn’t want their flagship show to be you, when the other networks were waving the American flag.

PHIL DONAHUE: That’s what it said. And, by the way,that memo was written by a Republican focus group, a Republican counseling group that took the focus groupand that revealed that most of the people in the focus group didn’t like me. But I saw that, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: And yet, you were the most popular show.

PHIL DONAHUE: Well, often we led the night for the—nobody burned the town down on MSNBC, including me. Fox just ran away with the ratings and continues to enjoy that success.

AMY GOODMAN: Were you watching MSNBC that night?

PHIL DONAHUE: I did. I saw it. And I called the kids. I said, "Hey!" I’m not sure I did it soon enough. But I certainly was grateful for—I mean, I needed the pat on the back at the time.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Phil, the irony that MSNBC now is supposedly this liberal—

PHIL DONAHUE: It’s amazing, really.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —the liberal network now?

PHIL DONAHUE: Yeah.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: You wonder, though, if another—if another move to war came, how liberal it would remain.

PHIL DONAHUE: Well, you know, the coin of the realm is the size of the audience. It’s important to see this. When a broadcasting executive gets out of bed in the morning, before his foot hits the floor, his thoughts are ratings. "What are my ratings?" Not unlike Wall Street people, who get their—and CEOs, their first thought is the price of their stock. So, you know, what—and I was replaced by Michael Savage. So there was a desperate need to get numbers.

AMY GOODMAN: Who is one of the most conservative, and that’s giving conservatives a bad name.

PHIL DONAHUE: This was the decision of—

AMY GOODMAN: Michael Savage lived up to his last name.

PHIL DONAHUE: And this was a decision by higher-ups at General Electric and NBC.

AMY GOODMAN: Tomas, you wanted to say something here. Let me go to a break, and then we’re going to come back, as we wrap up this broadcast. We’re talking to Phil Donahue and Tomas Young, Iraq War veteran, age 33—says he will end his life in the next few months, dealing with the pain of war—and his wife, Claudia Cuellar. We’ll be back in a minute.

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The Day That TV News Died

March 25, 2013

by Chris Hedges

This post originally appeared onTruthdig.

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I am not sure exactly when the death of television news took place. The descent was gradual — a slide into the tawdry, the trivial and the inane, into the charade on cable news channels such as Fox and MSNBC in

which hosts hold up corporate political puppets to laud or ridicule, and treat celebrity foibles as legitimate news. But if I had to pick a date when commercial television decided amassing corporate money and providing entertainment were its central mission, when it consciously chose to become a carnival act, it would probably be Feb. 25, 2003, when MSNBC took Phil Donahue off the air because of his opposition to the calls for war in Iraq.

Donahue and Bill Moyers, the last honest men on national television, were the only two major TV news personalities who presented the viewpoints of those of us who challenged the rush to war in Iraq. General Electric

and Microsoft — MSNBC’s founders and defense contractors that went on to make tremendous profits from the war — were not about to tolerate a dissenting voice. Donahue was fired, and at PBS Moyers was subjected to tremendous pressure. An internal MSNBC memo leaked to the press stated that Donahue was hurting the image of the network. He would be a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war,” the memo read. Donahue never returned to the airwaves.

The celebrity trolls who currently reign on commercial television, who bill themselves as liberal or conservative, read from the same corporate script. They spin the same court gossip. They ignore what the corporate state wants ignored. They champion what the corporate state wants championed. They do not challenge or acknowledge the structures of corporate power. Their role is to funnel viewer energy back into our dead political system — to make us believe that Democrats or Republicans are not corporate pawns. The cable shows, whose hyperbolic hosts work to make us afraid of self-identified liberals or self-identified conservatives, are part of a rigged political system, one in which it is impossible to vote against the interests ofGoldman Sachs, Bank of America, General Electric or ExxonMobil. These corporations, in return for the fear-based propaganda, pay the lavish salaries of celebrity news people, usually in the millions of dollars. They make their shows profitable. And when there is war these news personalities assume their “patriotic” roles as cheerleaders, as Chris Matthews — who makes an estimated $5 million a year — did, along with the other MSNBC and Fox hosts.

