MSNBC Puts Fiery Opinion Hosts in Charge of SOTU Coverage, While Fox and CNN Opt for News Anchors
MSNBC is putting the network’s fiery opinion hosts in charge of their State of the Union coverage.
The liberal network’s SOTU coverage will be led by Joy Reid, Rachel Maddow, and Nicolle Wallace, a team that looks particularly opinionated when stacked up against rival networks Fox News and CNN.
Over on Fox, Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum are leading coverage, while CNN has tasked Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper with the night.
While each of these anchors has in one way or another faced accusations of bias, they aren’t considered full-blown opinion hosts who craft their programs around long monologues tailored to appeal to a partisan audience.
MSNBC relying on Reid, Maddow and Wallace for their coverage of this major news event is like Fox having the prime time hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham run the show.
Instead, Fox opted for anchors Baier and MacCallum, whose brands are not built on how riled up they can get viewers.
Tapper and Cooper hold similar positions at CNN. While they offer news to an audience that tends to lean a certain way, they don’t rely on performance art and partisan red meat to fill their hours.
Are we really going to be surprised by how Reid analyzes the State of the Union? The MSNBC host has made it perfectly clear where she stands politically, whether she’s describing Florida as a literal hell on Earth, gleefully declaring the left has won the culture wars, or asking Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) if he was propped up by his colleagues simply as a “diversity statement.”
Maddow only pops up on MSNBC part-time these days, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a Republican who hasn’t written the host off since she dedicated herself to Russia election conspiracy theories and pushed the highly-disputed Steele Dossier to viewers. As for Wallace, take a look at her most frequent guests — including former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen — and you’ll get an idea of what to expect fairly quickly.
This isn’t to say MSNBC’s State of the Union coverage will be inherently bad, not entertaining, or fail in the ratings. The network has three gifted and fiery broadcasters running their coverage. You can expect passionate hagiography of Biden’s speech. Drink every time a host uses the phrase “soaring rhetoric.” If a Republican is caught on camera rolling their eyes or dozing off, you can count on these hosts to bring viral commentary.
This isn’t the first time MSNBC has relied on the trio. They also led the network’s coverage of the midterm elections. Previously, their coverage was balanced out by news anchors like Brian Williams — a figure more in line with the Tappers and Baiers of the industry — but he left the network in 2021, leaving a hole in its coverage of major news events.
What’s telling is that MSNBC has given up on wanting to even appear unbiased. No matter your feelings on Reid, Maddow, or any of these hosts, there is a clear-as-day difference between who is leading the coverage for CNN and Fox News and who is leading MSNBC’s night, and the difference says everything you need to know about the current state of MSNBC.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
