UPDATE: Tuesday, Jul 16, 2024 · 11:13:17 AM +00:00 · justmy2
Major Update: This morning, 7/16, Joe Scarborough confirmed that he was told Sunday night that there would be a single feed across all of NBC News all of Monday. When he woke up and the Today Show wasn’t on MSNBC he was surprised.
He said he didn’t know why the plan was not executed. He also said it is likely the normal late afternoon and prime time hosts came back in was because of the blowback, but he is not sure if he was just lied to about his show. I would tend to think the former because of Velshi’s live stream being canceled.
Finally, he said if he is told in the future that the team would be replaced with another feed, they are still going to come in. And if they aren’t put on the air, they will find somewhere else to work. The full team agreed with him.
My personal opinion is they are mad they weren’t the first hosts to present the point of view of the network, and Rachel and the prime time team were.
UPDATE: Monday, Jul 15, 2024 · 8:04:06 PM +00:00 · justmy2
Nicole Wallace has begun her show at the RNC. First political analysts/contributors show up. David Jolly and Claire McCaskill.
Make of that what you will.
Unclear as to whether focus will remain on RNC, Trump shooting, and Cannon decision without political pushback, but McCaskill or Jolly likely will.
UPDATE: Monday, Jul 15, 2024 · 4:57:12 PM +00:00 · justmy2
MSNBC has even canceled online programming.
www.nytimes.com/...
MSNBC made other programming changes after the shooting on Saturday. The network scrapped “VelshiCast,” a planned YouTube livestream that was slated to feature commentary on the Republican convention in Milwaukee delivered by the anchor Ali Velshi, according to a person familiar with the decision.
It is now abundantly clear. This is internal corporate censorship.
And I think anchors should start speaking out. If this is the treatment, is this really the network they want to work for? What else is being censored?
This situation becomes more alarming by the minute.
Once again, MSNBC leadership has made themselves the story.
I wonder if Rachel shows up and says, “I’m doing my show. Stop me.”
Yesterday, I wrote a diary explaining why I thought MSNBC’s decision to remove all of their anchors from air until noon was alarming.
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.
Since my post, the straight news anchors have returned, but no political anchors or analysts from the network have been present.
We now have official confirmation of the reasoning and the decision to extend this policy for at least another 48 hours.
www.cnn.com/…
The decision by MSNBC to leave one of its most recognizable programs on the sidelines amid a seismic politics-driven news cycle, with the Republican National Convention getting underway in the wake of the Saturday shooting at Trump’s campaign rally, is certain to raise eyebrows.
A person familiar with the matter told CNN that the decision was made to avoid a scenario in which one of the show’s stable of two dozen-plus guests might make an inappropriate comment on live television that could be used to assail the program and network as a whole. Given the breaking news nature of the story, the person said, it made more sense to continue airing rolling breaking news coverage in the fraught political moment.
“Given the gravity and complexity of this unfolding story, NBC News, NBC News NOW and MSNBC have remained in rolling breaking news coverage since Saturday evening,” a spokesperson for NBCUniversal News Group said in a statement to CNN. “As we continue to cover this story into the week, the networks will continue to cross simulcast, alternating between NBC News, NBC News NOW and ‘MSNBC Reports,’ so there is one news feed covering this developing situation.”
I don’t think this can or will last another day due to the first night of the RNC.
However, I continue to believe as I did yesterday that this is an indictment on the network. Every other network did not pre-empt political coverage. The decision to do something different only serves to reinforce the idea that the network is an arm of the Democratic Party, similar to Fox, or the network places GOP concerns higher on the priority list than anything else. And I think if that is really the case, the network should be transparent and outline their mission statement clearly.
Clearly, the same people that hired Ronna McDaniel have made another consequential decision.
Keep in mind, this is not the first time the network leaders have decided they can not trust their anchors to do their jobs and have put their finger on scale of coverage in a direction.
It’s not the first time MSNBC has made such programming decisions in charged political moments.
Last year after Hamas executed its deadly October 8 attack on Israel, MSNBC quietly pulled three of its Muslim broadcasters from air. That move, which came after some pro-Israeli forces criticized the tone of the MSNBC’s coverage, left some staffers at the network feeling uncomfortable, Semafor reported at the time.
Do you agree with the leadership that their anchors and guests can not be trusted to not do something detrimental to the network, or something that will get Democrats or Republicans outraged, similar to Scott Jennings statements on CNN?
Or do you think the political part of this discourse is crucial in this moment and only one side of the picture is being presented by focusing on rally goers and security experts as the only guests?
Update: 7/15 9:15am
I found this one sentence in a comment from another story a great summation of why this is so alarming and shouldn’t be underestimated.
A foretaste of the self censorship required in even “soft” dictatorships
Ruth Ben-Ghiat continuously warns us that self-censoring is a major precursor to an authoritarian regime. Our business and political leaders seem to be falling into that trap From this, to backtracking on diversity, to senior Democrats saying “we will just have to get comfortable with a second Trump term”, we are seeing the playbook play out it front of our eyes, and it is concerning, if no scary.
One other update Apparently NBC News analyst Chuck Todd was on MSNBC, but I didn’t catch it and don’t know what he presented. However, he is not an MSNBC employee, and this would seem to reinforce the point that Comcast simply is afraid or intentionally censoring their own team. I am not sure if this is the case, but if so, I think the folks like Rachel Maddow owe their audiences their point of view, similar to what happened to Ronna McDaniel, to at least end the speculation. Maybe I and much of their audience is simply missing something.
Update: 7/15 10:45am
With the dismissal of the classified documents case, MSNBC’s decision to put off a political analysis for the day looks even worse. It obviously can be revisited, and I think at this point it should.
