Cenk Uygur on the Washington Post Newsroom Revolt, Being ‘Banned from CNN and MSNBC’, and 20 Years of Taking on the ‘Corporate Media’

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Twenty years ago, Cenk Uygur launched a radio show from the living room of his one-bedroom apartment. Today, The Young Turks has grown into a sprawling online media company boasting tens of millions of subscribers — more than five million on YouTube alone.

“The Iraq war was about to start,” Uygur recalled on this week’s episode of The Interview. “Nobody was opposing the war. And we thought that was just the craziest thing we’d ever seen.”

Now, according to Uygur, TYT Network has 21 million subscribers across a dozen platforms and 20 billion lifetime views.

The network has thrived on YouTube, which has served as a home to independent media outlets and pundits seeking to take on the mainstream media outlets that have dominated politics and culture for years. That dominance is becoming increasingly fragile, as independent outlets that have found success on YouTube are seeing audiences that often dwarf cable news ratings — particularly when it comes to the coveted younger demographics.

Unlike many progressives, Uygur has no problem with YouTube as a platform. He credits its success to a welcome deference to the audience.

“They’re really, really not biased. They will not put a thumb on the scale for anyone,” he said. “They really let the audience decide.”

“To the people on the left that are complaining about those algorithms, it is what it is,” he continued. “You either win or you lose. So get in the game and figure out what the algorithm is and win it.”

He also dismissed complaints that YouTube does little to moderate its content.

“This is the most overhyped topic in all of media,” he said, suggesting media figures who criticize the content on YouTube are seeking to kneecap their competition.

“Do I want ads going on Alex Jones’s show? No, the guy’s a lunatic. I get it,” Uygur said, but argued television news has its own problems.

“Do you know the kind of vile trash that your ads go on on television? It’s like a dumpster fire. So don’t come talking to me about how online media might have issues and needs guardrails. TV needs guardrails.”

Uygur was once himself a cable news host. He helmed the 6 p.m. hour on MSNBC for six months until he left the network over creative differences (he said MSNBC objected to him challenging the political establishment, MSNBC said they wanted him to stay).

Now, Cenk says, cable news has become even more hostile to progressives.

“Are progressives being shut out of CNN and MSNBC? That’s not even a question,” he said. “Progressives are banned everywhere. I am very literally banned from CNN and MSNBC. They both told that to us, to our face.”

“And don’t tell me that Rachel Maddow, or Joe Scarborough and Nicolle Wallace are progressives. No. First of all, Nicolle Wallace was mouthpiece for George W. Bush. That’s what she was. Scarborough’s a long-time Republican. But even Rachel Maddow, when has she ever supported a progressive candidate? The answer is zero.”

Uygur and I also spoke about the mess at the Washington Post, where an offensive joke retweeted by political reporter Dave Weigel sparked an internal war that spilled out into public view and ended with the suspension of Weigel, the firing of reporter Felicia Sonmez, and the embarrassment of the Post.

Speaking of offensive jokes, Uygur has had his own troubles on that front. When he ran for a California congressional seat in 2019, offensive comments he had made were unearthed, and Bernie Sanders retracted his endorsement.

“First of all, when you’re reading a so-called controversy as the reader, the viewer, the consumer of it, beware,” Uygur said. “The first thing that you should look for is, is this the needle or is it the haystack?”

Weigel is “probably one of the most objective reporters in all of mainstream media,” he noted. “That’s the haystack for Dave Weigel.”

“If you went looking for a needle in that haystack, the first thing you should ask is why? Why does someone go looking for a needle in his haystack? And why are they making the needle appear to be the haystack? As if what Dave Weigel is mainly known for is retweeting bad jokes on Twitter.”

As for handling those kinds of conflicts at the Young Turks, Uygur believes it’s a balancing act.

“Find a middle ground where you’re not shutting down their speech, but you’re also not encouraging attacks inside your own tent,” he said.

“It’s difficult to deal with disagreements within a network,” Uygur said. “I’ve actually been on both ends of that.”

He recalled a conflict at MSNBC with Joe Scarborough:

When I was at MSNBC, Joe Scarborough cried to mommy and and said I was criticizing him too much. He went and told Phil Griffin and then Phil Griffin, who was the head of MSNBC at the time, came and told me, you’re not allowed to criticize Joe Scarborough anymore. At the time, I worked for them, I get it, and so I didn’t. At least on MSNBC. Luckily I had the Young Turks where I could do it instead.

“But let’s note for the record that Scarborough is weak and couldn’t handle any criticism at all,” he added.

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