MSNBC

Unethical Rant of the Year: MSNBC Left-Wing Propagandist Lawrence O’Donnell

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias! Lawrence O’Donnell, right up there with the most shameless Axis media hacks in captivity even compared to the rest of MSNBC, usually goes his merry way slamming Republicans, conservatives and President Trump, avoiding inconvenient facts, objectivity and balance at all costs, appealing only to American who don’t want news or fair analysis, just confirmation of their own world view. When people decry the harsh division in American society today, O’Donnell is one of the prime villains, in part because he has been championing “advocacy journalism” ( as in unethical journalism) for so long.

Here’s his Ethics Alarms dossier. The last time I bothered to mention him at all (he’s always biased and unethical: The Julie Principle applies), was last year when I elevated him from mere Unethical Broadcast Journalist to Ethics Corrupter. Yes, I defended O’Donnell once…for being caught on video screaming at the MSNBC staff and shouting “fuck” among other epithets. I don’t think anyone’s most embarrassing private moments should be made “viral.”

However, this time attention should be paid, as Willy Loman’s widow says at the end of “Death of a Salesman.” O’Donnell snapped on the air yesterday and began denigrating Scott Jennings, the articulate, restrained token conservative and Donald Trump advocate on CNN’s on-air team. Jennings does a superb job vivisecting the usually emotional, knee-jerk, woke Trump-Deranged fury that he encounters on the various panels and in the numerous discussions he participates in, providing a much-needed counterpoint on CNN, which has evolved into MSNBC lite: reliably unethically biased, but with occasional outbreaks of non-partisan reality.

For some reason a sole voice of non-Axis perspective on a rival network is deeply offensive to O’Donnell. How dare Jennings defend President Trump? How dare he undermine the perpetual efforts of the news media to destroy him and defeat his policies? The Unethical Rant of 2025 was the result. Here is the whole amazing thing:

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Two Sets of “Ten Journalism Principles,” One Honest and Aspirational, the Other a Flaming Violation of Itself

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Bari Weiss, founder of the Free Press, has sold the four-year-old independent and emphatically non-woke news site to CBS’s parent company Paramount for a reported $150 million. She was also appointed as the new editor-in-chief of CBS News.

Weiss left the New York Times with a damning letter of resignation after not being able to tolerate the paper’s flagrant Democratic and progressive bias. This morning CNN said that she “claimed” it was biased, just as Uri Berliner “claimed” that NPR is biased and Christopher Columbus “claimed” the world wasn’t flat. The New York Times and NPR (AND CBS, AND ABC, AND NBC…) are screamingly and undeniably biased to the extent that they can’t be said to be practicing trustworthy journalism at all.

Reportedly the CBS staff is freaking out over Weiss’s “10 core journalistic values” for the network news division. That the CBS culture is steeped in “advocacy journalism,” aka propaganda distribution, is proven by the fact that they are objecting to what was once accepted and standard journalistic values:

1.Journalism that reports on the world as it actually is.
2. Journalism that is fair, fearless, and factual.
3. Journalism that respects our audience enough to tell the truth plainly — wherever it leads.
4. Journalism that makes sense of a noisy, confusing world.
5. Journalism that explains things clearly, without pretension or jargon.
6. Journalism that holds both American political parties to equal scrutiny.
7. Journalism that embraces a wide spectrum of views and voices so that the audience can contend with the best arguments on all sides of a debate.
8. Journalism that rushes toward the most interesting and important stories, regardless of their unpopularity.
9. Journalism that uses all of the tools of the digital era.
10. Journalism that understands that the best way to serve America is to endeavor to present the public with the facts, first and foremost.

The Horror.

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Now THIS Lying MSNBC “Journalist” Really Needs To Be Fired…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Wikipedia tells us that Brandy Zadrozny “is an American investigative journalist and reporter with NBC News and MSNBC who specializes in radicalization, extremism and disinformation on the Internet.” Interesting! But apparently since she works for “MS,” she uses that supposed expertise to lie directly to the public in order to advance the Axis media’s propaganda. Zadrozny also, as evidenced by that head-exploding clip above, feels free to abuse her credentials and authority to literally deny reality that she, her fellow travelers, her employers and her whole profession find inconvenient.

