Longtime MSNBC host and race huckster Al Sharpton has seen his guest appearances on MSNBC cut nearly in half, following a scandal involving undisclosed payments from the Kamala Harris campaign. According to The Washington Free Beacon, the Harris campaign shelled out $500,000 to Sharpton’s non-profit, just weeks before his October 20 softball sit-down with the Vice President.
The Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross wrote that “Sharpton did not disclose payments from the Harris campaign during either segment with the candidate,” Naturally, both Sharpton’s non-profit (National Action Network) and MSNBC declined to comment.
MSNBC was so excited about Sharpton’s interview that they promoted it at least 17 times in the four days surrounding it, according to a review of Nexis and SnapStream transcripts. Three of those instances involved a guest appearance by Sharpton himself, in which he fielded questions about his conversation with Harris and accepted praise for his marvellous work.
Sharpton has been a recurring character on the liberal cable network, not only on his own program, but also as a routine guest on shows like Morning Joe and Deadline: White House. From October 1 through November 11 (the day before the Free Beacon’s exposé broke) he enjoyed 30 guest spots on other MSNBC shows. By contrast, since November 12, he’s had just six.
That means that before the Harris campaign’s massive payments to him were exposed on November 12, he had just over 0.7 guest appearances per day (or one every 1.4 days). Since the scandal broke, that figure has dropped to just 0.4 per day (one every 2.5 days) — about a 43 percent decrease.
The likeliest explanation for this discrepancy is that MSNBC’s higher-ups are embarrassed by the scandal, and thus they’ve reduced Sharpton’s presence on their airwaves in order to avoid reminding viewers of it. But this change looks more like an attempt at damage control than a gesture of contrition.
In fact, every aspect of MSNBC’s handling of this case demonstrates a wild disregard for journalistic standards. They ignored the story for days, then pleaded ignorance and moved on. Sharpton’s guest appearances may have decreased since this scandal broke, but he’s still around, and he still has his own show. His prevalence on the network will probably return to its normal rate within a month.
It looks like MSNBC’s plan is to ignore this story until it goes away.
