MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell tears into his own network for airing Trump press conference without fact-check
MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell tore into the major cable news networks, including MSNBC, on Thursday after they aired former President Donald Trump’s press conference live and didn’t “fact-check every lie” he told.
O’Donnell then complained that “to make a bad news coverage situation worse, none of the networks – none of them – carried Kamala Harris’ speech live after the Trump appearance. None of them.”
O’Donnell concluded, “It’s 2016 all over again. The same mistakes are being made. I have never seen an industry slower at learning from its own stupid mistakes than the American news business, and you cannot expect them in the next 89 days to figure out what they haven’t been able to figure out in nine years: how to cover a Trump for president campaign.”
MSNBC is owned by NBCUniversal is owned by Comcast. Any publicly traded corporation – let alone one making over $100 billion in annual revenue – will trample over anyone and anything – democracy itself included – in service of its bottom line. They exist solely to grow without bound as fast as possible like a cancer.
Don't let the company be faceless - it lets them escape accountability. The executive team at Comcast are willing to destroy democracy for a slightly higher bonus.
Ackchyually, it's the their major shareholders.
Edit: Downvote away, but read the threads under this comment. It's kinda important to understand if you're unhappy with the status quo.
Shareholders are not creating the program schedule.
The shareholders hire the people who create the programming schedule. The shareholders are their boss. Those executives know what their bosses want: maximum profits, and thus maximum shareholder value.
You're not wrong but it doesn't even matter what the shareholders want. Company executives are legally obligated to secure profits if they're publicly traded.
Of course it does. Shareholders elect the board of directors, and the board of directors hire the CEO. The shareholders, at least the majority shareholders, are the ultimate authority.
CEOs have an obligation to do what their bosses want them to do, which is true of every employee. Employees are hired to do what their bosses tell them to do, and if they don't they get fired. CEOs are hired by shareholders, shareholders are investors, investors want maximum return on their investment.
That isn't a justification as securing profits could be approached in numerous different ways. What we see typically is a focus on short-term profits at the expense of the company and it's long-term viability. You could easily argue that doing this is a disservice to the company, its employees, and the shareholders.
That's a cop-out. It's the execs.
Who hires the executives?
The board. Usually composed of the largest shareholders.
Exactly.
Are you under the very strange impression that the board of Comcast knows anything about the qualifications of a TV news producer? They probably didn't go to J-school.
They don't, however they hire the exec team with goals in mind ,such as maximizing profits, and they set specific metrics for these execs to meet. Execs cascade these goals down by hiring the right people who can execute them. For example this results in generally not hiring people who hurt profits.
I think you're discounting how far down does the profit maximization goal permeate and how significant its effects are.
Not at all. I've just worked in TV news. Not at the MSNBC level, but producers generally have at least an undergrad J-school degree. It's kind of necessary just to make things work.
I have no idea why you're being down voted because you're 100% right. Executives are EMPLOYEES. They are hired, and FIRED, BY the shareholders. They do what the shareholders want them to do.
Edit: I'm baffled at how many people don't know how corporations are actually structured. Let me help you:
Shareholders are the owners. Each shareholder owns a percentage of the corporation. All the shareholders together own the corporation, it is theirs. The shareholders elect a board of directors to make decisions on their behalf. This board of directors hires the CEO, whose job it is to oversee and manage the operations of the corporation.
Yeah, it's interesting.
To complete the picture, if the major shareholders set a goal of maximizing profits, this seeps into the hiring of execs and other employees down the chain as well as sets their goals. For example, a manager hiring a news journalist might hire a candidate that's more amenable to producing clickbait than dry reporting, if that generates more views. Another example - the board might decide that doing entertainment for a certain demographic while dressing it as news could be a profit maximizing endeavor. Then all the hiring afterwards has to acquire people who would conform to these goals. If this example sounds familiar, that's on purpose. 😂
Yes, and remember, there's like 100 people/families who are THE major shareholders for all the big corporations... But they make it impossible to figure out who exactly they are because they hide behind blackrock and vanguard... If we're going to name and shame anyone, it should be the owners.