The radical lefties at The Nation magazine are panicking about MSNBC. They posted an article titled “I Want My Progressive TV! What If MSNBC Dumps the Left? The cable answer to Fox News is slowly shrinking from the fight.”
Leslie Savan, a longtime Village Voice critic, recalled a recent exchange on Morning Joe about pollsters who asked about one word to define presidential candidates. Joe Scarborough said he’d been placed in this kind of poll, too.
“What were some of the worst [responses]?” co-host Mika Brzezinski asked.
“‘He works for MSNBC,’” replied Scarborough, who has long felt trapped in liberal-media hell. “That’s always the worst.
“Not anymore, though, ’cause things have changed,” he added, brightening up. “Thank you, Andy.”
That’s Andrew Lack, the new boss of MSNBC, who’s canceled liberal hosts like Alex Wagner, Ed Schultz, and The Cycle gang, and exiled Al Sharpton to Sundays. Savan asked:
So if Joe Scarborough, who regularly browbeats any libber ooze out of his co-hosts and guests, is thrilled with the changes at MSNBC, where does that leave progressives? Should we mourn that, along with Jon Stewart’s exit, one of the few venues for daily progressive politics on TV is, at best, shrinking? Or should we shrug—since how much of a force for lefty ideas can any corporate-owned commercial entity truly be?
Unnamed sources reassured Savan that MSNBC is committed to progressive hosts, even if they cancel Chris Hayes or Lawrence O’Donnell, and they talked up the possibility that they could bring Keith Olbermann back.
“I don’t think Andy or anyone else in the corporation has a problem with high-rated liberal content,” my source said. The issue is rather the overall impact of remaking MSNBC in NBC’s image. “The message from the top is that NBC and MSNBC share one set of values—as of today. If that’s the guideline,” the source added, “that sets a different tone.”
Liberals are scared that MSNBC will be too "fair and balanced," which they see as giving equal time to ignorance, racism, and every other social evil. Savan believes that Rachel Maddow (and when he was on weekends with Up, Chris Hayes) prove "that progressives can thrive on cable news." But they need new formats. She flirts with the Left's potential for influence with tinier forums like like Fusion, Vice, al-Jazeera, Russia Today, and HuffPost Live.
For all its shortcomings, MSNBC remains the closest thing we have to a daily, hour-by-hour counterweight to Fox News. Vice, Fusion, and HuffPost Live are not going to become the Anti-Fox; they lack the motivation of a direct competitor. You need to be on the same stage—literally the same “platform”—of big, bold, mass-market commercial TV to duke it out with Fox News.
Savan concluded:
Although MSNBC never was or could be as dogged a Fox-fighter as, say, Jon Stewart, it’s basically what progressives have on daily cable. Money, ratings, and popularity are what the media’s made of. But MSNBC, at its best, is also attempting something deeper: trying to dig us out from under what Stewart calls “Bullshit Mountain.” MSNBC has the shovels; it needs to hold on to its will.
