Since 7pm last night, all MSNBC programming has been pre-emoted. Initial coverage was handled by Jonathan Capehart. Kudos to him for handling the situation before a more established news anchor could be brought in. You obviously don’t want a political opinion anchor leading coverage.
The anchor at 7pm would have been Ayman Mohyeldin. I think he is perfectly capable of handling breaking news coverage. However, let’s assume you want you top anchor to lead across all of your networks. Bringing in Lester Holt makes sense.
However, it has now been 15 hours and MSNBC has not returned to regular programming. CNN and FOX have. Their standard anchors are in place. I don’t watch either ever, but I flipped to both to see if they were still in breaking news mode.
On the other hand, MSNBC has essentially gone off the air. There is no reason one of their lead news anchors should not be leading coverage. They are using the NBC News streaming feed. Ali Velshi is a long time news anchor and perfectly capable and this is his time slot. Jose Diaz Balart, Chris Jansing, Anna Cabrera, Mika Brzezinski. These are all long time news veterans who have managed breaking news for decades. Yet, they are pulled off the biggest breaking news story in ages. Furthermore, someone like Rachel Maddow, who is literally the breaking news anchor by title, is sidelined. A clear message from management.
Meanwhile, Fox and Friends, an opinion show progressed as planned. I actually watched some CNN as MSNBC was in headline news like looped coverage, not adding anything. CNN went forward with Inside Politics, and had exclusively GOP representatives. Jake Tapper eventually had John Fetterman on State Of The Union.
On Fareed Zakaria, Ian Bremmer said he is concerned that, and I quote “Like January 6, some people will try to weaponize this event, and not think about this as a moment for national unity”. Say what? To be clear, in context his implication was about Democrats as he has just previously mentioned this should be like 9/11 and people should come together to support Trump, and made the point that when he wins, which he did she now be expected, Trump will be all the President for all of us.
The potential for this effect is being amplified by a clear undeniable demonstration of media asymmetry. This seems innocuous, but it is incredibly dangerous.
At this moment, only one point of view is being presented. And the media is not pushing back on anything inflammatory. For instance, Willie Geist and Savannah Guthrie allowed Mike Johnson to use the “bullseye” tweet from Biden, uncontested. Democrats are being rhetorically demonized as “unhinged”, and needing to tone things down. There is no evidence that Democrats are doing anything but being reasonable, and in general, Democrats are always more likely to call for toned down rhetoric.
There is an absolute need to hear from Democrats. There is an absolute need to not avoid further tension by presenting only one perspective.
If Democrats got on tv, and started making this political, we should know that. If they are presenting the case for unity, that is important.
If MSNBC anchors are incapable of not making inappropriate political points at this point, we should know.
Censoring any message at all is unacceptable and dangerous. And that is what is happening in front of our eyes It’s even worse when the one network that ostensibly would provide that opportunity is literally shut down until further notice.
The incredible lack of confidence in anyone on the MSNBC roster to navigate this is a stunning indictment, not on the anchors, but on COMCAST and MSNBC leadership. They either have admitted and programmed a fully political channel that they don’t think can navigate politics in times of distress, or they are intentionally skewing content towards one position by focusing only on Republican messaging as the first 24 hours of info.
I don’t think the broader implications of these decisions should be underestimated. And it aligns directly with the primary topic of this diary.
I would love to hear your point of view. Maybe I am thinking about this wrong I know a lot of former and current journalists are part of this community, and I particularly and interested in how you evaluate this programming decision, and the ramifications.
