One of the striking things about how furiously many people reacted to the news last week that MSNBC “Morning Joe” hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski met with President-Elect Donald Trump was how quaint their defenders sounded.
“It is insane for critics to NOT think all of us in the media need to know more so we can share/report more,” Jim VandeHei, co-founder of Axios and Politico, said on social media.
It would be journalistic malpractice for the hosts of a morning television news program not to take a meeting with a president-elect, right? But “Morning Joe” isn’t traditional journalism, and last week’s incident is a telling illustration of the broader trend of impartial fact-finding being crowded out in the marketplace by opinionated news and the expectations that creates.
Scarborough, a former congressman, and his wife, veteran newswoman Brzezinski, didn’t just talk about the presidential campaign from their four-hour weekday perch. They tirelessly and emotionally advocated for Democrat Kamala Harris, likening Trump to a fascist-in-waiting.
“They have portrayed themselves as bastions of integrity standing up to a would-be dictator,” says Frank Sesno, a former CNN Washington bureau chief now professor at George Washington University’s school of media and public affairs. “What the followers see is the daily procession of people on the show constantly talking about the evils of Donald Trump and then Joe and Mika show up and have high tea with the guy.”
The social media blowback was instant and intense. “You do not need to talk to Hitler to cover him effectively,” was one of the nicer messages.
More telling is the people who have responded with action.
“Morning Joe” had 770,000 viewers last Monday, its audience — like many shows on MSNBC — down from its yearly average of 1.09 million because some of the network’s liberal-leaning viewers have tuned away after what they regard as depressing election results. That’s the day Scarborough and Brzezinski announced they had met with Trump the previous Friday.
By Tuesday, the “Morning Joe” audience had slipped to 680,000, according to the Nielsen company, and Wednesday’s viewership was 647,000. Thursday rebounded to 707,000. It’s only three days of data, but those are the kind of statistics about which television executives brood.
“The audience for the polarized news-industrial complex has become unforgiving,” says Kate O’Brian, outgoing head of news of the E.W. Scripps Co.
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