NBC Flees from Lefty MSNBC Cable Network

[quinnox]

NBC is going to change the name of its popular website MSNBC.com so that the public does not associate it with the liberal cable network MSNBC.

MSNBC.com gets over 50 million users a month, making it the third biggest news website, after CNN.com and Yahoo. The NBC executives’ decision to change is a risky marketing maneuver and says a lot about how much the network brass abhor association with the liberal cable outlet.

The MSNBC cable channel makes no attempt to give balance political news. The network’s shows are anchored by hyper-liberals—Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz, Chris Matthews and Lawrence O’Donnell.

The NBC network correspondents and producers, who attempt to be straightforward reporters, say they are embarrassed to be associated with the liberal cable outlet and fear being “tainted” by association with it.

“Fox is obviously more right of center but no one is running from the Fox name,” says a network insider of the MSNBC brand-name hot potato. “It’s just so funny that MSNBC is now tainted. It’s the danger of picking a direction like that.”

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=39332

I'm not a fan of what MSNBC has turned into. Its basically the Fox news of the Left now. CNN is the only halfway decent news station out there nowadays in my opinion. At least on CNN you know the bias will not be as heavy as on Fox or MSNBC.

[MrScorpio]

1. "Humanevents"???

I smell bullshit.

[blondeatlast]

55. Word. nt

[Statistical]

2. The story is unclear. Are they renaming MSNB.COM or the entire MSNBC network.

The article indicates the website but that doesn't make any sense.

Changing msnbc.com but keeping the network called MSNBC and using MSNBC logo on TV wouldn't seperate NBC from MSNBC but it would confuse the hell out of people and cause traffic on the "new" MSNBC.COM to drop by 90%.

[quinnox]

26. I think the website only

It will be changed to NBC.com

[flyarm]

3. I agree with your comment at the end! eom

[City Lights]

4. Unrec for source.

I don't give a shit what Human Events thinks about anything.

[EV_Ares]

34. I second that motion.

[Ichingcarpenter]

5. You link to a right wing rag .... human events

In 2005, Human Events published a list of Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries<2>:

The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler
Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, by Mao Zedong
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, by Alfred Kinsey
Democracy and Education, by John Dewey
Das Kapital, by Karl Marx
The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan
The Course in Positive Philosophy, by Auguste Comte
Beyond Good and Evil, by Friedrich Nietzsche
General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, by John Maynard Keynes

Twenty books received honorable mention, including The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin, and Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson.

Notable columnists include Michael Reagan, Ann Coulter, Oliver North, Lisa De Pasquale and Robert Novak.

[Cassandra]

9. I think Pat Buchanan also spews there.

[Ichingcarpenter]

19. Michelle Malkin writes for them too

Count them out, Michelle. You can use your fingers if you need to.

[Erose999]

59. The same Pat Buchannan who is ofeten featured as an analyst and commentator on *gasp* leftist MSNBC

[Cassandra]

10. I think Pat Buchanan also spews there.

[RedCloud]

13. More likely "stink" to a RW rag!

Going back to Mr. Scorpio's smell like bullshit idea.

[quinnox]

21. I didn't realize that

I did a search of MSNBC ratings and this news story came up. Even if it is a conservative site, I think this story is mostly straightforwardly reported in the article.

[Ichingcarpenter]

27. My "MSNBC rating "google turned up this page

Guess what? Human events doesn't show up until page 7


http://www.google.dk/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=MSNBC+ratings&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&redir_esc=&ei=-iWvTPunLMaAOuOgjJkG

[quinnox]

28. really? Weird, its the top story when I typed in

msnbc ratings on google.

[Ichingcarpenter]

30. Google knows where you look for things

and puts in what it thinks you read or sites you go to.

[northoftheborder]

6. Author of this post obviously a right-winger

[sufrommich]

16. She's the former financial director for Tom Delay. 'Nuf said. nt

[smiley]

51. and she was a deputy press secretary for the shrub

Emily Miller
Miss Miller is a senior editor of HUMAN EVENTS. Previously, she served as the deputy press secretary at the State Department during the George W. Bush administration and the communications director to the House Majority Whip, Tom DeLay. Miller also served as an associate producer at ABC News and started her career at NBC News.>

[AlinPA]

50. The two posts I've seen today from that OP lead me to believe the same thing.

[GodlessBiker]

7. The bias is just as heavy at CNN as it is at Fox or MSNBC. You just prefer it more.

[ixion]

8. uh, "hyper-liberals"?

:eyes:

[City Lights]

18. I know, right!

I've never heard one of the right-wing psychos referred to as "hyper" conservative. Hyper-psycho. Hyper-republican. Hyper-hypocrite. Hyper-liar. Hyper-into-diapers. Hyper anything.

When I see "Human Events," I think of that HYPER-CREEP, terry jefferies. :puke:

[ixion]

11. dupe

[AlabamaLibrul]

12. CNN - a halfway decent news station

:rofl:

[Skidmore]

63. That was my first reaction too.

[Kalyke]

14. I don't agree with your assessment of CNN - it's far more right wing

than middle (with the exception of their international division, which is what I wish all cable news was like).

But, I think that as long as there is a Fox "News", there needs to be a liberal alternative. But to equate five hours of liberal programming on MSNBC to the 24/7 right-wing pandering of Faux News is a misnomer. MSNBC, in its straight reporting, is not liberal - it's fairly middle-of-the-road unlike the Faux News anchors who only report on issues near and dear to the homelanders' hearts.

NBC needs to get over their big, bad selves. The latest trends show that Faux News' audience is dropping - either dying out or wising up - to the tune of 21 percent over the past year, while MSNBC's audience is growing at nearly the same rate.

[Erose999]

60. And MSNBC isn't liberal 24/7, they have conservatives like Joey Scab on in the AM.

Fox, on the other hand, has no liberals in front of the camera. One time Murdoch was pressed about this and I think he tried to claim that Greta Von Sustren was a liberal, lol.

[baldguy]

15. Real unbiased source you got there.

The article - and the rag it comes from - is a pile of bullshit.

[lame54]

17. Good luck with their "New Coke"

[LynneSin]

20. "Fox is more right of center"??????? You can't even see the center from where Fox is

seriously!

[area51]

46. +1

Faux "news" is ultra-right. If Hitler were still alive, it'd be his favorite network.

[AlinPA]

49. Agree.

[marmar]

22. Isn't Human Events a right-wing neocon-worshipping website?

nt

[quinnox]

25. I guess so, but the news story is a legit one

I didn't realize at the time that it was a conservative website when I did a google search for news about MSNBC.

[City Lights]

37. Seeing "hyper-liberals" in the text didn't make you wonder where you'd wandered?

:shrug:

[Roland99]

23. "hyper-liberals"? WTF? what a ridiculous statement. And to call Tweety one? HA!

[Greybnk48]

24. Who is the fucking idiot who wrote this piece????

Not you quinnox, the author. First of all, KO-RM-ES and LO are NOT hyper-liberals, they're plain old liberals. You know. The kind we had before Clinton (who I used to love but am now disappointed with). And Chris Matthews is NOT a liberal by any stretch. He's a moderate conservative with a couple liberal points of view.

MSNBC is only "tainted" to the teabaggers and Faux regulars, no one else. And to say Faux is not tainted as a joke of a news station is to be out of touch with the regular public. This asshole is framing a meme, and this should just be ignored.

[KharmaTrain]

29. Chicken Noodle Nuze Hurts My Brain...

I used to watch that network 24/7 for the better part of 20 years. But that was the CNN of Bernard Shaw, John Hollman, Daniel Shorr and Christine Armanpour. Today it's a joke...Blitzer never misses a right wing talking point and condescends to the point of tedium...and it goes downhill from there. The bias is there...it's just masked. When you bring in "experts" like Breitbart and Ericsson, this speaks volumes to their true lack of integrity and pandering to the right wing and the corporate establishment. The only saving grace is Zakaria's show on Sunday...but that's one hour out of 168.

As others have noted, this is a right wing rag...we've seen these stories before that hold little merit. The find one disgruntled employee and it's built up to be everyone.

[verges]

31. How can a network thas

uses a former Republican Congressman and Bud Greenspan's wife as major personalities be considered hyper liberal?

[democracy1st]

32. you sound like a repub!