Western Lensman (whoever he, she or it is) could not be more accurate, however. The lying by the Left, here and generally, knows no bounds. President Biden was sharp as a tack! If MSNBC doesn’t fire and permanently blackball this lying hack from ever practicing “journalism” again—and you know it won’t—we have a tacit admission regarding what their real purpose is: deception, confusion and distortion of reality for political gain. And it isn’t only MSNBC.

Heavens to Betsy: this woman’s specialty is the internet, and she doesn’t know about Bluesky, the Twitter/X alternative where cowardly progressives go to revel in their fantasies? Wait—she has an account on it: https://web-cdn.bsky.app/profile/brandyzadrozny.bsky.social! And still Brandy hasn’t noticed everyone around her cheering for Kirk’s death?

This is worse than mere lying. This is gaslighting, abuse of credentials (Brandy is a Pratt Institute grad), abuse of trust, abuse of journalism ethics, ack! ack! araghhyhayyrewqaunngemg!!!!!

(I just hurled myself to the floor like John Belushi used to do on Saturday Night Live.)

And poor Jimmy Kimmel sits at home, wondering what he said that was so bad….

A “Ripley” For MSNBC: It Actually Practiced Journalism!

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Wow. Will wonders never cease…

Yesterday, the continually ridiculous John Kerry must have thought he was in safe territory when he appeared with MSNBC’s Chris Jansing at the Vatican before Pope Francis’s funeral. But Jansing stunned the fake Irishman, pathetic Democratic Presidential nominee and inept Secretary of State under Obama by asking, “You were Secretary of State when Russia annexed Crimea, and I want to ask you…”

“But when they stated they were…” Kerry interrupted.

Oh, right. The Obama position was that Russia really didn’t take over Crimea, it just said it did, because doing so violated “international law,” so occupying the region and refusing to leave doesn’t count. By that logic, Hitler never invaded France.

“When they, when they stated, yeah,” Jansing said, then Kerry insisted, lying as he so frequently does, badly: “We did not allow them to annex it.”

Suuure, John. You hold on to that fantasy. President Obama was asleep at the metaphorical switch, Russia took the region, and Barack’s response consisted of a few weak sanctions. Jansing, endorsed Kerry’s “it isn’t what it is” spin—this is MSNBC, after all—but still pressed Kerry, saying, “Right. But they said that it was theirs.” And Kerry ludicrously replied, “And we stood up against it and called it against international law. Yeah, they said it, but that doesn’t…Under international law, that does not make it theirs.”

See, because Kerry’s State Department and Obama refused to “recognize” Russia’s annexation of Crimea, it wasn’t annexed. Standing up to Russia in Obama-Kerry Land is: Russia: “We’ve got Crimea!” The U.S.: No you don’t!” Russia: “Yes, we really do.” The U.S.: “Uh-uh, not until we say so!” Russia: “How the hell did we lose the Cold War to these bozos?”

The current Ukraine-Russia war is a direct consequence of the weakness projected by Presidents Obama and Biden, and it has cost our treasury billions while destabilizing the region. Kerry, winner of an Ethics Alarms Lifetime Weasel Award, has been an expert at ducking accountability (“I was against the war before I was for it!”) just like the inept (but historic!) President who appointed him Secretary of State despite a lifetime of failure.

MSNBC, amazingly, reminded us. Bravo.

Rachel Maddow’s Self-Indicting Message on MSNBC’s Firing Joy Reid

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

As EA noted in last night’s post, MSNBC finally fired Joy Reid and ended her nightly racist, unhinged rants on the network. For this it deserves no special credit or plaudits, for Reid was objectively terrible, getting worse as her Trump Derangement raged, and should have been fired years ago….for this head-exploding incident, for example.

