Phil Griffin, head of the MSNBC cable television channel, told Marisa Guthrie of the Hollywood Reporter that he accepts responsibility for recent embarrassments that led Alec Baldwin and Martin Bashir to leave the network and Melissa Harris-Perry to offer a tearful on-air apology.
"These were judgment calls made by some of our people. We handled them. We were transparent. That is our philosophy: Be factual, and step up when you make a mistake,” Griffin asserted. “We took responsibility for them and took action. They were unfortunate,” but “I don't think it hurt us in any way.”
Phil Griffin
By Randy Hall | January 16, 2014 | 7:47 PM EST
By Noel Sheppard | January 7, 2014 | 5:29 PM EST
As NewsBusters has reported for years, the conservative-leaning Koch brothers are a routine target of the liberal media for their contributions to causes that don’t fit the left’s agenda.
On Monday, Koch Industries accused MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow of misrepresenting its donations to falsely assert the billionaire brothers are supporting laws in Florida to drug test welfare recipients.
In researching this accusation, NewsBusters has discovered that neither Maddow nor anyone at MSNBC bothered to contact the organization the Kochs are alleged to be connected to.
Maybe even worse, Maddow didn't bother informing viewers that Comcast, the media conglomerate that owns NBC Universal which includes MSNBC, is actually a contributor to the same alleged conduit the Kochs are.
By Matthew Sheffield | January 6, 2014 | 7:41 AM EST
After a string of high-profile embarrassments, MSNBC appears to have decided that perhaps letting the inmates run the asylum is not the best of ideas.
According to a piece out today by National Review, the low-rated cable news channel has assigned an executive to review the scripts of its shows before they are aired as a way of trying to prevent such premeditated disasters like Martin Bashir wishing for Sarah Palin to be defecated upon.
By Ken Shepherd | January 3, 2014 | 1:10 PM EST
MSNBC president Phil Griffin announced this morning that 11 a.m. anchor Thomas Roberts would be getting a new year's promotion... to the 5:30 a.m. Eastern program, Way Too Early, the lead-in to Morning Joe. Roberts will vacate his present MSNBC Live gig but also be awarded a regular contributor slot on the Morning Joe panel.
“This is a very exciting opportunity and right in line with my career goals and aspirations,” Roberts was quoted in an MSNBC.com story, adding:
By Noel Sheppard | January 2, 2014 | 3:20 PM EST
After his first full year running CNN, Jeff Zucker has little to be proud of.
The primetime ratings of the self-proclaimed "Most trusted name in news" reached 20-year lows in 2013.
By Noel Sheppard | December 4, 2013 | 5:37 PM EST
As NewsBusters revealed earlier, Martin Bashir has resigned from MSNBC due to vile comments he made in November about former Alaska governor Sarah Palin first reported here.
Moments after the announcement, Baltimore Sun television critic David Zurawik said MSNBC president Phil Griffin is just as responsible as Bashir:
By Noel Sheppard | November 27, 2013 | 10:43 AM EST
By Noel Sheppard | November 26, 2013 | 7:23 PM EST
The New York Post reported Tuesday that MSNBC's Up Late with Alec Baldwin has been cancelled in the wake of the host's most recent gay slur. Yet eleven days after Martin Bashir said someone should defecate and urinate in former Alaska governor Sarah Palin's mouth, the vile host with some of the lowest ratings on cable television still hasn't been punished in any way.
Baldwin apparently sees the same hypocrisy, and told Gothamist Tuesday, "Martin Bashir's on the air, and he made his comment on the air!"
By Randy Hall | November 22, 2013 | 8:37 PM EST
During Wednesday night's edition of The O'Reilly Factor on the Fox News Channel, Bill O'Reilly slammed Martin Bashir for his vulgar comments about defecating and urinating on former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, and guest Howard Kurtz said it's “stunning” that MSNBC has yet to discipline its weekday afternoon anchor.
Even though Bashir apologized for his disgusting remarks on Monday, Kurtz -- who called him “sad, pathetic and disgusting” on Tuesday -- stated that the network should still have “fired his butt” or at least uttered “a single syllable” denouncing “this kind of vitriol” instead of “looking the other way.”
By Tim Graham | October 17, 2013 | 7:45 AM EDT
Just as MSNBC went Hollywood and hired Alec Baldwin as a talk-show host, now they’ve hired the 25-year-old son of actress Mia Farrow. Ronan Farrow, currently buzzed about as potentially the son of Frank Sinatra, has been dabbling as an Obama State Department adviser since he was 22. He's projected to be a weekday MSNBC host starting early in 2014, but there's no word on who's getting dumped. (Uh-oh: straight, white, male Chuck Todd is an ancient 41, for example.)
“We're always trying evolve the message here and how to get ideas across. And he was an original thinker. And that's the most important thing,” said MSNBC boss Phil Griffin. If you believe Al Sharpton represents “evolving the message,” then that might make sense. For his part, Farrow landed in the Lean Forward camp of heavy citizen “involvement” and “empowerment” (bias) in the cable-news product:
By Noel Sheppard | October 16, 2013 | 10:40 AM EDT
It's really tough to imagine calling one of the nation's leading on air Democratic shills a national treasure.
However, when your name is Phil Griffin and you are the president of what many refer to as "MSDNC," I guess it's understandable that you might think that about Hardball host Chris Matthews.
By Noel Sheppard | October 15, 2013 | 12:13 PM EDT
When the new Fox News program The Kelly Files trounced The Rachel Maddow Show in the ratings last Tuesday, MSNBC president Phil Griffin actually called for an investigation into the matter.
The good folks at Nielsen complied, and according to New York's Daily News, Griffin is once again looking foolish: