At the top of Monday’s Morning Joe, the MSNBC show ripped a new promo on network affiliates owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group denouncing “false news” as a “chilling,” “frightening,” and “Pravda”-like “propaganda clip” doing President Trump’s bidding. Of course, it was without any sense of irony in how they licked the Obama administration’s boots and serve as home for the Resistance.
Joe Scarborough started the hysteria two minutes into the three-hour show, lamenting that he saw the Sinclair affiliates airing “a propaganda clip and so here you have an entire broadcasting system running a propaganda clip attacking news agencies while the President himself was running a lot of fake news stories.”
Co-host and fiancée Mika Brzezinski bemoaned how the ads are “pretty frightening” “chilling,” while slamming the local TV anchors as “frightening, too, that they did this, so it goes all the way down to who actually let the words pass through their mouth without thinking about them.”
After a Deadspin mash-up of the stations warning about biased, fake, and false news being “extremely dangerous to our democracy,” the stunned liberal panel acted as if the apocalypse were upon us.
“A national broadcasting system that is shoving propaganda down local anchor's throats straight, straight from the pen of somebody who’s a Trump acolyte is really, really chilling,” Scarborough screeched to author and frequent guest Jon Meacham.
Meacham smugly responded by agreeing that it was “beyond chilling” and “state media, essentially” before going on a bizarre rant/dismissal of the media having a (liberal) bias that supposedly no one raises anymore:
It's one of the things that we've always, as a country, prided ourselves on a free and raucous press. People can accuse us of thinking alike sometimes. They don't do that anymore, but back mid-century, but at least that was a free choice. This is — this is something that's sort of fascinating. I guess only Donald Trump can do this, could unify fears of corporate media plus First Amendment people plus true conservatives who should be worried about large institutions dictating the reality for others. So, anyone worried about any of those issues should be, as you say, chilled by this.
If the panel wants to complain about something, it's my view that the Boris Epshteyn commentaries that are more of a nuisance, but to each their own.
Anyway, Scarborough shifted to The Washington Post’s David Ignatius, declaring that “it looks like something that we would mock the Russians for during the days of Pravda, and yet you have....Donald Trump attacking actually respectable news outlets that actually fight hard everyday to get it right, while Donald Trump in his White House and his allies are churning up their own fake news.”
“[N]ow they're using an entire broadcast system and I'm not sure who advertises on these stations, but they're basically advertising for America's new Pravda,” he added.
Ignatius surmised that viewers probably didn’t know that this was a nationwide promo campaign but now they know and can trust folks like MSNBC (and their authoritarian leftist allies like CNN) because “we're the best check against this.”
On Morning Joe alone, the show has proven itself to be possessing the same one-mindedness that they’ve now accused Sinclair of conducting. Here’s a few recent headlines from NewsBusters blogs about the show:
- 'We Love You': Morning Joe Panel Fawns Over Impeachment Activist
- Morning Joe: Anyone Who Criticizes 'Hero' McCabe Is Not 'a Good American'
- Scarborough Compares Trump White House To 'Al Qaeda After 9/11'
- Pro-Gun 'Useful Idiots' Are 'Not Welcome' On MSNBC's Morning Joe
- Donny Deutsch Loses It, Calls Republicans 'Cockroaches'
- Morning Joe: 'Tyrannical' Trump Turning America Into 'Real S-Hole'
To see the relevant transcript from MSNBC’s Morning Joe on April 2, click “expand.”
MSNBC’s Morning Joe
April 2, 2018
6:02 a.m. Eastern
JOE SCARBOROUGH: You know, Mika, I thought it was — I thought it was interesting, if you look at what the president said and this weekend I was struck by all of the false information coming out of the White House, it seemed like a more steady pace.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Yeah.
SCARBOROUGH: And then on top of that, I actually saw an ally of the President using a lot of local news stations to run a propaganda clip and so here you have an entire broadcasting system running a propaganda clip —
BRZEZINSKI: This is pretty frightening.
SCARBOROUGH: — attacking news agencies while the President himself was running a lot of fake news stories.
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Sinclair Anchors Required to Read Script]
BRZEZINSKI: Well, and I find the anchors to be frightening, too, that they did this, so it goes all the way down to who actually let the words pass through their mouth without thinking about them. Early last month, reports surfaced that the largest owner of television stations in this country, Sinclair Broadcast Group, was planning to force anchors across the country to attack other media outlets for sharing, “fake stories.” The broadcaster is known for pushing a conservative platform and mandating must-run commentary. Over the past week or so, anchors nationwide were required to read from the script, not their own commentary, the commentary of their company as this mash-up from Deadspin illustrates the results are chilling.
