Unlike many journalists who bury their corrections at the end of their articles, I will issue mine right at the top.
Last week, in my column Bibas and Brennan, I mistakenly wrote that the remains of Yarden and Kfir Bibas were returned by Hamas. Of course and sadly, the tiny coffins contained the bodies of Ariel and Kfir Bibas, the two small redheaded boys, murdered by the beasts of Gaza. Yarden, their father, was returned alive on February 1st.
Several of our astute subscribers quickly pointed out my error, and I did correct it through Substack. But apparently, when you get the mass email that goes out at 8am ET, the uncorrected column will always pop up when you click the link.
Live and learn.
Now for this week’s topic and for that, I’ll call on my more than four decades media experience, much of that time spent as a manager.
The new boss at MSNBC, Rebecca Kutler, shook things up this past week and then was accused by her star host, Rachel Maddow, of being a racist.
Oh, Maddow didn’t come right out and say the “R” word, however she sure as shootin’ implied it.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Kutler who happens to be white, officially took over MSNBC a couple of weeks ago, but she’s been running the place for a few months. She’s been studying the ratings and came to the conclusion that Joy Reid, who happens to be a woman of color, just wasn’t cutting it in her prime time slot. Weak ratings.
Kutler also reassigned another woman of color, Alex Wagner of Burmese parentage, from her primetime hosting duties. She made other programming moves that involved whites and non-whites.
Well, Rachel Maddow took great umbrage to management’s moves and she went on her show and torched her bosses. I mean, she just didn’t torch them, she took out her flame thrower and burned them to a crisp.
Maddow ranted for five minutes, focusing mostly on her pal Joy Reid. She said Reid’s firing “is very very hard to take” and “there is no colleague for whom I have had more affection and more respect than Joy Reid.”
Okay, spoken from the heart. Sincere emotions. As a manager, I’d let that slide. No point making a mountain out of a mole hill.
But Rachel was just revving up.
She said, “I do not want to lose her as a colleague at MSNBC, and personally, I think it is a bad mistake to let her walk out the door.”
Uh oh. Now she’s flirting with insubordination.
If she had just stopped there, if I were her boss I wouldn’t be pleased, but again, I’d probably let it go. To continue the hill cliches, you have to carefully pick the hill you want to die on when it involves the star of your network.
But Maddow kept climbing higher and it got uglier.
She said, “Both of our non-white hosts (Reid and Wagner) in primetime are losing their shows…and that feels worse than bad, no matter who replaces them. That feels indefensible and I do not defend it.”
Well wait a second Ms. Maddow. So you’re saying it’s purely an issue of how many “non-white hosts” are on MSNBC? But how can that be? Joy Reid was replaced by a hosting trio of two African Americans, a man and a woman, and a Latina? So what’s so “indefensible” about that? What’s so racist about that?
In other words, the skills of the hosts be damned. The ratings in that important time slot be damned. The financial viability and the stability of the network be damned.
Gulp.
You know what? It’s a bullshit move by Rachel Maddow. To keep on paying her massive salary, which was recently slashed from a reported $30 million a year to a “mere” $25 million, MSNBC has to have better ratings and fast.
Joy Reid’s ratings sucked and not enough people were watching what she was dishing out. That’s the bottom line.
I feel Rebecca Kutler’s pain. (BTW, I do not know her and I have never met her). She’s not only responsible for the journalistic integrity of the network, equally as important, she is responsible for the network’s profitability.
Yes, she made some tough calls this past week and probably knew she’d get some flack for them. She probably never thought those calls would be branded by her highest profile employee for being racist.
That’s the world we live in, the media world I lived in. You are given great responsibilities and when you make difficult decisions, decisions that are rooted in fact, not facade, that are core to your job, that are not due to the person’s skin color, gender or sexual preference, you risk being labeled as a racist, or a sexist, or a homophobe.
How do you make important and needed changes if your own people, up and down the food chain, from anchors to desk assistants, play the race card, or the misogyny card, or the homophobia card or any combination of cards? You can, you must, but you recognize it’s at your own peril.
Apparently, MSNBC’s leaders fear Maddow’s wrath or her loss, or they would have fired her for her malicious and unwarranted accusations.
Maybe that left wing news network should look at how its right wing rival has operated.
Fox News Channel parted ways with huge ratings successes like Tucker Carlson, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and Megyn Kelly, and it is doing just fine. A heckuva lot better than MSNBC.
Love them or hate them, the Murdoch’s proved the FNC brand is bigger than any one star. Trust me, that message filters down to the entire organization.
It seems to be quite the opposite at MSNBC or Rachel Maddow would already be toast.