I understand where the sentiments are coming from. Still, there is going to be a fundamental incongruence between the concept of a national news network, and an extended effort to cancel 45% of the country.
Sorry but this is a bad faith argument and you know it. There is a vast difference between hiring someone who is simply a Republican and hiring someone who is an election denier and was quite literally a part of the scheme to try and steal the last election. No honest news organization would hire someone with those credentials. This very clearly is not about ideology and again, trying to make it out to be purely that is just disingenuous.
You win some, you lose some. Donald Trump has won the 2024 Republican nomination. Choosing to only represent anti-Trump Republicans is either opting not to represent one side of the political spectrum on your network, or to mislead your audience into believing something else*.
I actually don't have a problem with the former if networks are upfront about it. If NBC wants to be clear they will be a Democratic outlet as long as Donald Trump dominates the Republican party that is fine. What irritates me about MSNBC is the insistence on platforming astroturfed "Republicans" who represent nobody but a grift on resistance wine moms.
NBC is justified in not employing Ronna or anyone else but they should be upfront and acknowledge what that decision means, instead of treating it like a fringe view.
The best statement of responsible journalism I've ever seen is this: if you (the reporter) are writing a story about the weather, and you interview two people - one who says it's sunny and the other who says it's raining - your job is not to print both statements and give them equal weight. Your job is to look out the damn window and report which one is right.
This applies to news. The problem MSNBC is not news. It's a series of talk shows with panels.
The rise of this format has arguably been a disaster for discourse but pretending that Al Sharpton is there to report the news is absurd.
At the point at which your show is a format where pundits exist to provide insights into the opinions of groups you probably should honestly represent the opinions of one of the parties. Then if you want have others or even your host rebut/fact check them.
If you were running a news show in 1932 Germany you would not want to report anything Goebbels said as fact. If you were putting together a panel of seven Reichstag members excluding anyone from the largest party in the country would raise serious questions. Especially if you were excluding both the Communists and the Nazis as together they were a majority. I mean it might be ethical and if it had been done five years earlier accomplished something, but by that point you are instead creating a bubble where people tall to themselves while the world burns.
So it comes down to this.
Is this a news program designed to convey information?
Is it a political discussion show with a panel that goes over current events?
The former is diminished by letting people on solely on the basis of popularity. In the latter case, a political force existing in large enough numbers makes it a relevent topic of discussion.
