The Righting of MSNBC

[PGage]

I prefer straight news of course. But MSNBC has never been an equally but opposite ideologically slanted operation to Fox, and that is about to get even more true.

Stephanie Ruhle, former derivatives super sales woman at Credit Suisse, Hedge Fund specialist at Deutsche Bank and staffer at Bloomberg Television, and NBC’s Financial Correspondent, is taking her “Enlightened Capitalist” Act from MSNBC’s 9:00 am hour to the 11:00 pm hour that, IMO, Brian Williams made the best hour on cable television news. Morning Joe, the horrific bastion of establishment Center-Right conventional wisdom and Insider Name Dropping, will enlarge to take over Ruhle’s 9:00 am slot.

If Nicole Wallace (as good as she is) takes over for Rachel, MSNBC will be going into the Midterm elections significantly more Center-Right leaning. And being biased towards the Center is not the same thing as being unbiased or objective, it is very much a strong ideological bias and slant itself.

Again, the ideal is not to be as Left leaning as Fox is Right, but there is something irritating, and probably dangerous, about the persistent myth that since they are both equally biased, both can be equally disdained and dismissed.

https://www.axios.com/stephanie-ruhle-replace-brian-williams-host-b4118537-0d00-4e60-8eb9-fe7b9977e854.html

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[M-D November]

We can only hope this is more of a balancing act and less an act of 'both sides'-ism (TM Don Lemon).

[Kevin M.]

This is all an absurd premise. The gathering of information, reporting of facts, and contextual analysis can all be done in a nonpartisan way. The fact MSNBC isn’t as guilty of partisanship as Fox is not an excuse. 

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Kevin M. (RPCV)

[PGage]

I am not sure what premise you find absurd. My point is simply 1) MSNBC has never been as liberal as Fox is conservative and 2) Changes at MSNBC are going to result in it being even less liberal. I think both of those things really are undeniably true.

Perhaps you mean that none of that matters, as any new outlet with any amount of ideological slant is equally worthless, regardless of degree. With respect, that is the premise that seems absurd to me. There will always be some bias in reporting “facts”, but that does make facts impossible or meaningless. 60% biased is meaningfully better than 99% biased.

A news report can be high in objective facts even when presented with an ideological bias. If I am programming the opening segment tonight on a news cast, will it be on the news that the US economy under Biden in 2021 grew substantially more than any previous year since 1984, or that ongoing inflation concerns will likely result in several interest rate increases over the next few months, which may scare the Market and increase mortgage payments on variable rate loans (I have one of those)? 

A liberal slant might lead with and emphasize the first, a conservative might do the reverse. But both would be accurate, and assuming they also accurately report the other story, even if with less time and emphasis, but would qualify I think as credible newscasts. My point is that Fox has always been a place where on any given night it is possible if not likely that only one of those stories get reported accurately. MSNBC is (with a few exceptions) not that kind of place, and in fact a significant number of their programs are likely to lead with the Inflation story.

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[Kevin M.]

On Thu, Jan 27, 2022 at 7:21 PM PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote:

I am not sure what premise you find absurd. My point is simply 1) MSNBC has never been as liberal as Fox is conservative and 2) Changes at MSNBC are going to result in it being even less liberal. I think both of those things really are undeniably true.

Perhaps you mean that none of that matters, as any new outlet with any amount of ideological slant is equally worthless, regardless of degree. With respect, that is the premise that seems absurd to me. There will always be some bias in reporting “facts”, but that does make facts impossible or meaningless. 60% biased is meaningfully better than 99% biased.

Bias is inevitable. Open political partisanship in any level is what is absurd. Maybe it’s a chicken and egg thing. I don’t know whether the nation became more divided because of increasingly partisan media or if the sh*t storm we have become as a society led to the media absurdity. Regardless, it’s damaged to the point of irrelevance.

Jon Stewart’s podcast this week is semi related, though the focus is on Q Anon. The BBC reporter he spoke with pointed out that the internet and random sites are where people turn to now, largely because of how the major media changed. We now choose which facts to believe, then seek out the media that reinforces our beliefs and opinions. 

Of course Fox and OANN and Newsmax are more blatant, but Maddow on MSNBC and Lemon on CNN are horribly partisan… while there can be a place for their rhetoric in media, it does not belong on a news network. 

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Kevin M. (RPCV)

[PGage]

I don’t think there is any reason to establish a standard that a news network should only contain straight news. That has never been the expectation for newspapers. The problem with Rachel is not that she delivers opinion, but that she delivers opinion and news reporting, without even much of an attempt to label which is which.

But, again, even so, the most opinionated and biased report from Rachel Maddow is far more connected to shared, common facts than much is similar material on Fox. While neither is optimum, the difference between them is real, and ought not be dismissed.

And, again, my point is that whatever the liberal bias of MNSBC, it is much less pronounced than Fox (who have no one close to being as liberal as Joe Scarborough and Stephanie Ruhle are conservative, for example). 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKgmY4D%2BO-UGghL7J2f4RbgRUfCq2RzD2X31FQJ1hfhnBKjfSw%40mail.gmail.com.