MSNBC won’t be probably the most controversial cable information channel on the market, nevertheless it has had its share of dangerous PR in its time on the air.
From offensive feedback made by MSNBC hosts — on digicam and off — to office battle that performed out publicly, right here’s a timeline of our picks for the most important controversies from almost three a long time of the community’s historical past.
2003: Michael Savage insults a prank caller with homophobic insults
Conservative radio host Michael Savage misplaced his MSNBC present, The Savage Nation, in July 2003 after shedding his cool with a prank caller on air. After the caller insulted Savage’s tooth, the host fired off a barrage of homophobic insults.
“Oh, you’re one of many sodomites!” Savage stated, per the San Francisco Chronicle. “You must solely get AIDS and die, you pig! How’s that? Why don’t you see if you happen to can sue me, you pig?”
In an announcement, an MSNBC spokesperson stated that Savage “made a particularly inappropriate comment” and that “the choice to cancel this system was not a troublesome one.”
2007: Don Imus makes an abhorrent comment concerning the Rutgers girls’s basketball group
Shock jock Don Imus crossed the road with MSNBC in April 2007 when he made a racist and sexist comment — which TV Insider received’t reprint — concerning the Rutgers College girls’s basketball group.
NBC Information stated the choice to chop ties with Imus “[came] on account of an ongoing assessment course of” that “[took] under consideration many conversations with our personal staff,” per The New York Occasions.
2013: Alec Baldwin makes use of a homophobic slur
In November 2013, after actor Alec Baldwin was caught on tape yelling homophobic language at a paparazzo, MSNBC yanked the six-week-old discuss present Up Late With Alec Baldwin off the air in what the community known as a “mutual parting,” per NBC Information.
Baldwin allegedly known as the photographer two homophobic slurs. He claimed he solely used one, not realizing it was a slur, and denied utilizing the opposite.
2013: Martin Bashir means that Sarah Palin ought to need to eat feces
Only a week later, British journalist Martin Bashir resigned from MSNBC after weeks of controversy across the feedback he made on his self-named program about former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who had stated it was “going to be like slavery” when the U.S. needed to pay its nationwide debt.
In response, Bashir recommended that Palin needs to be punished with somebody defecating in her mouth, in response to The Hollywood Reporter.
Bashir issued an apology in his resignation announcement, saying, “It’s my honest hope that each one of my colleagues, at this particular community, will probably be allowed to concentrate on the problems that matter with out the distraction of myself or my ill-judged feedback.”
2016: Melissa Harris-Perry will get lower after criticizing the community
In February 2016, TV host Melissa Harris-Perry refused to return to work at her self-named weekend MSNBC present after feeling preempted and sidelined in the course of the community’s presidential election protection, telling The New York Occasions she hadn’t appeared on MSNBC in “weeks.”
In an electronic mail to coworkers, Harris-Perry wrote, “Right here is the fact: Our present was taken — with out remark or dialogue or discover — within the midst of an election season. After 4 years of constructing an viewers, creating a model, and creating belief with our viewers, we have been successfully and completely silenced.”
Harris-Perry additionally wrote within the electronic mail that she would “not be used as a device for his or her functions” and that she was “not a token, mammy, or little brown bobblehead.” She later instructed the Occasions she didn’t suppose she was being denied airtime as a result of she was Black however stated on The View her therapy had racial implications. Days after the walkout, an MSNBC spokesperson instructed the Occasions that the community and Harris-Perry have been parting methods.
2020: Chris Matthews exits MSNBC after a number of inappropriate feedback over time
Chris Matthews left his MSNBC present, Hardball, mid-broadcast in March 2020 after a short on-air assertion apologizing for his feedback about girls. “We’re speaking right here about higher requirements than we grew up with, honest requirements,” he stated in that farewell, per the Los Angeles Occasions. “A variety of it has to do with how we discuss to one another. Compliments on a lady’s look that some males, together with me, may need as soon as incorrectly thought have been okay have been by no means okay, not then and definitely not as we speak. And for making such feedback prior to now, I’m sorry.”
Days earlier, journalist Laura Bassett alleged in a GQ essay that Matthews inappropriately flirted along with her earlier than a 2016 interview. However Matthews had a historical past of inappropriate feedback. In 2006, he criticized Ann Coulter’s look, and the next 12 months, he known as Laura Ingraham “great-looking” and Erin Burnett “a knockout” on air, per Refinery29. And in 2016, he joked about needing “that Invoice Cosby tablet” earlier than interviewing Hillary Clinton, per The Minimize.
2024: NBC Information hires Ronna McDaniel, sparking outrage amongst MSNBC anchors
MSNBC anchors rebelled in opposition to community execs In March 2024 after NBC Information made a paid political analyst out of former Republican Nationwide Committee chair Ronna McDaniel, who was concerned in makes an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election outcomes, per CNN. MSNBC hosts Chuck Todd, Mika Brzezinski, Joe Scarborough, Nicolle Wallace, and Rachel Maddow all objected to the addition of McDaniel to the NBC Information payroll.
Inside days, NBC Information modified course and let McDaniel go. “There isn’t a doubt that the final a number of days have been troublesome for the Information Group,” Cesar Conde, president of NBCUniversal Information Group, stated in a memo to workers. “After listening to the respectable considerations of a lot of you, I’ve determined that Ronna McDaniel is not going to be an NBC Information contributor.”
