World

MSNBC nearly ignores Gaza-Israel crisis in primetime

Jeff Poor Media Reporter
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When wildly liberal MSNBC loses wildly liberal The Nation magazine, the cable network is probably doing something wrong.

As The Nation’s media blogger Greg Mitchell pointed out Tuesday, MSNBC showed almost no interest Monday night in the escalating tensions between Israel and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Early yesterday, I made this prediction over at Twitter:  Based on past performance, none of MSNBC’s five primetime, liberal, hosts last night or their guests would utter a single word critical of Israel in the current conflict with Gaza.  This came on a day when the missiles and drone strikes and rockets kept firing, and the death toll climbed to over 110 in Gaza, most of them women and children and most, no doubt, killed by US weapons or weapons purchased with funds from America. Just in case an “American angle” was needed.

Sadly, my prediction proved all too prescient, as the night rolled on from Chris to Al to Ed to Rachel to Alex Wagner (sitting in for Lawrence).

The bulk of the attention, Mitchell noted, came during two brief mentions during Chris Matthews’ “Hardball” program and Rachel Maddow’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.”

Meanwhile on MSNBC’s competitors — CNN and Fox News — the conflict was the central focus of almost every broadcast, including during “Anderson Cooper 360” with host Anderson Cooper reporting live from Gaza.

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