Let’s See If MSNBC Has The Integrity To Fire Joy Reid…Because, You Know, It Should

/ Jack Marshall

“Yippee! There go all them Democrats and minorities!”

(I didn’t mean for this to turn into Our News Media Stinks Day, I really didn’t. But our news media stinks…)

People keep asking how the mainstream news media can back away from the abyss, stop being an enemy of the American people a true profession is duty bound to serve, and start re-instituting professional standards into the rotting, putrid news business. Firing reporters, pundits and anchors who fail to meet minimum levels of objectivity, honesty, independence and competence would be an excellent start. These partisan hacks behave as they do because they know they can get away with it.

Take, for example, MSNBC’s Joy Reid and this  episode of runaway journalism bias and incompetence cascade.

The National Review’s David French wrote an essay about the possible outcome of a nuclear strike on an American city, as a response to the false alarm in Hawaii. He’s a military veteran and a substantive commentator; I usually admire his work more than this piece. I see what he was trying to do, but “a nuclear strike isn’t as bad as people think” just isn’t a position worth taking, in my view.

Well, as I know as well as anybody, they all can be gems. [Update: French criticized the article as well, saying, “On re-reading it, I’m slightly embarrassed. The post is so basic and simple that it barely scratches the surface of decent prepping. As something of an amateur prepper, I have thousands more words I could unleash. But this wasn’t a magazine piece. It was a blog post.”]

Here is part of what he wrote in the original article, titled, “If a Missile Alert Sounds, Prepare to Live”:

The bottom line, even if a nuclear weapon as big as the largest North Korea has ever tested were to impact squarely on Manhattan, the vast majority of New Yorkers would survive the initial blast. A strike would devastate central Honolulu but leave many suburbs intact. If the missile misses a city center even by a small amount, the number of initial casualties plunges dramatically.

Only a rabid partisan attack dog could read French’s exhortation to  survive rather than surrender to panic in an emergency as an ideological or even a conservative piece. Newsweek, however, which has devolved into the scum on the sides of the bottom of the journalism barrel, described the article with this headline:

“NUCLEAR WAR? IT WON’T GET YOU IN THE SUBURBS, CONSERVATIVE MAGAZINE TELLS READERS”

Divisive, misleading, unfair, and inflammatory. Then, to make its smear explicit, Newsweek wrote this:

Amid heightened tensions with nuclear armed North Korea a conservative magazine is telling its readers not to worry about a potential nuclear strike because they live in America’s suburbs and countryside. An article published Monday in the National Review reassures readers that nuclear war—and North Korea’s arsenal—shouldn’t cause them concern because a nuclear strike will mostly vaporize those in major cities while suburbanites will come out largely unscathed….

During the 2016 election, Trump won 50 percent of the vote in suburban America and 62 percent of the vote in small cities and rural areas compared to Hillary Clinton’s 45 and 34 percent performance in the regions. Conservatives tend to prefer small towns and rural areas, according to a 2014 Pew Research Center study, with 46 percent of liberals preferring city life compared to just 4 percent of conservatives who said the same.

Nice.

Naturally Raw Story—I am still searching for a left-leaning political website that is more substantive than The Daily Beast, less hysterical than ThinkProgress, and more professional than The Huffington Post—thought the Newsweek innuendo was so nifty that it re-posted it.

So French pointed out that a direct nuclear hit on a major city would be survivable for a lot of people. Newsweek and Raw Story told their readers that conservatives are fine with nuclear war because it will fry more citizens in the city, where Democrats roam. Then Joy Reid, the indefatigable race-baiter who routinely oozes hate for the President, whites and conservatives, re-translated French’s non-partisan article as–well, guess. Come on, it’s Joy Reid. What would she be expected to argue?

She tweeted,

“We have truly entered the age of insanity when the conservative argument in favor of risking nuclear war is, “don’t worry, it will only kill Democrats and minorities.” Shame on you, @DavidAFrench”

Fake news. Race-baiting. Hate-mongering. Or, as short-hand, I could just say “Joy Reid.”

French tweeted back:

In the annals of misleading and ridiculous tweets, this takes the cake:

1. I did not argue in favor of risking nuclear war.
2. I never said anything like the words in those quotes.
3. I wrote only in favor of prepping for bad events.

Other than that, the tweet’s great

It turns out that Reid accused French of being a racist without even reading his article. That’s fair, isn’t it? After all, he’s a conservative. Eventually she came out with a retraction, tweeting

“Taking back my take on this take – the rawstory writeup doesn’t reflect David French‘s intent…David and I disagree on almost everything, but my take on this was off track.”

Off track? She falsely accuses another journalist of favoring nuclear war, and doing so because it will kill Democrats and minorities, without checking her facts while relying on  biased partisan news sources, and calls that being “off track”? No, that’s signature significance for a vicious, incompetent, untrustworthy and biased hack journalist. Notice that Reid didn’t have the decency to apologize, either to her reiders or her victim, David French.

U.S. journalism will only continue to decline in value and public trust when such conduct equals a ticket out of the profession.

