FOX HAS BEEN "MORE FAIR": WHY BERNIE'S TEAM HAS HAD IT WITH MSNBC

[Uncle Joe]

19. Are you referring to Hillary?

(snip)

The Sanders team might actually find some common ground with Hillary Clinton, whose 2008 campaign had its own grievances with MSNBC. Clinton and her supporters scoffed at what they saw as unfair and sexist treatment from the network combined with its fawning coverage of Barack Obama. Former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, a Clinton supporter in 2008, called MSNBC “the official network of the Obama campaign.” Matthews apologized at one point for saying Clinton was only the Democratic front-runner because “her husband messed around.” David Shuster, then a reporter for MSNBC, was suspended for saying that Chelsea Clinton “was sort of being pimped out” by the campaign, remarks that prompted Hillary Clinton to write a letter to the head of NBC News. “I would urge you to look at the pattern of behavior on your network that seems to repeatedly lead to this sort of degrading language,” Clinton wrote.

The twilight of George W. Bush‘s presidency and the ascent of Obama marked the beginning of MSNBC’s transformation into a liberal analog to Fox News. Keith Olbermann’s thunderous, Murrow-affected denunciations of Bush gave way to Matthews’s giddy embrace of Obama, ushering in a new era for a network that had previously struggled to find an identity. “This is the network that has opened its heart to change, to change and its possibilities,” Matthews said while covering Obama’s first inauguration in 2009. In 2010, MSNBC launched a marketing campaign that carried the tagline, “Lean Forward.” By 2012, the transformation was complete, with former president Bill Clinton remarking that MSNBC had “become our version of Fox.” When NBC News and MSNBC chairman Andy Lack returned to 30 Rock in 2015, there were rumblings that MSNBC would depart from some of its left-leaning opinion programming in favor of more hard news coverage, but the network—particularly its prime-time lineup, where Maddow is one of the most influential players in Democratic politics—has remained mostly a safe haven for the party faithful. It has not, however, played host to many of the leftist and progressive voices that have powered the Sanders movement and upended Democratic politics in the last four years. The party may be changing, but MSNBC has not.

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https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/02/fox-has-been-more-fair-why-bernies-team-has-had-it-with-msnbc