1). MSNBC: Nothing Says Sizzle Like Andrea Mitchell
2). MSNBC: Still 100% Latino Free
3). MSNBC: It Could Always Be Worse. You Could Be Watching CNN Right Now
For all of those people on the Right who demonize Jon Stewart and his “liberal show,” I’d like them to watch this segment. Stewart doesn’t have a political agenda. He does have an agenda about media accountability, but he doesn’t have a partisan agenda. It is endless frustrating to watch and read so many of the self righteous political pundits in this country try to attach a political motive to everything that Stewart does, for example, The Rally to Restore Sanity, which isn’t about politics, and won’t impact the midterm elections a couple of days later, no matter how myopically the talking heads analyze it.
With their constant thrust to fit him into their predefined political narrative, the media has proven Jon Stewart’s point for him. Cable news needs to break away from the entertainment that passes as news, and try to focus on returning to its original purpose of factual reporting and news gathering. This will never happen because of how profitable the current model is. Fox News makes a mountain of profit. MSNBC is one of the most profitable divisions in the whole NBC family. Even CNN despite their ratings struggle pulls in strong profits.
The news media has shifted from being run as a public service with a civic duty to report the news to a center for corporate profits. Jon Stewart has been the singular voice advocating for “restoring sanity” to our media. That’s what the 10/30 rally is about. It is about getting rid of lame, slick, branding, like MSNBC’s latest terrible misfire, and replacing it with programming that is informative. As Stewart himself has proven with his comedy show, it is possible to be entertaining and informative, but as long as news divisions are being run with only profit in mind, our news will continue to vanish from what are supposed to be news networks.