25 thoughts on “Let’s See If MSNBC Has The Integrity To Fire Joy Reid…Because, You Know, It Should”

  2. Honestly, this was straight-up libel by Joy Reid against David French. She was not stating an opinion, but arguing her take as a fact, when only the most basic amount of due diligence would’ve prevented it.

    Thats negligence. Gross, culpable negligence in a statement that harmed French. He could probably sue (not with a great chance of winning), but he won’t.

    Libel aside, it’s pretty clear that the so-called (or should I say, self-styled) “journalists” are so far gone that checking facts is totally optional now. Because Trump, I reckon — anyone not in the #Resistance is a moral reprobate.

    This has consequences, and it is showing. This Cook Report piece makes an interesting claim:

    A more significant change between now and 2006, however, is partisan antipathy. Our friends over at Pew Research have been asking voters for many years if they have a favorable or unfavorable view of the opposite party.

    …

    Back in 2006, 75 percent of Republicans had an “unfavorable” view of Democrats, with 47 percent saying they had a “mostly unfavorable” view of Democrats and 28 percent saying they had a “very” unfavorable view. Fast forward to 2017 and you see that the percent of Republicans who hold Democrats in low opinion has jumped 6 points to 81 percent. But, more importantly, the percent who said they had a “very” unfavorable view jumped 17 points to 45 percent. In other words, Republicans are more hostile to Democrats today than they were in 2006.

    …

    The 2018 map is not easy for Democrats, but it’s not any more challenging than the one Democrats faced in 2006. Midterm elections are a referendum on the party in power, not the party out of power. However, the dislike for the Democratic party among GOP partisans is more intense today than it has ever been. The question is whether that antipathy to Democrats will be enough to match the anger and opposition to Trump among Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters. [my emphasis]

    This antipathy is driven, in no small part, by the constant drumbeat of Trump hate in the media. Many Republicans dislike Trump and even the Republicans in congress, but the overt political bias of the media has enraged them, and their anger is directed right at the Democrat party.

    Joy Reid just put a giant shot of hydrogen on that fire. The Democrats may well rue the day the media went into the tank for them. Wouldn’t that be droll?

    Reply

    • Poll candidate: Is Reid more or less outrageous than the departed Melissa Harris Perry? As long as Chris Matthews and Lawrence O’Donnell are still employed at MSNBC—they are white men, you know—no black woman can be considered “rogue.”

      Reply

  6. MSNBC’s Joy Reid is exhibiting her Progressive Magical Thinking; she took something she read that supports her partisan bias against the political right, formed her opinion around the topic based on that something she read, abused her soap-box platform, didn’t bother to cross check the facts as a true professional would do, and presented it as fact. She should be fired, but they won’t.

    She should be sued by David French.

    Joy Reid is absolutely no better than the blatantly obvious idiot female portrayed in this TV commercial:

    The real quicksand to this kind of fake news is that even if the fake news is only out there for a day or two and then retracted the seeds have been sown and the damage has been done; thus is the nature of true propaganda, it doesn’t have to be true, it just has to plant the seeds to fuel the fire. The political left is waging a propaganda war and they don’t give a damn if what they use is false; it’s all about the ends justify the means for the political left.

    Reply

  7. There was a great book I read several years ago that really alleviated my fears along these lines (not that I had much fear of this). It is called Physics for Future Presidents (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2341767.Physics_for_Future_Presidents)

    It really sets aside some big misconceptions related to science, and covers the basics of what someone in public office should know at the least. This should also apply to journalists, since they are, ostensibly charged with informing the public (a charge which they have failed miserably at since at least the “Little Bush” days).

    Reply

  8. People keep asking how the mainstream news media can back away from the abyss, stop being an enemy of the American people a true profession is duty bound to serve, and start re-instituting professional standards into the rotting, putrid news business. Firing reporters, pundits and anchors who fail to meet minimum levels of objectivity, honesty, independence and competence would be an excellent start. These partisan hacks behave as they do because they know they can get away with it.

    Take, for example, MSNBC’s Joy Reid and this episode of runaway journalism bias and incompetence cascade.

    Joy Reid is awful and should be fired–I knew her interpretation was wrong before I even read the David French piece, because I know French wouldn’t write what she claimed–but how does she qualify for the “enemy of the people” designation, given that you just told me Tucker Carlson couldn’t qualify since he’s a commentator rather than a journalist? Reid is also a commentator. She isn’t a journalist, and her tweet certainly wasn’t “journalism.”

    Reply

    • She is speaking on behalf of MSNBC.She bills herself as a national correspondent at MSNBC. She pretends to report facts. She was trained as a journalist, and worked as a journalist.

      Carlson has journalist in his resume, but his current show is a pundit debate format. If he states as fact what is false on a news channel, then the channel’s journalistic standards are breached. Same for Reid. And both, as representatives of the news stations, cannot play “journalist! Not journalist!” games.. on social media or anywhere else. Pundits have to be trustworthy and responsible too—they just don’t have a code to ignore.

      Reply

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