[asjr]

33. It's all about the money. That is the main

consideration. And as far as Chris Matthews is concerned, he can be so bi-polar that he can be a switch hitter. I feel lucky in having Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann on the air. The rest seem to stick their fingers in the air to see which way the wind is blowing. Most of the time the finger goes into our eyes.

[DefenseLawyer]

35. What a load of garbage

Thanks for sharing worthless right-wing crap. I bet NewsMax as a few good stories about the state of the world, maybe you can enlighten us with those too.

[hlthe2b]

36. Do you have any kind of reliable source for this?

I find your assessment of MSNBC bizarre, to say the least. Yes, it has three progressives. But it also has Morning Schmo and his band of frothing RWers, including Buchanan, Barnicle, Halperin, and others; it has Chuck, the Toady "wants to keep himself marketable for Faux job" Todd. It has Tweety, who on any given day is perfectly schizophrenic with his occasional rational statement soon contradicted by oodles of RW fawning.

And, have you looked at CNN lately? Yes, it probably just averages in the "stupid" range rather than firmly left or right, but reallly...

You say "I'm not a fan of what MSNBC has turned into. Its basically the Fox news of the Left now. CNN is the only halfway decent news station out there nowadays in my opinion. At least on CNN you know the bias will not be as heavy as on Fox or MSNBC." Really? Where are our lie a minute, O'Reilly's, Hannitys, Becks, Roves, and all the other idealogues who spew lies like mother's milk? Sadly, I think, quinnox, it may be you, who has drunk the koolaide if you think there is equivalency. :shrug:

[quinnox]

38. Yes, here is a NY Times article I found on the same story -

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/business/media/07msnbc.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss


On your last point, While I don't watch MSNBC a whole lot, I have seen Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann before, and they do remind me of Fox news in terms of their heavy bias except its on the left.

I like to make up my own mind on things so I like CNN better, it seems more nuetral in their approach.
<Shrug> But its ok by me if you disagree.

[hlthe2b]

44. Thank you...

As to Rachel and Keith, I agree that they might be strident at times, but the big difference you seem to be ignoring, is that they are not idealogues. They criticize Dems without hesitancy when they believe it appropriate--something you would NEVER see Hannity or the other Faux news gang doing. And, the big issue is they don't LIE to make a point.

You may not like the promotional aspects of personal viewpoints, but rather prefer unbiased reporting. That is a valid view, IMO. However, I find the MSM reliance on moral equivalency and equal weight given to both views, regardless if one side is blatantly lying or just plain wrong, infuriating. Nonetheless, that still does not make the likes of KO and RM anything like the Faux News propagandists.

[City Lights]

39. Here's one...

MSNBC.com May Change Its Name
By BRIAN STELTER
Published: October 6, 2010

NBC Universal and Microsoft, the parents of msnbc.com, are holding high-level talks about changing its name, an unusual and potentially risky endeavor for the third most popular news Web site in the United States.

The two parents have not yet agreed on what to call the site. But according to internal memorandums obtained by The New York Times this week, the parents have concluded that the brand known as msnbc.com, a strictly objective news site, is widely confused with MSNBC, the cable television channel that has taken a strongly liberal bent in recent years.

Charlie Tillinghast, the president of msnbc.com, wrote in one of the memos, “Both strategies are fine, but naming them the same thing is brand insanity.” The channel and Web site are already separate companies.

Under the current plan, the msnbc.com Web address would become a site exclusively for the cable channel, fulfilling the channel’s desire to have an independent site to promote its TV programs. The existing news site, called the “blue site” internally, would move to a new and as-yet-undetermined Web address. There is a subsection on msnbc.com for the cable channel.

More at link...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/business/media/07msnbc.html

[hlthe2b]

40. Thank you...

[anniebelle]

41. How 'bout three hours with Joey the Scar every morning

And Pat Buchannan is rampant on MSNBC -- he used to come on Rachel's show -- made me turn the channel when his mug appeared, but he's still a regular on Tweety's show. Ed Shultz always has some right-wing nutjob on his show. Just because an anchor chooses to show actual facts instead of spin does not make them illegitimate, as say, all the lies and distortions 24/7 on Faux News Network. It's strange how telling the truth now is considered to be a nasty liberal habit. Lies and hypocrisy are not the counterpart to truth and facts.