On yesterday’s episode of “The Rachel Maddow Show,” Maddow told us all we should need to know…. about Maddow…with this outburst:

“Joy Reid’s show “The ReidOut” ended tonight. And Joy is not taking a different job in the network. She is leaving the network altogether and that is very, very, very hard to take. I am 51 years old. I have been gainfully employed since I was 12. And I have had so many different types of jobs you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. But in all the jobs that I have had, in all of the years I have been alive, there is no colleague for whom I have had more affection and more respect than Joy Reid. I love everything about her. I have learned so much from her. I have so much more to learn from her. I do not want to lose her as a colleague here at MSNBC, and personally, I think it is a bad mistake to let her walk out the door. It is not my call and I understand that, but that’s what I think. I will tell you, it is also unnerving to see that on a network where we’ve got two—count them, two—non-white hosts in prime time, both of our non-white hosts in prime time are losing their shows, as is Katie Phang on the weekend, and that feels worse than bad no matter who replaces them. That feels indefensible. And I do not defend it.”

All righty then! There we have it: a full-throated endorsement of racial quotas, discrimination in hiring and career advancement, and double standards. For a special bonus, Maddow endorsed the practices and conduct of an unethical and untrustworthy former colleague, which means that Maddow is unfit to appear on any respectable news organization’s broadcasts.

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I’m Not Forgetting The Alamo This Year, and Other Concerns…

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

That is one of several plaques around San Antonio that memorializes William Barrett Travis’s desperate but inspiring letter on this date in 1836 calling for assistance as the fortress Travis commanded found itself under siege by the Mexican army. Last year at this time, I’m ashamed to say, I was too preoccupied to write about the Alamo, its defenders and its importance in American history and lore. I’m just as preoccupied now, frankly, but also determined not to neglect my duty to give proper respect and acknowledgement to 220 or so volunteers who, by their courage, comradery and dedication to a cause, displayed the best of the American spirit. Travis, Bowie, Crockett, Bonham and the rest would have really gotten a kick out of Trump’s post-assassination attempt theater.

Meanwhile,

1. I won’t be using the History Channel’s daily history prompts from now on. It seriously hacked me off, first by insisting that I consent to an A&E “Consumer Agreement” and not making a way to consent to it evident, but worse, presenting me with this monster (skip to the end; for God’s sake don’t try to read it!)

I have lectured and written abut this before. No ethical lawyer should prepare such a thing which they know with 100% certainty that literally no one can or will read. That’s not informed consent. That’s chicanery. Nor should a consumers have to pay lawyers to explain what what they are agreeing to. If I were asked to advise a client about the propriety of inflicting such a document on anyone, I would a) end up charging them several thousand dollars for my time and b) tell them that if they couldn’t cut the agreement down to three pages while defining every legal term in it, I would regard it as signature significance for an untrustworthy company. Give consumers a video to listen to that explains what the document covers in simple English. Something…anything but that mess. This is how Disney ended up using the agreement to sign up for a free trial on Disney+ to try to dodge a negligence suit at EPCOT. Over the past year, as I have been digging out from a financial disaster, I’ve become really good at saying, “You know what? I don’t want or need this service enough to tolerate the way you manipulate and mistreat customers. Screw you.”

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The Hegseth Confirmation, and Great Moments in Ethics Estoppel: The Concern That New DOD Sec. Hegseth Won’t Be Ready “24-7”

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

I probably wouldn’t have voted for Pete Hegseth to be Trump’s DOD Secretary; certainly not until he answered a lot of crucial questions he never was asked. He should have been grilled about the extent of his management, oversight and negotiation experience, but the Democrats, because they have no principles, decided to use the Kavanaugh strategy to slime him (because that worked so well the first time).

Hegseth is easily the worst of Trump’s major appointments, and the fact that he was confirmed last night (by the narrowest margin possible) demonstrates that the terror expressed by the Trump Deranged that unlike last time around, the Republicans in Congress are inclined to help their party’s President achieve his goals rather than obstruct them is justified. (To that, my reaction is “Tough. You have nobody but your own party to blame, along with people like you who enabled and supported an arrogant, incompetent, corrupt, untrustworthy, and increasingly totalitarianism-embracing government.”)

