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.”
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 entertaining 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. 😂