Joe Kahn’s Morality Tale
By 
It is a sad tale of a news outlet that allowed itself to be captured by the libs. That was, in fact, designed for the libs. Just what the libs want from the New York Times, says Joe, and we’re not going to go there. We’re going to show the other side: that dictatorship is what the people want. Or, ahem, give you brave and objective coverage of all the views.
Jim Rutenberg and Michael Grynbaum took the assignment (gift link) manfully to show how divisive and ultimately bad a news channel that gave the libs what they wanted could become.
MSNBC placed a big bet on becoming comfort TV for liberals. Then it doubled down.
Time slots on the cable network once devoted to news programming are now occupied by Trump-bashing opinion hosts. The channel has become a landing spot for high-profile alumni of President Biden’s administration like Jen Psaki, who went from hosting White House press briefings to hosting her own show. On Super Tuesday, when producers aired a portion of a live speech by former President Donald J. Trump, Rachel Maddow chastised her bosses on the air.
You can see what a problem this would be.
The moves have been a hit with viewers. MSNBC has leapfrogged past its erstwhile rival CNN in the ratings and has seen viewership rise over the past year, securing second place in cable news behind the perennial leader, Fox News.
Um, we can find something!
NBC’s traditional political journalists have cycled between rancor and resignation that the cable network’s partisanship — a regular target of Mr. Trump — will color perceptions of their straight news reporting. Local NBC stations between the coasts have demanded, again and again, that executives in New York do more to preserve NBC’s nonpartisan brand, lest MSNBC’s blue-state bent alienate their red-state viewers.
It’s tempting to go through the article, paragraph by paragraph, to pick out the “tensions roiling NBC and its corporate overseers,” but you can read it for yourself. Tensions! Imagine tensions in the Times newsroom! Imagine alienating red-state readers!
I saw something yesterday about Times reporters preparing an open letter in response to Kahn’s latest interview. BUT THIS IS NOT A TENSION. Those arrogant scamps will be put down.
In a brave attempt to preserve journalism, the Times will forgo the fruits of partisanship.
The tensions inside NBC are, in some ways, a microcosm of the challenges facing many traditional news organizations as the country hurdles toward a tense presidential election: how to maintain trust and present neutral, fact-based reporting in a fractionalized era when partisanship carries vast financial and cultural rewards.