Seems Like Old Times: MSNBC Now Back In Fourth Place Among Cable-News Networks

Did you know this? I didn't. Some guy at Mediaite notes it, speculating that the reason for the fall is that MSNBC is simply a partisan cheerleading outfit (No, that's not true, take it back, Jennifer Jason Leigh said) and that without an election to cheerlead, it has no actual identity.

In fact, it's a bit worse than that, because MSNBC's core corporate mission -- outdo Daily Kos in fervent liberal partisan apologias -- plays especially poorly during a period of very real scandal in the Obama Occupied White House.

Check out some of these recent quotes from MSNBC hosts:

“I do not believe what the IRS was reported to have been doing is an outrage. I believe that the IRS agents in this case did nothing wrong. Let me say it again, you won’t hear it anywhere else: the IRS agents did nothing wrong. They were simply trying to enforce the law as the IRS has understood it since 1959.” – Lawrence O’Donnell on the IRS.

“Conservatives still want to change the subject to the fake, ginned up scandal they’ve been pushing month after month.” – Chris Hayes on Benghazi.

“So now they’re (Republicans are) viewing an actual real world abuse of power scandal (the IRS Scandal), not as its own outrage, but as a means of supporting their preexisting witch hunt on Benghazi, which they really struggled to turn into a scandal in large part because they themselves cannot seem to settle on what the scandal even is. It’s a cover-up. Just don’t ask what’s being covered up…” – Hayes on the IRS Scandal being used for political gain for Republicans on…Benghazi.

There's another quote from Maddow I've left back at the link.

Note what's going on here: A "news" network -- a business in the business of selling you The News each night -- is forced into the position of telling you there is no news to report, night after night.

Because of the Full Partisan Tilt of MSNBC, the alleged "news" network must tell its customers, night after night, that there stockrooms are bare, and they have nothing at all to vend.

I remember this happening with Keith Olbermann on, I think, MSNBC. I think that was his first time he got fired from the network, but don't hold me to that; I can never keep his firings straight. For that matter, neither can he.

Point is, he was a hardcore liberal partisan (of course), and his show debuted during or just before the Clinton Impeachment story.

And night after night... Keith Olbermann basically told people there was no story.

Same story, every night, that there was no story at all.

That didn't exactly light up the ratings.

One can only hope the same fate for all of MSNBC.

posted by Ace at 04:27 PM

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