This morning I decided to surf between MSNBC and CNN to hear the screams of the Axis propagandists who hang out there [Oh NOOO! ICE is really arresting illegals! Oh NOOO! Trump is making villains like Anthony Fauci pay for their own security details! Oh NOOO! Trump is killing DEI!] When they weren’t screaming about all of that, they were indignant that someone was now leading the Pentagon who could not be trusted to be ready for a crisis phone call every hour of the day, 365 days a year. These assorted partisan hacks and the Democratic party “contributors” who joined in their self-righteous lament are ethically estopped from making that complaint about Hegseth.

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A Jumbo For Democrat Bitter-Enders and the Trump-Deranged

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

This made me laugh out loud, and I have to do a quick post. I heard successive guests and hosts on MSNBC desperately try to give puppet President Joe Biden credit for today’s cease fire and negotiated release of the Hamas hostages, including the Americans. They denied that Donald Trump had anything to do with it. Trump, you may recall, promised that “all Hell would break loose” if the hostages were not released by the time he became President. Inaugeration Day is January 20. The cease-fire deal goes into effect on January 19.

That’s just a coincidence, you see. Sure it is. “Elephant? What elephant?”

Would it really be so difficult for even the worst Trump-phobics to give him credit for what to any non-deranged observer is so clearly the result of his thinly-veiled threat and the belief abroad that, unlike some “red line”- drawing Presidents of the recent past, it is risky to call this one’s bluff?

Apparently it is too difficult. They would rather lie when the lie is obvious and indefensible than show the integrity to admit that the man they hate so much did something that worked. How unprofessional. How petty. How self-indicting. How stupid.

But funny!

Ethics Dunce and Human Smoking Gun: The Ridiculous Stacey Abrams

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Oh, just shut up, Stacey.

Is she still around? I would have thought that Abrams had so beclowned herself that even MSNBC wouldn’t…no, never mind, that’s impossible. I was about to write that even MSNBC wouldn’t be so silly as to give her a forum, but at this point MSNBC is so desperate to keep woke (and Trump Derangement) alive that it will give any progressive hack air time.

In an interview with Chris Hayes (talk about “Oh shut up!”) the always self-promoting Georgia “voting rights activist” wanted everyone to understand that Donald Trump won the 2024 election “but it wasn’t a landslide. It was an evenly divided nation. He got more people, but this was not the seismic shift where 57, 58 percent of America said no. It was less than 50 percent of the electorate who said this is what we want.”

Abrams is a laughing stock, or if you aren’t laughing at her, then you are part of the American Left’s problem. She managed to run twice for Georgia governor without any serious qualifications, losing both times. While the Axis was condemning Donald Trump for insisting that the 2020 election had been stolen and refusing to concede, Abrams was refusing to concede that her first loss to Republican Brian Kemp for the Georgia statehouse wasn’t legitimate while her party and its press embraced a damning, “Well, in her case, it’s OK!” double standard because she’s black, female, and “gooble gobble one of us!”

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From the Res Ispa Loquitur Files…Maddow’s Hypocrisy

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment
https://twitter.com/i/status/1865163195146477938

Althouse found this for me. Anyone who is surprised or disillusioned by Maddow’s blazing hypocrisy hasn’t been paying attention or doesn’t care that the propagandists they follow have no integrity.

“Maze’s” comment about her being an actress is, sadly, astute. The talking heads on MSNBC, to a significant extent on Fox News, and also on the other networks, are allowed and probably encouraged to telegraph their feelings (or the feelings the network’s want their audiences to think they have) about what they are reporting. Once upon a time, even the most biased of news anchors would announce the news with poker faces and neutral tones. That was considered professional then, and in fact that was and is professional for broadcast journalists: it has just become passe along with journalism ethics generally. Few mug as furiously and shamelessly as Maddow, but her bosses and clearly her audience appreciate her hamming it up: she is reported to have a salary of around $25 million.

A total contradiction like the one portrayed in the matching videos above should be signature significance for anyone paying attention: it means: “I am a partisan hack rather than the trustworthy analyst I pretend to be, and I express what I think my audience wants me to feel about what I am reporting.” People are fine with that, apparently. Fascinating.