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.”
That’s a cop-out. It’s the execs.
Who hires the executives?
The board. Usually composed of the largest shareholders.
Exactly.
Are you under the very strange impression that the board of Comcast knows anything about the qualifications of a TV news producer? They probably didn’t go to J-school.
They don’t, however they hire the exec team with goals in mind ,such as maximizing profits, and they set specific metrics for these execs to meet. Execs cascade these goals down by hiring the right people who can execute them. For example this results in generally not hiring people who hurt profits.
I think you’re discounting how far down does the profit maximization goal permeate and how significant its effects are.
Not at all. I’ve just worked in TV news. Not at the MSNBC level, but producers generally have at least an undergrad J-school degree. It’s kind of necessary just to make things work.