As NewsBusters has often reported, MSNBC's line-up has led the cable news channel to a freefall in the ratings, with Baltimore Sun media critic David Zurawik blasting the schedule as “unwatchable” and “24 hours a day of mess.”
In an article posted on Thursday, Politico columnist Dylan Byers reported that the channel's daytime year-to-date viewership “is down 21 percent overall and 41 percent in the coveted 25- to 54-year-old demographic.”
One week after MSNBC.com staff writer Zachary Roth hinted that Ferguson, Missouri's April municipal elections are racially discriminatory, MSNBC host Joy Reid took that argument out for a spin on the Thursday, August 21 edition of her eponymous Reid Report program with guests MSNBC contributor Goldie Taylor and Missouri State Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal (D). Oddly enough, Ms. Reid laid some blame on the "city's strange politics" resulting from the Progressive movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries as that generally left-leaning movement created the sort of non-partisan, off-year municipal elections that the St. Louis suburb uses. [LISTEN to MP3 audio clip here; video update forthcoming]
For her part, guest Goldie Taylor churned out the usual MSNBC talking points about voter ID laws and "voter suppression", etc., even though moments earlier Reid pointed out that African-American voter turnout in 2012 in Ferguson had been 54 percent, which suggests that lack of interest in municipal politics -- as compared to presidential politics -- was chiefly to blame for the paltry 6 percent African-American voter turnout in the 2013 city elections in Ferguson. What's more, contrary to Taylor's suggestion, the Show-Me State does NOT require voters to show a photo ID. It's categorized by the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures as a "ID requested; photo not required" state. Here's what is required as far as identification goes, according to the Missouric Secretary of State's website:
He just won't let it go. MSNBC's Chris Matthews returned once again to his hare-brained idea that the president should sue Congress, joined tonight by another dynamic duo of hard-core lefties in cheering on the idea: the perpetually sanctimoniously smug comedian John Fugelsang and MSNBC daytime anchor Joy Reid. The Hardball host is ostensibly unafraid of conflict, but thus far he has failed to bring on a conservative sparring partner in his "sue Congress" segments.
But not only is Matthews stubbornly surrounding himself with those who share his absurd opinion, he's throwing out statements that are either patently false or grossly misleading. For example, in opening Matthews charged:
In reaction to Georgia’s new gun law that expands legal carry to some schools, churches, government buildings, and bars, MSNBC waxed hysterical about the potential consequences of expanding the freedoms of gun-owners.
On the July 1 edition of The Reid Report, host Joy-Ann Reid and her two guests were skeptical that the law would be effective and were confident that it would increase violent crime. Goldie Taylor, an MSNBC contributor, took things a step further, asserting her ‘right’ to not be around any law abiding citizen who might happen to own a gun [MP3 audio here; video below]:
June 13 marks twenty years since O.J., Simpson’s ex wife and boyfriend were found murdered outside their condo in California, and MSNBC’s Joy-Ann Reid chose to use her June 12 The Reid Report program to discuss the O.J. Simpson and how in Joy-Ann Reid’s words “race played into that trial.”
Lisa Bloom, legal analyst for NBC News and daughter of feminist lawyer Gloria Allred, appeared with Reid and proclaimed “I have a race discrimination case going on right now. I’m sure hoping I get African-Americans on the jury. Because I don't think whites really understand the black experience here in Los Angeles.” [See video below.]
In a fit of partisan pique, national Republican leaders like RNC chairman Reince Priebus are whipping up a "lynch mob" against Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl that threatens the soldier's right to due process.
That's the latest Obama-shielding spin hitting the airwaves on MSNBC courtesy of NationalMemo.com editor-in-chief Joe Conason, who made such a charge on the June 5 edition of The Reid Report towards the conclusion of a segment with host Joy Reid and Salon.com's Joan Walsh. The relevant transcript appears below the page break [Listen to MP3 audio here; Watch the video below the page break]:
Commenting on a recent women’s health measure passed by the Louisiana state house, Joy-Ann Reid and MSNBC.com’s Irin Carmon portrayed the bill as an aggressive attack on women’s rights. The law includes such innocuous provisions as a 24-hour waiting period for abortions and a requirement that doctors must have admitting privileges within 30 miles of the clinic where the procedure is performed. This didn’t stop Reid and Carmon from waxing apocalyptic about the bill.
The Reid Report host opined that “people are actually going back to what we had before Roe v. Wade which is trying to find some other way to end a pregnancy which isn’t safe.” Irin Carmon later hyperbolically claimed (MP3 audio here; video below):
Today is quite the busy day on the cable news networks for new debuts. Maria Bartiromo, late of CNBC, made her maiden voyage on her new Opening Bell program on Fox Business Network, and both Ronan Farrow and Joy-Ann Reid launch their eponymous MSNBC programs at 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. Eastern respectively.
Big friggin deal, you say. I agree, but oddly enough, Washington Post TV columnist Rachel Lubitz found Bartiromo and Farrow's premieres as worthy of noting in her February 24 TV Highlights column, while ignoring Ms. Reid. By contrast, Lubitz found space today to plug the History Channel's latest fascinating foray into non-historical "reality" programming: Cryptid: The Swamp Beast.
Chris Matthews really is the last person to be lecturing someone about using extreme rhetoric to score cheap political points. The man who just this week said that GOP concerns over executive orders is “second term birtherism” and who repeatedly blasted Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich as demonic was at it again on February 5.
"Anything that’s nasty about this guy has become the Amen chorus of the Republican Party," Matthews whined to his Wednesday program's liberal guests Joy-Ann Reid and Ron Reagan. [See video below.]
The Republican National Committee (RNC) is currently having its annual winter meetings, and what better way for MSNBC to discuss its progress than to bring on two liberal reporters to discuss the gathering.
During her January 23 Jansing and Co. program, host Chris Jansing invited on no Republican to discuss the RNC meetings, instead opting to bring on MSNBC’s Joy-Ann Reid, who herself is a former Obama campaign operative, and The New York Times’ Nick Confessore -- no conservative he. Jansing began the segment by discussing abortion and concluded that a big part of the GOP strategy was “how to blunt the Democrats' successful ongoing narrative of the war on women.”
In her closing "Clear the Air" commentary on the November 4 Martin Bashir program, substitute host and longtime Florida resident Joy-Ann Reid rewrote the political history of Republican-turned-Democrat Charlie Crist, who announced today that he will run for the governorship in the 2014 election cycle.
Reid suggested that Florida Democrats should get over their suspicions about the turncoat and get behind Crist to better ensure that the governor's chair is flipped over to Democratic control. In doing so, however, Reid virtually threw liberal African-American and loyal Democrat Kendrick Meek under the bus:
Were you outraged over the senseless shooting of Chris Lane? If you were, what you were really experiencing was vengeance toward blacks for their daring to react to the death of Trayvon Martin. In fact, unless you are a conservative, you probably didn’t feel outrage over the death of Chris Lane at all.
This bit of psychologizing comes to you courtesy of Grio columnist Joy Reid, who sat in as guest host on MSNBC’s Martin Bashir’s show Friday night. The discussion had turned to the use of race as a “political football,” when Reid interrupted with this insight (video below, begins at around 3:52):