This just in: MSNBC’s political coverage is decidedly progressive, regularly advocating for Vice President Kamala Harris and against former President Donald Trump! Film at 11…
Yes, I am aware that everyone knows MSNBC has figured out a lucrative model designed around programming that appeals to progressive, liberal, and left-of-center viewers, eyeballs that they then sell to multibillion-dollar corporations to advertise pharmaceutical products, cars, and fossil fuels. They’ve been doing this for nearly two decades — and officially embraced advocacy in a “Lean Forward” promotional campaign around 14 years ago.
So this may not be surprising, but it’s nonetheless worth scrutinizing. Earlier this summer, I asked if MSNBC was “getting a pass” for playing the part of state-run TV under President Joe Biden. With a crucial election approaching, MSNBC’s naked advocacy for the Harris-Walz campaign has only become louder and further afoot from what a news network would reasonably do.
Yes, you can make the same arguments about Fox News (and I have on several occasions.) But for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me, while so many respected media critics love to focus on Fox News and its alliance with the Republican Party and Trump, MSNBC pretty much gets a pass from the same set of group-thinkers eager to farm engagement from one another on social media.
The irony here, of course, is that MSNBC’s opinion programming is modeled on Roger Ailes’s vision for Fox News. Early memos show that Ailes thought the network should be dedicated to furthering Republican talking points and that mission is clearly a crucial part of the outlet’s DNA. Oddly enough, few news outlets have argued more vociferously about the dangers of partisan media more than MSNBC, despite the fact that they are doing the very same thing, though just from a different perspective.
In the last few weeks, Joe Scarborough has slammed the media for “false equivalency” by ignoring “crazy” Trump answers and recently advised Harris to “goad” Trump into a second debate. Joy Reid agreed with a guest who declared that anyone supporting Trump is “just as despicable” as Trump. Joe Rogan alleged MSNBC aired a misleading clip suggesting he was pro-Harris, saying their coverage was “a real lie!” (MSNBC corrected the misleading video.)
There is also the relentless pro-Harris fawning pervasive on the network, perhaps best exemplified by Chris Hayes saying that Kamala Harris’s performance in her debate with Trump was the “best performance” in history because Trump “couldn’t control her mind.” There is Donny Deutsch admitting that he “kind of fell in love” with Harris after her campaign kickoff speech.
What’s more, MSNBC hasn’t shied away from the revolving door between its roster of contributors and the Biden White House, most recently evidenced by MSNBC contributor Jen Palmieri (a former Obama advisor and senior aide to the Hillary Clinton campaign) joining the Harris-Walz campaign. Earlier this year, Former Biden Press Secretary Jen Psaki interviewed the Biden campaign social media team, praising their Dark Brandon meme in a manner that could have easily been confused with a promotional campaign spot.
The revolving door of this kind is not a new phenomenon, nor is it unique to MSNBC. Still, it merits inclusion as a way to describe a sordid mess, a sausage factory lying underneath opinion programming.
Perhaps most damning is the complete lack of reporting on air of stories that are in any way negative about Harris. MSNBC executives under Cesar Conde’s bizarre leadership know full well what their viewers want, and it is decidedly not anything that paints the Democratic candidate in a less than flattering light, despite her stunning shifts on policy and her sudden political transformation into a Rockefeller Republican. Again, I’ve called out Fox News for refusing to “tell the people” about Trump’s buffoonery; MSNBC should also be called out for telling an incomplete story about Harris and Governor Tim Walz ahead of the election.
To be clear, MSNBC is unique in the current cable news landscape in that, though it is clearly opinion-based, its reporting is far more rooted in accepted truths than those of more extremist outlets. But that is a nuanced difference that is relatively meaningless for true adherents of the accepted standards of journalism, presuming such a thing can even exist in a postmodern world where personal truths are prioritized over facts, accepted or alternative.
When he was leading CNN, Jeff Zucker famously blasted Fox News as “state-run TV” for how its programming so closely paralleled and advanced the communications strategy and political agenda of then-President Trump. That’s an argument you can now make against MSNBC under the Biden-Harris administration
As an election — one that’s often described by MSNBC talent as the most important for the future of American democrac—- draws nearer, the left-leaning network is leaving everything on the field. But let’s not pretend that they are anything close to a news outlet when, in recent weeks, they have looked more like an arm of political propaganda working on behalf of the Democratic Party.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
