http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/11/22/time_to_pull_the_plug_on_msnbc_120753.html It’s a question the suits at MSNBC might ask themselves today. A cable network informed with progressive sensibilities devoted to unearthing hard truths about this society is something people might watch. They did watch it in the 1950s and 1960s. It was NBC’s “The Huntley-Brinkley Report,” anchored by two newsmen with great gravitas, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. In those days, NBC hired regional reporters with talent, people such as Frank McGee, John Chancellor, and Tom Brokaw, who would go on to become anchors themselves. The network distinguished itself covering the civil rights movement. Their politics surely skewed liberal, but they told their stories with shoe-leather reporting that required physical courage when they went to the Deep South and good humor when going into the hornets’ nest of Republican politics. Chancellor, covering the 1964 GOP convention in San Francisco, once set up camp in an aisle in the convention hall. Sen. Barry Goldwater’s supporters, not keen on NBC anyway, told him to make way for the delegates. When he didn’t move fast enough, he was ejected from the hall by security guards. “I've been promised bail, ladies and gentlemen, by my office,” he said on-air. His sign-off that night was, “This is John Chancellor, somewhere in custody.” I can see Chuck Todd -- or Rachel Maddow or Alex Wagner -- saying something similar. And that’s a news show I’d watch.
Almost all cable news is a sham in one way or another. Either they're run by partisan hacks, or they're guilty of manufacturing "news" to fill dead air and generate ratings and they usually race to the bottom to get there. CNN, Fox, MSNBC - charlatans and pretenders all.
I more or less agree with this. There is really very little non partisan media anymore. And most have become entertainers first, agenda talking heads second and then maybe responsible journalists.
I thought the article is a good read. There are basically 3 salient points made: 1) Overly partisanship, over the top rhetoric results 2) 85% opinion, 15% news 3) Blemish on the good history that NBC has behind it as a news organization
I quit watching MSNBC not too long after they hired that Maddow chick. err, I might be wrong about the gender. They seemed to take a big turn left about that time, the G force left was too much. You needed no map to see where they were headed hiring a PHD from the Wilson school. "Wilson was the first president to criticize the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence." http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2051567/posts http://conservativecolloquium.wordp...n-americas-worst-and-first-fascist-president/ I agree with Huntley Brinkley and gang.
Liberals tend to read and search out sources, so a cable news channel has some huge hurdles to get a large liberal viewership. It's a very difficult target market.
I think this is very true. I don't pay attention to MSNBC much anymore, because it is no longer news, but opinions. While that works for Fox (not ALL of their shows are opinion, but most of them are), it just doesn't work for MSNBC or as Further said, a liberal audience. Not saying liberals are "better", just different audiences.
i'd think that anyone who watches a lot of cable news, no matter the channel, is fucking retarded but i might be wrong.
What MSNBC suffers from is any shade of disagreement. Like FOX or not, but they'll at least have some lackey weakly giving the other side of the debate. At MSNBC, they state a thesis, all agree and then just shake their heads in derision at anyone with a different point of view not even worthy to appear on their network.
MSNBC and Fox both suffer from the same fallacy. They act like they present the other side, but it's a weak counter balance, and usually someone who is actually a phony liberal or conservative.
That and there isn't always a mirror argument. They promote false equivalence. There is such a thing as right and wrong.
Bingo. And they both hyperbole about things (although I think Fox hyperboles a little worse, AND their audience, usually older white people, scare easier). Not saying MSNBC doesn't, but it's not on an equal level.
