MSNBC: ‘Breaking the Mold’ So Al Sharpton Can Host and Run Activist Group
Remember when MSNBC suspended Joe Scarborough and Keith Olbermann for making donations to candidates? So how is MSNBC (and NBC) reconciling having Rev. Al Sharpton being both a host…and a lectern-pounding activist for convicted cop-killers and other leftist causes? Obviously, the rules are different now. Sharpton began his Wednesday night Politics Nation show by boasting about all of the protests he was leading through his group against the Troy Davis execution and how he would be traveling to Washington for more lobbying: Right now supporters of Troy Davis are holding a vigil that I started this morning outside the state prison. I and National Action Network was there all day speaking out against this travesty. Security was tight. TV satellite trucks were pulling up, protesters were gathering, and emotions were running high…. I've been on this case for the last three years, National Action Network, NAACP, Amnesty International and others, because we felt that no one should face death. Beyond a reasonable doubt being established has been the bar that we use in cases of murder, and clearly in capital cases. Whatever happens within this hour, we will be in Washington Friday saying that we need federal law that says eyewitness accounts alone, without physical evidence, should not be allowed to establish a capital case. On September 18, New York Times reporter Alan Feuer unveiled how MSNBC was changing its rules for the Reverend Al and his persistent protest parade against American racism: Many polarizing former office holders — Sarah Palin, Eliot L. Spitzer — have been given TV platforms, but Mr. Sharpton is not a former anything. He remains an activist: he is planning to march on Washington next month to call for jobs (an event he expects to cover on his show) and has already done segments on another project, winning the release from death row of a Georgia laborer, Troy Davis, convicted — wrongfully, Mr. Sharpton says — of killing a policeman. As construed by MSNBC, Mr. Sharpton will be a hybrid TV personality, a journalist-participant of sorts, both a maker and a deliverer of the news. “We are breaking the mold,” said Phil Griffin, the network’s president. “Anything he does on the streets, he can talk about on air — we won’t hide anything.” Though this arrangement may be journalistic, said Dan Kennedy, an assistant professor of media at Northeastern University, it is probably not journalism. Its proper name, Professor Kennedy said, is talk-show hosting. “Maybe a talk-show host shouldn't have to follow the entire code of ethics for a journalist,” Professor Kennedy said, “but he shouldn't be able to run roughshod and function as pure political activist. ” That's Dan Kennedy, a liberal former media critic for The Boston Phoenix, questioning his own side's media ethics. But Griffin and Sharpton sound united on the new plan to let the old no-donation/no-activism rules slide:
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on September 22, 2011. Filed under