MSNBC - Good, Bad or Meh?

Eric Wemple, media critic at the Post, and Eric Loomis at LGM weigh in on MSNBC. Their gripe is that the network doesn’t really engage in debate about the future of the Democratic Party, and instead boring and repetitively tells us that Trump is bad. Wemple’s recommendation is for them to engage more Republicans, Loomis’ is for them to engage in serious debate about how to re-construct the Democratic Party to take on Republicans.

I’m more sympathetic to Loomis than Wemple, but I have a bit of a different take. My limited experience with MSNBC is watching it with my dad in the evening when I’m out here in redlandia. So, Ari Melber, Rachel Maddow (sometimes) and Lawrence O’Donnell (sometimes). He doesn’t watch Morning Joe, which is pure beltway poison as far as I’m concerned. And he also doesn’t watch their daytime coverage, which according to Wemple is just another brand of NBC News.

Based on my experience with their nighttime programming, what I see on MSNBC is fan service for the median Democratic voter. By this I mean they spend a lot of time on the Trump news of the day and what they construe as the Democratic response. This includes bringing on fan favorites like Jasmine Crockett and (sometimes) AOC, but also elected Dems who aren’t in the spotlight.

For example, last night on Last Word, O’Donnell interviewed Rep Brendan Boyle (D-PA-2), who’s the ranking member of the House Budget Committee. He’s a very competent Democrat, but he’s no AOC or Crockett. O’Donnell’s show has a very “West Wing” feel to it, at least from my perspective. Pretty words mean a lot. He closed last night with the victory speech from Alison Riggs after she was finally sworn in as a Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court.

O’Donnell isn’t above telling a big fat lie to his audience if it serves his purposes — he did so during the debate over whether Kathy Hochul should remove Eric Adams. His purpose is to reassure Democrats that “hey, leadership has this covered.”

Ari Melber is a little better, and contra Wemple, he will have Republicans on his show. Last night he had Dr. Oz, but it wasn’t a really hard-hitting interview. Melber is more of an explainer and less of a pretty words guy than O’Donnell, but I have yet to see him criticize Democratic leadership very sharply.

Maddow is Maddow, and I don’t see much of her, so I won’t comment much. From what I can tell, she’s somewhere between Melber and O’Donnell.

Generally, if you watch the MSNBC evening lineup, you probably have a set of beliefs that don’t really jibe with reality:

1. The Democratic Leadership is generally doing a pretty good job leading the party. (You’d also be pretty ignorant of leadership infighting.)

2. There are a lot of Democrats who are speaking out. (They’re speaking out on MSNBC, but not to general media.)

3. Democratic messages are generally right and good, and those who don’t perceive that are misinformed, ignorant and not “in the know” like a MSNBC viewer.

So, as I said above, fan service. MSNBC tries to make viewers angry about Republicans but is pretty quiet about Democrats.

Fox is similar to MSNBC in some ways, but in other ways it’s quite different. They’re unafraid to criticize Republican leadership. They seek to evoke a sense of dissatisfaction with the condition of the country and the condition of the Republican Party — the country is always fucked up and the Party is never right-wing enough.

Fox is proactive where MSNBC is reactive. Fox will search out non-stories and make them into stories that fit their narrative. MSNBC generally reports the news and debunks Fox narratives that make it into the mainstream. Fox has a clear ideology that exists separate from the Republican Party (though, nowadays, they mostly coincide). MSNBC adopts the ideology of the center of the Democratic Party.

MSNBC, by design and temperament of their marquee hosts, will never take the place of Fox in our media ecosystem. It is not a recruitment tool (Fox is), and it’s not an organizing tool. As far as I’m concerned, it isn’t really a part of the future of the Democratic Party.