Phil Griffin

Some left-wingers adore the newest program at MSNBC. Alyssa Rosenberg at Think Progress thinks "Giving Alec Baldwin A Talk Show Is The Best Idea MSNBC's Had In A While." Never mind Baldwin's old dreams of killing Osama bin Laden and then killing Vice President Dick Cheney with the terrorist's corpse. "If MSNBC is supposed to be a smart, enthusiastic place for intelligent analysis and…

As NewsBusters previously reported, MSNBC president Phil Griffin told the New York Times in June that his network is "not the place" for breaking news. This was evident again this past Saturday when MSNBC actually saw a 20 percent week-over-week decline during the busy news period when President Obama announced that he was going to Congress for approval to attack Syria.

Even the lefties at The New Yorker magazine know that Fox offers more space to liberals than MSNBC does to conservatives. Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple's headline was "MSNBC: Must-agree TV." The New Yorker's Kelefa Sanneh (for eight years a music critic at The New York Times) profiled MSNBC and declared point blank that "Conservatives are far less visible on MSNBC than liberals…

As NewsBusters has been reporting, MSNBC's ratings have been plummeting all year. As strange as it might seem, network chief Phil Griffin believes the cure to be - wait for it! - bringing Ed Schultz back from his failed stint at weekends to the 5PM slot Monday through Friday. In a memo to staffers obtained by TVNewser, Griffin wrote:

The Hollywood trade magazine Variety offered an article asking “MSNBC: Too Much Opinion and Not Enough News? Focus on commentary and advocacy may be dampening viewership”. It has no “news” anchor for breaking events. Variety’s Brian Steinberg asked “Who is the face of MSNBC should terrorism cripple a major American city?" Steinberg says the strong turn left into all-opinion programming…

Since practically its inception, NewsBusters has been informing readers that MSNBC is not a news network. In an article to be published in Monday's New York Times, national media reporter Bill Carter actually asked if MSNBC is "being damaged by a perception that it is not really a news channel anymore."

"The Five" on Fox News Channel didn't cover more than a few seconds of President Obama's petulant Rose Garden attack on conservatives making Wednesday "a shameful day for Washington." The other networks, which define "news" as anything their Heroic President chooses to utter, including his March Madness picks, were shocked and appalled. In Thursday's New York Times, Phil Griffin, the…

Is it MSNBC or MSDNC?  Andrew Kirell of Mediaite reported today that the left-wing commentary network has hired the Democratic National Committee’s director of video production, Anne Thompson, to produce the network’s newest weekend show Up with Steve Kornacki.  Yet, this is just another episode in the annals of MSNBC’s revolving door of hiring Obamaites.  MSNBC has already hired David Axelrod…

Ten years ago, the perilously liberal talk show host Phil Donahue was fired by MSNBC. In an interview with HuffPostLive Thursday, Donahue spoke candidly about what led to his termination including his frosty relationship with Chris Matthews who he felt was threatened by him.

Looks like this could be a rocky transition for Ed Schultz and MSNBC. Ever since Politico reported "The Ed Show" would move from primetime weeknights on MSNBC to the network's barren weekends, bumping up against scarcely watched programming that consists mainly of reality shows set in prison, Schultz has insisted the shift is not a demotion. (Audio clips after page break)

The New York media has a nasty habit of producing puff pieces about rabble-rousing Rev. Al Sharpton. The latest came from Daniel D’Addario at The New York Observer. It was headlined “A Reasonable Man: How Track-Suited Firebrand Al Sharpton Became the Most Thoughtful Voice on Cable.” “He’s controversial,” MSNBC president Phil Griffin told The Observer. “But a lot of people only know him from…

MSNBC president Phil Griffin must be the most deluded executive in the television news industry. On Wednesday, he actually told the Huffington Post his farce of a network is "about smarts, it's about depth....[our people] live in the world of facts."

"A little perspective would inform [Chris] Hayes’ inflated sense of self-worth, particularly when he attempts to demean the notable careers of others."  That's how Mediaite editor Noah Rothman concluded a scathing piece written to address a misleading charge made by the MSNBC host in a recent Talking Points Memo (TPM) interview. Fox News is captained by Roger Ailes, who is "a lifetime, hard-…