MSNBC, the fake news champ, expanded its unethical practices to deceptive broadcast settings for the Republican National convention this week. MSNBC’s prime-time coverage of the Republican National Convention looked familiar to the other networks and what veteran viewers are used to from past convention coverage: anchors at a desk positioned above the convention floor. Rachel Maddow, Nicolle Wallace, Jen Psaki, Joy Reid and the rest of the MSNBC anchors were not inside the convention hall as it was designed to appear, however. They were in a Manhattan studio. That backdrop of the convention floor was being projected on a screen behind them.
Senator Rubio and CNN’s Jake Tapper alluded to MSNBC’s deception at one point. When Rubio greeted Tapper with “And you’re actually here live!,” the CNN host replied, “We are here live, as opposed to some other networks that just have a big LED. Who shall remain nameless!”
Yes, at the beginning of each broadcast, Maddow or another member of the team dutifully stated that the commentators were in the Manhattan studio rather than in Milwaukee, or at least so I am told. I was watching CNN, Fox News and MSNBC on a split screen, and all three productions looked the same: I didn’t learn about MSNBC’s fake until this morning.
Frank Sesno, former Washington bureau chief for CNN, told the New York Times that creating the illusion of a live, on-the-scene convention coverage “could cause ethics concerns.”
Gee, Frank, ya think?
“News organizations need to be very careful and very transparent about what they represent and how they represent it,” Sesno said. “It can feel like a frivolous thing — oh, well, gee, we’re just using the pictures behind them — but there’s something profoundly important here. If news organizations don’t represent where they are clearly, then how is the audience to have faith and confidence in the actual content of the reporting?”
Well, this is MSNBC, so the argument could be made that a network that employs Al Sharpton, Joy Reid, Joe Scarborough—all of their talking heads, really—is way, way beyond representing itself as honest or credible.
Sesno also noted that viewers—like me!— drop in and out throughout a convention telecast. “How does someone who joins seven minutes later know where they’re coming from?” he said. We don’t. And if you think MSNBC didn’t know that and depend on it, I have a nice bridge to sell you cheap.
Ethics Alarms 
Do MSNBC viewers care about faithfulness to truth and objectivity? Do they even care if they are being deceived if what they are listening to validates their own beliefs?
I’ve come to believe MSNBC viewers tune in because they WANT to be deceived. The reason is that reality causes them much distress. In this instance, the reality that Trump leads significantly in the polls and is likely to be the next president is too much for them to bear, so they retreat into a more comfortable deception..
I agree, Chris. The first lie is presenting themselves as a news agency. In fact, they swing wildly between wildly biased opinion pieces and government mouthpiece. After that, everything is a coverup lie to bolster the first one.
I do wonder why they didn’t have a presence there, at a nationally newsworthy event. Was it because they didn’t want to sully themselves by associating with all the ~ew~ Republicans? Or because they weren’t allowed in the door, because the RNC has more sense than that? If the latter, I take THAT as some encouraging news.
I also wonder what we will see from Fox to contrast it with next month at the DNC.
I believe it was Pew Research that did a study a few years ago of the 24-hour news outlets to determine how much of their content was actual news and how much was just talking heads and group chats that spouted opinions as “news”. I also believe I read about the study on this site.
The winner? Fox, with 45% of their content being actual news. That means more than half their day was spent on editorial content which is not news. Not too good.
MSNBC? Well, they were the worst…15% news and 85% Maddow-esque blather.
I’ve been an EA regular for five years, so the story lives in that timeframe. I would wager MSNBC hasn’t changed that ratio, except maybe to make it less news. Safe to say, MSNBC is NOT a news outlet and its viewers would rather hear opinions about news than get any actual facts about the stories being presented.
“In fact, they swing wildly between wildly biased opinion pieces and government mouthpiece.”
From the bedrock Conservative HuffPo MSNBC Almost Entirely Dominated By Opinion: Pew Study
News Content: FoxNews 45 % MSNBC 15 %
Opinion Content: FoxNews 55 % MSNBC 85 %.
Et tu, HuffPo?
It gets worse.
Bill Clinton (December 2011) “I was just watching MSNBC and they had a woman that used to work for me and a couple of other people on there, and they were talking about the Republican primary. And I was laughing. I said, ‘Boy, it really has become our version of Fox,’”
That was nearly 14 years ago; think it’s gotten better, stayed the same, or gotten worse?
PWS
Where did they find Rachel Maddow? What a creepy person she is. She’s right out of “The Scarlet Letter” or some other Hawthorne. Such a Puritan. So stern. All fire and brimstone all the time. Truly a high priestess of modern-day secularism. Kind of in the tradition of traveling revivalists. Ironic. Supposedly brilliant and rational, but nothing but fearmongering.