The Washington Post’s media critic Erik Wemple mocked MSNBC on Tuesday for its “bias toward consensus” in President Donald Trump’s second term, joking that its unofficial motto should be, “I could not agree more.”
In a new column published Tuesday, Wemple revealed he spent 18 hours watching MSNBC in order to discover if the liberal network ever had dissenting voices on to debate the issues, as other cable news networks have done since Trump returned to the White House.
“To get closer to an answer, I decided to gulp roughly 18 hours of MSNBC programming, starting with ‘Morning Joe’ at 6 a.m. and continuing through daytime and prime time. That way, perhaps, I could gather some insights on the network’s strategy and view all those fierce debates that I’d missed with my on-again, off-again viewing habits. As it turned out, there was … one,” Wemple wrote.
That one debate came during MSNBC’s new evening program, “The Weeknight,” where co-hosts Symone Sanders Townsend, Michael Steele and Alicia Menendez sparred with guest, Republican Rep. Victoria Spartz of Indiana, in “an intense exchange of views that qualifies as a debate,” Wemple wrote.
However, that was a stand-alone in the day’s lineup, Wemple said, from a network that seems to have sidelined pro-Trump voices.
He quoted Aidan McLaughlin, editor-in-chief of Mediaite, who said MSNBC opts for anti-Trump Republicans to appear on the network to “give it the patina of balance,” even if those voices don’t represent the 77 million voters who elected the president “in the slightest.”
“The result is a programming model in which hosts and guests compete against one another to fashion the sharpest denunciations of the Trump regime,” Wemple wrote.
The downside of this approach is “vast expanses of predictable programming in which people passionately agree with one another,” he added.
Wemple noted that there are some programs on the network that deserve recognition for sometimes breaking from this model. He acknowledged that host Ari Melber has dissenting voices on his program at times, and referenced “Morning Joe” co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski welcoming Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on their show Monday.
The media critic argued that MSNBC’s model would have been considered “outright journalistic fraud” before Trump took office, but isn’t anymore.
He claimed CNN’s approach, of having Trump-supporting guests on the network for “loud chaotic” arguments, isn’t much better, but “at least CNN viewers get to hear the pro-Trump arguments in all their fact-deprived glory.”
“No matter how it’s produced, television is a medium ill-equipped to cover Trump. My advice? Read newspapers,” he concluded.
When asked by Wemple to respond to his criticism that the network is biased, a spokesperson for MSNBC offered up a list of commentators and hosts with backgrounds in Republican politics, such as Michael Steele, Tim Miller and Susan Del Percio, who are reliably anti-Trump voices on the liberal network.
MSNBC declined to provide comment to Fox News Digital.
The scathing column comes on the heels of former White House press secretary-turned-MSNBC host Jen Psaki’s new primetime program bombing on its second day, shedding 53% of its viewers in its key demographic from the day before.
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