MSNBC and the Obsolescence of Legacy Media

By Dan Kovalik

MSNBC, a news network which caters to and has been popular among liberal, Democratic voters, has been particularly harsh with its attacks on Robert Kennedy, Jr. (RFK) and his campaign for president.

The cable network has vilified him as a “conspiracy theorist” because, for example, he has argued that Covid vaccine mandates make no sense given that the vaccines have not been shown to prevent disease transmission. This is an argument that has been shown to be valid, but which the mainstream media has been reluctant at best to acknowledge. MSNBC has even made the outrageous and desperate claim that RFK, an accomplished environmental protection lawyer and best-selling author, who hails from one of the most storied and successful political families in US history, is running for president as a “stunt” to feed his “addiction to attention.” 

Of course, all of these attacks are being leveled in order to protect the re-election chances of President Joe Biden, who is terribly unpopular: two-thirds of Democratic voters do not want Biden to be the Democratic nominee in 2024. Such voters, looking for alternatives to Biden and to “news” coverage that apparently seeks to protect Biden’s presidency from any criticism or any challenger, are being forced to look to other sources for their news. This is showing in legacy media ratings.

Forbes reported earlier this year that “[t]he three prominent cable networks reported audience declines when first quarter 2023 is compared to the first quarter 2022.” In terms of MSNBC in particular, “[t]he audience delivery was -8% compared to both one year ago and the previous quarter. Year-over-year, the audience fall-off was greater among adults 25-54 of -15%.” 

While Forbes gives several reasons for this decline in viewership, what it fails to explain is that more and more Americans are losing faith in the mainstream media and are looking for different sources of news and information—like podcasts and alternative websites—to learn about what is happening in their country and the world. 

One of the reasons Forbes gave for the decline in MSBNC’s ratings was the fact that one of its flagship shows—The Rachel Maddow Show—has gone into hiatus due to Maddow’s decision to concentrate on other projects. What remains unstated is the undeniable fact that Maddow has had to look for other projects because her main project for the past seven years has been fatally undermined by the truth—that is, the truth that the Russiagate scandal, which she promoted like no other pundit, was shown to be a hoax, including by Biden’s own Justice Department in the Durham Report. 

Maddow, for years MSNBC’s most prominent and popular pundit, has been downright obsessive in her peddling of conspiracy theories about alleged Russian “interference” and “collusion” to the exclusion of other important issues. She has done great damage in the process. This disproportionate and non-evidence-based focus was well-detailed in a 2017 report by The Intercept entitled, “MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow sees a Russia Connection Lurking around Every Corner.”

As The Intercept, itself an alternative to the legacy media, explained, Maddow’s “‘above all else’ focus on Russia lacks concrete supporting evidence, either of Russian hacking and cyber disinformation impacting the vote’s outcome or of the Trump campaign’s complicity with it. Journalist Matt Taibbi, who himself fled the mainstream Rolling Stone for Substack, calls Russiagate ‘an exercise of conspiratorial mass hysteria.’”

The Intercept report was prescient when asking the following about Maddow and MSNBC’s Russia-gate hysteria:

But what if the allegations are ultimately disproved or go nowhere? Maddow and likeminded influential liberals will have led their audience on a fruitless quest, all the while helping foment anti-Russia sentiment, channeling Democratic Party energy away from productive self-critique, and diverting focus from the White House’s actual policies. Trump would be handed a further gift via the damaged credibility of his “enemy”: the media responsible for holding him to account.

Indeed, these predictions have come to pass, with Russiagate being debunked, the Democratic base having been led down the Primrose pass and the legacy media losing credibility.

But even more disastrous is the fact that, as also predicted by The Intercept as a possible outcome of the Russiagate coverage of Maddow and MSNBC, the obsessive vilification of Russia has led to a more belligerent US foreign policy towards Russia as well as public consent for this belligerence. This, in turn, has helped lead to the disastrous proxy war between NATO and Russia in Ukraine—a war which has gradually become unpopular among the majority of the American people and which RFK is vowing to end as President.

However, the slowly rising tide in American public opinion against the war has come in spite of the shamelessly pro-war coverage of all legacy media and in large part due to voices outside the mainstream media, including RFK himself. 

Tucker Carlson was the lone legacy media voice to speak out against the war. He was fired by Fox News earlier this year for his refusal to tow the mainstream line. And his firing led directly to a dramatic, albeit temporary decline in Fox News viewership.

The continuing decline of both cable and broadcast news appears to be inexorable at this point. In May, the Washington Post warned about “The looming existential crisis for cable news.” For its part, CNN reported in August, “[t]he decline in traditional broadcast and cable television viewership is accelerating, falling below a major milestone for the first time. In July, linear TV made up less than half of all TV viewing, according to Nielsen. Both broadcast and cable ‘each represented record low shares’ of total viewership, the firm’s report said, making up just 49.6% combined.” 

While there are a number of reasons for this, one is certainly Americans’ declining faith in their traditional news sources. Gone are the days that Americans could tune into someone like Walter Cronkite and feel like they were being given the straight scoop about national and world events rather than pro-state propaganda. 

It is slowly dawning on Americans that they cannot trust what the legacy news is telling them, so they are looking for alternatives. 

Networks like MSNBC, instead of giving their audience what they want, have decided to circle the wagons and keep out alternative voices, like RFK’s, who are challenging the prevailing narrative that these networks so desperately try to protect. As more Americans realize that there are better news sources outside of the corporate mainstream, legacy media will continue to bleed viewership.