Tilt! MSNBC Online Job Applications Demand 'Thorough Knowledge' of 'Progressive News'

December 9th, 2011 10:48 PM

The blog Inside Cable News noticed new job notices at MSNBC.com. "One was more of a support position for Up with Chris Hayes and another that seemed more like a general editorial position" for the NBC/MSNBC Decision 2012 team. Both had a line that stuck out: "Must have thorough knowledge of political and progressive news."

"While I can see the applicability of that for Up, I’m having a harder time understanding the propriety of it in this other rec," ICN wrote. "This is allegedly to be a position that is at least partly in support of Decision 2012 which as far as I know is an NBC News project that’s not supposed to skew along ideological lines. The very idea that MSNBC is looking for political editors whose knowledge of progressive news matters but conservative news apparently does not matter, seems to run entirely counter to what NBC News professes to be about."

On the other hand, the blogger acknowledged, this is about MSNBC shows in prime time, which everyone knows are progressive. Still, "The danger in all this is it has the potential of creating in MSNBC a system where knowledge of subject matter is defined not by whether you know the story but whether you know one side’s interpretation of the story. And it makes me queasy about the status of that vaunted NBC News firewall between news and opinion."

Liberal blogs have become incredibly important to liberal cable news. Remember Cenk Uygur pledging his show is more plugged into blogs than anyone else: "No one scours the internet for news and video more than the Young Turks. So we have all the progressive websites that we look at every single day, and we integrate that into the show more thoroughly than anyone else."