Phil Griffin

"The Five" on Fox News Channel didn't cover more than a few seconds of President Obama's petulant Rose Garden attack on conservatives making Wednesday "a shameful day for Washington." The other networks, which define "news" as anything their Heroic President chooses to utter, including his March Madness picks, were shocked and appalled.

In Thursday's New York Times, Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, noted that ABC, CBS and NBC had broadcast special reports because they deemed the president’s remarks important. Griffin denounced Fox’s decision to skip it as “a disgrace.” At TV Newser, Fox broke out its smackdown machine:

Is it MSNBC or MSDNC?  Andrew Kirell of Mediaite reported today that the left-wing commentary network has hired the Democratic National Committee’s director of video production, Anne Thompson, to produce the network’s newest weekend show Up with Steve Kornacki.  Yet, this is just another episode in the annals of MSNBC’s revolving door of hiring Obamaites.  MSNBC has already hired David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs, two high-level Obama campaign advisors. On top of that, other Obama acolytes Like Ben LaBolt are recurring guests on shows like Now with Alex Wagner.

If MSNBC’s president, Phil Griffin, was really trying to distance himself from the Democratic Party, this was a poor decision.  Griffin has been trying to dispel the fledgling narrative that his network is nothing more than a communications outlet for the DNC.

Ten years ago, the perilously liberal talk show host Phil Donahue was fired by MSNBC.

In an interview with HuffPostLive Thursday, Donahue spoke candidly about what led to his termination including his frosty relationship with Chris Matthews who he felt was threatened by him.

Looks like this could be a rocky transition for Ed Schultz and MSNBC.

Ever since Politico reported "The Ed Show" would move from primetime weeknights on MSNBC to the network's barren weekends, bumping up against scarcely watched programming that consists mainly of reality shows set in prison, Schultz has insisted the shift is not a demotion. (Audio clips after page break)

The New York media has a nasty habit of producing puff pieces about rabble-rousing Rev. Al Sharpton. The latest came from Daniel D’Addario at The New York Observer. It was headlined “A Reasonable Man: How Track-Suited Firebrand Al Sharpton Became the Most Thoughtful Voice on Cable.”

“He’s controversial,” MSNBC president Phil Griffin told The Observer. “But a lot of people only know him from a few things. You don’t understand that he’s a good person. He’s fair. You don’t want to be judged for just a few things in your life, do you?”

MSNBC president Phil Griffin must be the most deluded executive in the television news industry.

On Wednesday, he actually told the Huffington Post his farce of a network is "about smarts, it's about depth....[our people] live in the world of facts."