[DEADSPIN VIDEO OF SINCLAIR AFFILIATES]
SCARBOROUGH: And Jon Meacham, I think we would all agree that —
BRZEZINSKI: This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.
SCARBOROUGH: — yeah. A national broadcasting system that is shoving propaganda down local anchor's throats —
BRZEZINSKI: Then reading them.
SCARBOROUGH: — straight, straight from the pen of somebody who’s a Trump acolyte is really, really chilling.
JON MEACHAM: It's kind of beyond chilling, right? It's state media, essentially. It's one of the things that we've always, as a country, prided ourselves on a free and raucous press. People can accuse us of thinking alike sometimes. They don't do that anymore, but back mid-century, but at least that was a free choice. This is — this is something that's sort of fascinating. I guess only Donald Trump can do this, could unify fears of corporate media plus First Amendment people plus true conservatives who should be worried about large institutions dictating the reality for others.
SCARBOROUGH: Yeah.
MEACHAM: So, anyone worried about any of those issues should be, as you say, chilled by this.
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: President Trump, Lies, & Propaganda]
SCARBOROUGH: David, this is — it looks like something that we would mock the Russians for during the days of Pravda, and yet you have, again, Donald Trump, you combine this with Donald Trump attacking actually respectable news outlets that actually fight hard everyday to get it right, while Donald Trump in his White House and his allies are churning up their own fake news. They're lying to the American people throughout the weekend over the past year, year and a half, but they're trying to discredit those who are actually calling them out on their lies and now they're using an entire broadcast system and I'm not sure who advertises on these stations, but they're basically advertising for America's new Pravda.
DAVID IGNATIUS: Joe, that mash-up was funny. It had me almost giggling, the repetition over and over again of these lines, but obviously it's not funny. I found myself wondering what those journalists, those people who decided I want to be in the news business and I'm going to work hard at my local station. I want to be in that business of sharing information, telling the truth to people, what they felt reading these can lines and what they're going to feel when they see around the country people — they probably don't know that everybody was saying the same thing. They will now and I hope people in our business — I think we're the best check against this. People say, wait a minute, I'm not going to do that. I believe in this business. I didn't come into journalism to repeat the same things over and over again, but that's — that’s one check against people trying to put things down the throats of journalists in quotation marks to get this uniform lineup.
SCARBOROUGH: Yeah and —
BRZEZINSKI: I'm surprised not one person said I'm not going to read this. That's stunning to me and really depressing. Why are you in this business?
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: President Trump, Lies, & Propaganda]
SCARBOROUGH: And Nick, there is, of course, a business angle to this.
NICK CONFESSORE: Right.
SCARBOROUGH: Donald Trump gave Sinclair a sweetheart deal and they're paying him back.
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: “This Is Extremely Dangerous to Our Democracy”; Sinclair Anchors Required to Read Script Bashing “False News”]
CONFESSORE: That's right. Sinclair is trying to acquire even more TV stations from Tribune and trying to make this deal go through, so it's easy to look at this as a way to win some favor in the Trump administration and win some favor with the President's appointees at the FCC. There is certainly a business angle to this and if just kind of picture these people with even more stations and having this happen over even a bigger part of the country, that's what we're going for in the future.
SCARBOROUGH: Well, you look at what happened this weekend, Mika, and you actually have a reason for Sinclair to believe if we attack everybody else, if we blindly follow the President, we'll be rewarded because if we actually did our jobs, we would be attacked and we saw that happen with a lot of people that work at David's paper, The Washington Post, this weekend. The President has no problem calling the media enemies of the state, has no problem constantly lying about them. He has no problem being angry when they call him out on his own lies and you know what's so interesting is as those news anchors from around the country were saying that this weekend, you know, and they were instructed to recite words that legitimize the President's agenda, it was Donald Trump who was lying. He lied about the DACA program. You just saw that. He said people were crossing the border to take advantage of DACA. Well, unless they had a time machine, like I said, if they had a DeLorean, if — if they went back to the future to before I think June of 2007, they could have taken advantage of it, but he lied about DACA. He lied about Amazon — he — and post office rates. He lied about The Washington Post who happened to publish his story about Donald Trump's finances and all of that just days after websites, including Infowars and others, accused Parkland survivor David Hogg of not being at the Parkland massacre. That was picked up by mainstream media, by the way. Hostile to the Parkland students.