[lonestarnot]

43. Dead Intern Guy.

[Winterblues]

42. Doesn't the MS part of MSNBC stand for Microsoft and don't most freepers use microsoft operating sys

Hmmmm.. Glen Beck could do wonders from this..

[Nite Owl]

45. CNN?

They are nothing but a baby FOX news. Haven't watched them in years because of their right wing bias. When their ratings started to dive they emulated FOX and did it poorly at that.

Rachel and the others are not hyper-liberals at all, they stand with most of what the people actually want.

[leftynyc]

47. Human Events?

Surely you jest.

[AlinPA]

48. IMO, CNN is close to Fox "news". They seem to run their stories in agreement with each other.

[Yeshuah Ben Joseph]

52. How is Tweety Matthews a "hyper liberal"??

Even on his "good" days, he barely manages to be slightly left of the DLC. On his "bad" days he might as well be a neocon teabagger.

[madfloridian]

53. Not good to give Human Events so much traffic. It's right wing media.

[SidDithers]

54. "Hyperliberals" like Chris Matthews?...

WTF? Is humanevents.com fucking high?

Sid

[EFerrari]

56. LOL.

[Jim__]

57. Emily Miller - short bio.

Source:

Miss Miller is a senior editor of HUMAN EVENTS. Previously, she served as the deputy press secretary at the State Department during the George W. Bush administration and the communications director to the House Majority Whip, Tom DeLay. Miller also served as an associate producer at ABC News and started her career at NBC News.

Are you a fan of Emily Miller and Human Events?

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

66. Wasn't she the one who pushed the camera away on MTP

when Russert was interviewing Colin Powell?

edit to answer my own question: Yes, she was.

snip

In the broadcast, aired several hours after the interview was conducted, Powell abruptly disappears from view. Briefly seen are swaying palm trees and the water, backdrops for the interview.


NBC identified the aide as Emily Miller, a deputy press secretary.

Russert responded: "I don?t know who did that. I think that was one of your staff, Mr. Secretary." The host added: "I don?t think that?s appropriate."

With the cameras still on the water, Powell snapped, "Emily get out of the way."
He then instructed the crew to "bring the camera back," and told Russert to go ahead with the last question.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4992866/

[newspeak]

58. actually MSNBC does not compare with Faux

for one thing, if any of the commentators on MSNBC get something wrong, they usually publicly correct it, not so much Faux. And, I haven't seen MSNBC showing a politician's photo with the wrong party affiliation, not once; while faux has done it numerous times--most of the time changing a repug into a democrat during a scandal.

CNN, especially with their talking heads, shows a heck of a lot of partiality-hell, they were at one time attempting to compete with faux sleaze. Now CNN, when Ted Turner once owned it is another story.

But, comparing MSNBC with Faux is way over the top. I find, like with Rachel, she allows her guest to defend themselves or answer questions, instead of bellowing over them. So, I AM a fan of MSNBC, and I'm thankful that more informative people are given access to impart their information or ideas, unlike some of the "faux" military specialists and other faux (corporately sponsored) guests on the other stations.

[Matariki]

61. MSNBC is NOT the fox o the left.

that's just dumb.

[DirkGently]

68. Yep. This false equivalency notion is out of hand.

[ThomWV]

62. makes no attempt to give balance political news" What kind of horseshit is that?

You will bet more balanced political news from Rachel than any other source on the air or cable.

[DirkGently]

64. Nice website. "Stop the Mosque!" heads up their homepage.

[DainBramaged]

65. Hmmmmmmmm

:puke:

[Hannah Bell]

67. You're aware that human events = serious racists & wingers?

[blondeatlast]

70. Good question, and

from past experience with the OP, my guess is that they are in serious denial.

[Gold Metal Flake]

69. What a fair and balanced report and comment.

"The network’s shows are anchored by hyper-liberals"

“Fox is obviously more right of center"

"It’s the danger of picking a direction like that."

"I'm not a fan of what MSNBC has turned into. Its basically the Fox news of the Left now. CNN is the only halfway decent news station out there nowadays in my opinion. At least on CNN you know the bias will not be as heavy as on Fox or MSNBC."

Alrighty then.

[annabanana]

71. "The NBC network correspondents and producers, who attempt to be straightforward reporters"

What a massive load of horse manure!

I'd match the primetime lineup fact for fact any day of the week.