COMMENT
MSNBC’s
Bad Bargain
IN
ITS DESPERATION,
THE NETWORK MADE
A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL
© Marcellus Hall
The
current “narrative” in the cable news business goes
this way: Fox News Channel is the ratings leader, CNN is a strong
second, and MSNBC — the offspring of General Electric and
Microsoft, with NBC News as its sibling — is so far behind
as to be virtually a nonstarter (despite its exemplary coverage
of the war). Recent indications are that MSNBC will do just about
anything to get into the race.
Witness: In February the network hired Michael Savage, host of
a widely syndicated radio talk show (more than 300 stations) to
serve as host of an hour-long weekend call-in program titled The
Savage Nation — also the title of Savage’s extraordinarily
popular book, the subtitle of which is: “Saving America From
the Liberal Assault on Our Borders, Language and Culture.”
So far so good. But let’s sample some thoughts from Savage’s
book and radio show:
Immigrants: They come from “turd world nations,” he
tells his audience. “You open the door to them and the next
thing you know they are defecating on your country and breeding
out of control.”
Blacks: It bothers him that TV correspondents in Iraq often interviewed
black soldiers. “Ninety percent of frontline troops are white
boys,” he said. “So stop your big lie. Liberalism of
this kind is not a philosophy, it’s a mental illness.”
Ghetto children killed by guns are “not kids, they’re
ghetto slime.”
Women: “Today in America we have a ‘she-ocracy’
where a minority of feminist zealots rule the culture,” and
have “feminized and homosexualized much of America to the
point where the nation has become passive, receptive, and masochistic.”
Before being hired by MSNBC, Savage called its reporter Ashleigh
Banfield “the mind-slut.”
You get the idea. A few media voices have been raised in response
to Savage’s views. The weekly New York Press wrote:
“MSNBC’s desperation has brought it down into the mud,
and it’s only going to sink deeper.” Entertainment
Weekly called Savage “a nasty, stupid piece of work —
a puffed-up hate monger, pure and simple-minded.”
MSNBC also has hired the former Republican Representatives Joe
Scarborough and Dick Armey and former Minnesota Governor Jesse
Ventura. Savage’s arrival is clearly part of a strategy by
the network to mimic Fox News Channel’s successful formula
by appealing to conservative sentiment, although Fox has shown
no sign of taking so low a road.
In a statement, MSNBC said the addition of Savage to its line-up
“was made with the full awareness of his reputation for controversy
. . . . We also strongly defend his new show as a legitimate attempt
to expand the marketplace of ideas.” Bob Wright, chairman
of NBC, said Savage “brings a style that has a great deal
of popularity.” Savage, perhaps on orders from MSNBC, has
been marginally less virulent so far on TV than he is on radio
and in his book.
Nonetheless, we can only wonder how much hate, bigotry, and divisiveness
General Electric and Microsoft are willing to underwrite in pursuit
of audiences and profits.
Trouble at the Times
WHY
DID TOP EDITORS IGNORE
WARNINGS ABOUT JAYSON BLAIR?
It
happens to priests and politicians. It happens to cops. A percentage
of every group that holds itself to a high ethical standard succumbs
to some combination of need and mendacity and betrays that standard,
damaging colleagues and wounding institutions along the way. Journalism
is not immune. We should know that by now.
The latest case is Jayson Blair at The New York Times,
and the proper questions now are, What is it about the operation
and culture of that newsroom that allowed a troubled cell to mutate
into a cancer? And what can the rest of us learn from the episode?
The Times is to be commended for reporting the story on
May 11, a four-page blockbuster that explained Blair’s scary
methods and corrected his falsehoods in the newspaper of record.
Still, the piece was longer on Jayson Blair than it was on newsroom
management. It did not fully explore, for example, the question
of whether some editors were so eager for this charming and ambitious
young black reporter to succeed that they did not want to confront
his shortcomings. Enemies of newsroom diversity now see Blair
as exhibit A in their argument that diversity programs promote
double standards. They are wrong. But that doesn’t mean the
implementation of such programs can’t be critiqued. And diversity
pressure is only a thread in a story with many ragged edges. Blair,
for example, was apparently a master at what is politely called
managing up.
The central lesson that the Times seems to draw so far
is that, in an institution all about communication, the Blair
episode represents a failure to communicate. That’s the wrong
lesson. From its own reporting it is clear that top Times
editors dismissed serious warnings about Jayson Blair. This looks
less like a failure to communicate than a failure to listen.
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