Alex Wagner Interview Part 2: On Fox News, CNN, Gun Control, And Her Unusual Career Path

Now With Alex Wagner has been on the air for almost a year now, with host Alex Wagner bringing MSNBC viewers a quirky, smart conversation every weekday at noon, and ushering in an era of new, young talent at the network. We sat down earlier this week to talk about the show, and a range of other topics. In the second part of our exclusive interview, Alex talks about her unconventional path to cable news stardom, the relative strengths of Fox News and MSNBC, and some of the issues that are important to her, like gun control and the political strife in her ancestral home, Burma.

Before landing her hosting gig at MSNBC, Alex Wagner was the White House correspondent for Politics Daily. Prior to that, she was Executive Director of a nonprofit called Not On Our Watch, the group perhaps best known for their involvement in Sudan, with actor George Clooney as its most visible spokesman, but also in her mother’s native land of Burma. Thursday, in fact, she had the honor of moderating an event in honor of Nobel Peace Prize winner and Burmese dissident Aung San Suu Kyi, a hero of Wagner’s whom she calls “the light of Burma.”

Prior to that, she ran several magazines, and worked at the Center for American Progress as a cultural correspondent. Alex says aspiring young journalists don’t have to be conventional in their career choices, “but I don’t necessarily recommend hopscotching around as much as I have,” and that despite her patchwork résumé, she was always driven by “a real interest in journalism, and the forces that shape our world.”

She adds that “in this day and age, it is a 24-hour cycle, and you have to be committed to that. Not only committed to that, but excited by that. You’ve got to want to be swimming or treading water, but in motion all the time, like a shark, because it doesn’t top.”

One of the most important pieces of advice Alex offers is to “be nice to everybody, at all times,” which runs superficially counter to the cutthroat image of journalism, but pays off in practice. Aside from just being a good way to be as a person, this business is all about relationships, on every side. Everyone you meet is a potential source, contact point, or even future colleague, so it never pays to throw your weight around, or leave someone feeling burned.

We also talked about the oft-cited comparison of MSNBC as a liberal version of Fox News. Alex calls it s “convenient comparison,” but rejects it. “I know how much work we put into our show in terms of being… fair, and while a lot that motivates me is driven by progressive values, I think we’re completely unafraid to call out the right or the left when we think that they’re doing something wrong, or bad for the country, or disingenuous, or isn’t true.”

She adds that “The ideology that permeates this building is ‘Be smart, be fair, know who you are, and have integrity.”

While she’s critical of some Fox programs she feels are not accurate or fair, Alex does credit Fox News for some of its work in covering this campaign. During the republican primaries, she says, “I thought some of the Fox anchors were incredibly fair and incredibly tough on the Republicans running for president, I don’t think Fox gets enough credit for that.”

“Chris Wallace can be really tough in his interviews,” she added. “Megyn Kelly was really tough during those primary debates. You have to tip your hat when it’s time to tip your hat.”

She’s absolutely right about that. The Fox News debates were, head and shoulders, the most substantive of the Republican primary season, and Fox News journalists like Brit Hume, Bret Baier, and Wallace have all performed well in interviews with the candidates.

As for MSNBC’s other competitor, CNN, Alex says they have “really good breaking news coverage, they’re really good at international stuff, they’ve got some incredibly talented analysts and anchors…there’s a lot that’s good about CNN.”

Alex also expresses excitement about the network’s surge in ratings since the Democratic National Convention. “There’s a lot of momentum where the channel’s concerned, there’s a lot of momentum in the race, people are really tuning in.”

“The show’s been doing really well, ” she adds, but while “We pay attention to the ratings, you really can’t live and die by them. The number one goal always has to be to put on the best show you can put on, which sounds so trite, and so boring, but it’s absolutely true.”

We also discussed gun control, what makes MSNBC a great place to work, and who her favorite person at the network is (an area around which something of a consensus built as I interviewed other MSNBC talent). Check out the full second, and final, part of our exclusive interview (more from Rachel Maddow and The Cycle gang to come):

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.