It does not matter that these celebrities and their guests, usually retired generals or government officials, got the war terribly wrong. Just as it does not matter that Francis Fukuyama and Thomas Friedman were wrong on the wonders of unfettered corporate capitalism and globalization. What mattered then and what matters now is likability — known in television and advertising as the Q score — not honesty and truth. Television news celebrities are in the business of sales, not journalism. They peddle the ideology of the corporate state. And too many of us are buying.

The lie of omission is still a lie. It is what these news celebrities do not mention that exposes their complicity with corporate power. They do not speak about Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act, a provision that allows the government to use the military to hold U.S. citizens and strip them of due process. They do not decry the trashing of our most basic civil liberties, allowing acts such as warrantless wiretapping and executive orders for the assassination of U.S. citizens. They do not devote significant time to climate scientists to explain the crisis that is enveloping our planet. They do not confront the reckless assault of the fossil fuel industry on the ecosystem. They very rarely produce long-form documentaries or news reports on our urban and rural poor, who have been rendered invisible, or on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or on corporate corruption on Wall Street. That is not why they are paid. They are paid to stymie meaningful debate. They are paid to discredit or ignore the nation’s most astute critics of corporatism, among them Cornel West, Medea Benjamin, Ralph Nader and Noam Chomsky. They are paid to chatter mindlessly, hour after hour, filling our heads with the theater of the absurd. They play clips of their television rivals ridiculing them and ridicule their rivals in return. Television news looks as if it was lifted from Rudyard Kipling’s portrait of the Bandar-log monkeys in “The Jungle Book.” The Bandar-log, considered insane by the other animals in the jungle because of their complete self-absorption, lack of discipline and outsized vanity, chant in unison: “We are great. We are free. We are wonderful. We are the most wonderful people in all the jungle! We all say so, and so it must be true.”

When I reached him by phone recently in New York, Donahue said of the pressure the network put on him near the end, “It evolved into an absurdity.” He continued:“We were told we had to have two conservatives for every liberal on the show. I was considered a liberal.I could have Richard Perle on alone but not Dennis Kucinich. You felt the tremendous fear corporate media had for being on an unpopular side during the ramp-up for a war. And let’s not forget that General Electric’s biggest customer at the time was Donald Rumsfeld [then the secretary of defense]. Elite media features elite power. No other voices are heard.”

Donahue spent four years after leaving MSNBC making the movie documentary “Body of War” with fellow director/producer Ellen Spiro, about the paralyzed Iraq War veteran Tomas Young. The film, which Donahue funded himself, began when he accompanied Nader to visit Young in the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

“Here is this kid lying there whacked on morphine,” Donahue said. “His mother, as we are standing by the bed looking down, explained his injuries. ‘He is a T-4. The bullet came through the collarbone and exited between the shoulder blades. He is paralyzed from the nipples down.’ He was emaciated. His cheekbones were sticking out. He was as white as the sheets he was lying on. He was 24 years old. … I thought, ‘People should see this. This is awful.’ ”

Donahue noted that only a very small percentage of Americans have a close relative who fought in Iraq or Afghanistan and an even smaller number make the personal sacrifice of a Tomas Young. “Nobody sees the pain,” he said. “The war is sanitized.”

“I said, ‘Tomas, I want to make a movie that shows the pain, I want to make a movie that shows up close what war really means, but I can’t do it without your permission,’ ” Donahue remembered. “Tomas said, ‘I do too.’ ”

But once again Donahue ran into the corporate monolith: Commercial distributors proved reluctant to pick up the film. Donahue was told that the film, although it had received great critical acclaim, was too depressing and not uplifting. Distributors asked him who would go to see a film about someone in a wheelchair. Donahue managed to get openings in Chicago, Seattle, Palm Springs, New York, Washington and Boston, but the runs were painfully brief.

“I didn’t have the money to run full-page ads,” he said. “Hollywood often spends more on promotion than it does on the movie. And so we died. What happens now is that peace groups are showing it. We opened the Veterans for Peace convention in Miami. Failure is not unfamiliar to me. And yet, I am stunned at how many Americans stand mute.”

tomas contmplating suicide now 4/13

Read Chris Hedges’ interview with Tomas Young on Truthdig.

Watch Bill Moyers’s 2008 interview with Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro aboutBody of War.

Watch Bill Moyers’s 2012 interview with Chris Hedges about his new book,Days of Destruction, Days of Revolta collaboration with comics artist and journalist Joe Sacco.